It’s A Wonderful Life is a holiday classic today. The film, which stars Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, and Lionel Barrymore was released in 1946 by RKO Radio Pictures. Despite legendary director Frank Capra, claims it was his best movie, it was a box-office flop.
Even though the movie was a commercial failure, that did not stop the Feds. The Smithsonian reports that from its release until 1956, It’s A Wonderful Life was deemed a communist plot against the U.S. by J. Edgar Hoover’s Federal Bureau of Investigation. An FBI agent was assigned to watch the film as part of the FBI’s program to detect and neutralize Commie influences in Hollywood (PDF). The FBI agent reportedly said the film was “very entertaining.”
Even though it was entertaining for the Hollywood G-Man it was not good enough for the Bureau. The FBI focused on It’s a Wonderful Life because it suspected director Frank Capra, lifelong Republican, of left-wing sympathies. The Bureau believed that the 1939 Capra movie, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, was a socialist film.
The Washington Post reports that the FBI believed that two of It’s a Wonderful Life screenwriters were Communists. Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, “were very close to known Communists and on one occasion in the recent past … practically lived with known Communists and were observed” eating lunch every day with “known Communists.”
As a result of this report, the film underwent further FBI scrutiny. Professor at Franklin and Marshall College, John A. Noakes told The Smithsonian that the FBI “also identified what they considered a malignant undercurrent in the film.” The FBI scrutiny found, “those responsible for making It’s a Wonderful Life had employed two common tricks used by Communists to inject propaganda into the film.”
In his article “Bankers and common men in Bedford Falls.” Professor Noakes identifies the two common “devices” or tricks, the FBI saw in It’s a Wonderful Life.
1- Values or institutions judged to be particularly American are smeared or presented as evil in a movie.
2- Values or institutions judged to be particularly anti-American or pro-Communist are glorified in a movie.
The FBI believed the Christmas classic was guilty of using Communist trick 1 by discrediting bankers. In a 1947 FBI memo, the Hollywood G-Man said that the poor depiction of the movie’s antagonist banker Henry F. Potter “represented a rather obvious attempt to discredit bankers.” The report continued by saying that the depiction was a deliberate ploy to ensure that Potter was the most hated character in the movie.
The FBI report also claimed the movie “deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters.”
An unnamed Bureau “expert” who knew better than three-time Academy Award winner Frank Capra, said that instead of demonizing Potter, the film should have shown that he was only following the rules issued by State Bank Examiners about making loans.
The FBI also believed the movie was guilty of using Communist trick 2 by defending the common man. Professor Noakes points to the scenes where George Bailey defends loans made by the Bailey Brothers Building and Loan to working men that want a decent home. These scenes challenged the status quo and thus were considered “Communist.” In the post-World War II paranoia, even the idea of a community bank could be read as Communist.
Further, George Bailey’s deep unhappiness in a quintessentially American small-town life was viewed by the FBI as also Communist. The FBI report characterized George Bailey’s depression and existential crisis as a “subtle attempt to magnify the problems of the so-called ‘common man’ in society.”
Because of these factors, the FBI handed over the results of its investigation to the U.S. Congresses’ House Un-American Activities Committee. The HUAC was an investigative subcommittee established to weed out organizations and individuals with suspected communist ties. Best known for its leader, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) lasting from the late 1940s through the 1950s. The HUAC had a hearing on It’s A Wonderful Life.
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Of course, we could focus on the deeper issues of It’s a Wonder Life, like the FBI Communist hunters playing fast and loose with the truth or the not surprisingly still relevant commentary on too big to fail banks.
Or
It’s a Wonderful Life is simply a classic holiday movie you watch on Christmas – at least until Die Hard, Scrooged or A Christmas Story come on.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.