TONY CAPRA AND HIS GRANDFATHER'S LEGACY

When “It’s a Wonderful Life” comes on TV, Tony Capra – like so many others – will be watching at home.

If Capra’s name rings a bell, it’s because he shares it with Frank Capra, the film’s legendary director, producer and co-writer. Tony Capra is senior director at NBC News in Washington, D.C. and Frank was his grandfather. Tony grew up in California watching the film with his family every year like many other families. He says he has seen it all the way through “about 50 times.” But unlike other families, the Capras watched an original 16mm version.

“There’s the obvious connection and it does bring me close to my grandfather and the relationship I had with him,” Capra said.

Frank Capra was born in Sicily in 1897. He moved to California with his family when he was five years old. He became Hollywood’s highest-paid director in the 1930s thanks to classic movies like “It Happened One Night,” “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” “You Can’t Take It with You,” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” He was nominated for Best Director six times – including for “It’s a Wonderful Life” – and won three Oscars.

“If you watch all of his films, it’s like the culmination of all of his films.”

Capra, who volunteered in both World Wars, died in 1991 at the age of 94.

“He was very smart and very funny but could not tell a joke to save his life but he would have you falling on the floor telling stories,” Capra said.

When ‘It’s a Wonderful Life” came out in 1946, a year after the end of World War II, it was not a blockbuster. Reviews were mixed but it was nominated for five Oscars including Jimmy Stewart for Best Actor for his portrayal of down-on-his-luck George Bailey. The movie did not become an iconic film until the 1970s when its copyright lapsed and television stations all around the country started playing it often, especially during the holidays. It is now considered one of the greatest films of all-time.

The 1946 movie has become the definitive holiday classic that resonates with so many people, standing the test of time with its universal messages.

Seventy-six years after the movie’s release, people come up to Capra at work — especially this time of year — to say how much the movie means to them. “It’s a meaningful film. It makes people feel good. It means a lot to me,” Capra said. “It is important, it’s got a message and he was very proud of it,” Capra said.

And though his grandfather was a Hollywood legend, “he was just a normal grandfather,” Capra said. “He taught me how to fish, how to do all sorts of stuff. I feel very lucky to have had him in my life. He was a wonderful person to be around. He was a wonderful grandfather.” You’ll excuse Capra if he uses the word “wonderful” more often than most. He’s got a pretty good excuse.

And, yes, he’ll be watching Saturday night with his family just like he has every year for as long as he can remember. “It always gets me.”

IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE: A 1946 REVIEW

I have to admit I have never seen the 1946 classic It's A Wonderful Life. I have seen parts of it, but not the whole movie. I vow I will try to remedy that this year! In the meantime here is what the New York Times thought of the film when it published this review on December 23, 1946...

The late and beloved Dexter Fellows, who was a circus press agent for many years, had an interesting theory on the theatre which suited his stimulating trade. He held that the final curtain of every drama, no matter what, should benignly fall upon the whole cast sitting down to a turkey dinner and feeling fine. Mr. Fellows should be among us to see Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life," which opened on Saturday at the Globe Theatre He would find it very much to his taste.

For a turkey dinner, with Christmas trimmings, is precisely what's cooking at the end of this quaint and engaging modern parable on virtue being its own reward. And a whole slew of cozy small-town characters who have gone through a lot in the past two hours are waiting around to eat it—or, at least, to watch James Stewart gobble it up. For it is really Mr. Stewart, who does most of the heavy suffering in this film, and it is he who, in the end, is most deserving of the white meat and the stuffing.

That is because Mr. Capra, back from the war, has resumed with a will his previously manifest penchant for portraying folks of simple, homely worth. And in this picture about a young fellow who wants to break away from his small-town life and responsibilities but is never able to do so because slowly they close in upon him, Mr. Capra has gone all out to show that it is really a family, friends and honest toil that make the "wonderful life."

His hero is a personable fellow who wants to travel and do big things but ultimately finds himself running a building-and-loan association in a one-horse town, married and locked in constant struggle with the greedy old banker of the town. And when it finally looks as though the banker is about to drive him to ruin, he makes what appears a brash endeavor to take his own baffled life. Whereupon a heavenly messenger providentially intercedes and shows him, in fanciful fashion, what the town would have been like without him. The vision is so distressing that he returns to his lot with boundless joy — and is saved, also providentialy, by the financial assistance of his friends.

In composing this moralistic fable, Mr. Capra and his writers have tossed in a great abundance of colloquial incidents and emotional tangles of a mistful, humorous sort. The boyhood of his hero, the frolic at a high school dance, the clumsy pursuit of a courtship—all are shown in an entertaining way, despite the too frequent inclinations of every one to act juvenile and coy. And the heavier sections of the drama are managed in a tense, precipitate style.

As the hero, Mr. Stewart does a warmly appealing job, indicating that he has grown in spiritual stature as well as in talent during the years he was in the war. And Donna Reed is remarkably poised and gracious as his adoring sweet-heart and wife. Thomas Mitchell, Beulah Bondi, H. B. Warner and Samuel S. Hinds stand out among the group of assorted small-town characters who give the picture variety and verve. But Lionel Barrymore's banker is almost a caricature of Scrooge, and Henry Travers' "heavenly messenger" is a little too sticky for our taste.

Indeed, the weakness of this picture, from this reviewer's point of view, is the sentimentality of it—its illusory concept of life. Mr. Capra's nice people are charming, his small town is a quite beguiling place and his pattern for solving problems is most optimistic and facile. But somehow they all resemble theatrical attitudes rather than average realities. And Mr. Capra's "turkey dinners" philosophy, while emotionally gratifying, doesn't fill the hungry paunch...

SOURCE

WHERE ARE THEY NOW: KAROLYN GRIMES

Who can forget Jimmy Stewart's daughter in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE(1946)?

Karolyn Grimes (born July 4, 1940) is an American actress known for her role as "Zuzu Bailey" in the Frank Capra classic It's a Wonderful Life. Grimes also played Bing Crosby's daughter in the big budget musical BLUE SKIES in 1946. She also played "Debbie" in the 1947 Christmas film, THE BISHOP'S WIFE starring Cary Grant, David Niven, and Loretta Young.

Grimes was born in Hollywood, California. Her mother pushed her into acting, but her acting career declined with her mother's health. The latter died from illness when Grimes was 14, and she lost her father from a car crash a year later. A court ruling sent her from Hollywood to Osceola, Missouri, where she lived in what she called a "bad home" with her aunt and uncle. She went to college, married, raised kids, and became a medical technologist.

 

Years after her movie stardom, she gave local interviews in the 1980s and national interviews in the 1990s. Her first husband's death in a hunting accident, 18-year-old son's suicide in 1989, and second husband's death from cancer in 1994 made it difficult for Grimes to move on. After she suffered a serious financial setback during the early 2000s recession, she made a career of her advocacy for the film, whose hopeful and optimistic message she now says she can relate to.

Today, she tours big-screen showings of It's a Wonderful Life at dinner theatres worldwide, signing autographs, sharing tidbits, and pointing out small 'goofs'. One such mistake is that she, 6 years old at the time, faked the lyrics to "Auld Lang Syne" in the movie's famous closing scene. "If you watch closely, James Stewart is holding me tightly and he looks at me and begins to laugh because he knows I'm not singing the right words", she says...