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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday December 18, 2000 Volume II Number 51 |
FOCUS - Bedford Falls
When Frank Capra created a character named George Bailey and cast Jimmy Stewart to play the part, he knew he was tapping into something primal. Something fundamentally basic to life in America.
But when his film debuted in 1946 with lots of fanfare at the Globe Theater in New York City, the response was less than he hoped. Another film eclipsed Capra at the box office – William Wyler’s “Best Years of Our Lives” took home most of the Oscars Capra believed should have gone to his film.
Today, no one has heard of “Best Years.” But everyone still loves “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
It’s a movie that mellowed with age. By some quirk, in 1971 the film slipped out of its contractual copyright and became public domain. Networks aired the film often, primarily because they paid no royalties. And with exposure, the movie gained popularity. The black and white film about the timely visitation of a plump, simple-minded angel to a troubled husband and father and businessman became a holiday classic. Today, for many families including mine, there’s at least one showing every Christmas… permanently woven into the fabric of Christmas tradition.
It’s a Christmas movie. It’s also a financial planner’s movie.
It deals with issues like debt and equity and mortgages and shareholders and hostile takeovers and whole life insurance. There’s a “run on the bank.” The plot twists and turns around finance, and the behind-the-scenes way in which a typical American local economy operates.
The story winds through the boom times of the nineteen-twenties on through the Great Depression and then through the hardships of the Second World War. And as George Bailey comes of age, his life gets complicated. His dreams fade. His hopes diminish. Once a carefree dreamer with big and brassy ideas, he sinks into a dark despair. Despondent, he comes to believe that he is “worth more dead than alive.”
In the depths of that depression, George Bailey, with the ready assistance of his guardian angel, Clarence, rediscovers the rich meaning and positive purpose of his life. It’s a genuine conversion, which rivals that of Charles Dickens’ immortal Ebenezer Scrooge, and really, is a turning point to an unforgettable celebration of life and love and family. George Bailey is born again. It affirms the potential of every individual to make the world a better place.
Later, Jimmy Stewart would admit freely, “this is my favorite role. The best of my career.” Frank Capra would add, “this film sums up all of my aspirations as a movie maker.” Up until his death in 1991 at the age of ninety-four, he claimed this to be his best film.
“It really is a wonderful life,” he would say.
* * * * * * *
The mythical Bedford Falls was a creation of Frank Capra’s fertile imagination. With a budget of three point one eight million dollars, he created Main Street on a Hollywood back lot and with his special effects crew, added a foot of new fallen snow in the middle of a California summer heat wave.
A snowy sign welcomes us to Bedford Falls, an all American city somewhere in Upstate New York. All over town, people are praying for a man named George. He’s in trouble, they say. We hear their voices as the camera pans the Gower Drug Store, Martini’s Tavern, the Bedford Falls Garage, the Bailey Building and Loan and finally George’s house. From inside, children’s voices are praying, too.
Out there in the heavens, an angel is summoned. An aging uncomplicated angel by the name of Clarence. AS2. That’s Angel Second Class. Second class because he has yet to earn his wings. His superiors warn him that this will be a difficult case. Clarence agrees to take the assignment on one condition – that success will earn him his wings.
Clarence is briefed on the life and times
of one George Bailey from the periphery of heaven.
As a boy,
George rescued his little brother Harry from near drowning in the icy waters of
a frozen lake in a sledding mishap. George
lost his hearing in one ear. He
worked the soda counter at Gower’s Drug where a little princess named Mary
Hatch whispered her undying love and affection into young George’s bad ear
(he didn’t hear any of it) as he dished up ice cream. That same day, he discovered a terrible error, which could
have gravely harmed a young customer when the druggist, Mr. Gower, accidentally
poisoned a prescription intended to be medicine for a local child.
We learn early on that George is a good boy, with big aspirations. He plans to travel to the far corners of the globe, “to shake the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and see the world.” He tells his father, “I’m gunna build skyscrapers a hundred stories high, and build bridges a mile long…”
George
Bailey is the archetype American emerging from the ashes of the Great
Depression. His optimism is
irrepressible. His energy
boundless. His dreams vivid,
alive. Contagious.
Every time he walks into Gower’s Drug Store, he stops at the counter, closes his eyes and declares, “I wish I had a million dollars!” Then he presses the lever of a lighter, and as the flame jumps to life he cries, “Hee Haw!” like a donkey, affirming for all who hear that he knows its all going to come true.
And by this time, we are believers. This bright young boy with fire his belly, hope in his heart and lights in his eyes can do just about anything he wants.
* * * * *
But every time George packs up to leave Bedford Falls in pursuit of those wild-eyed dreams, he hits a detour. And the detour points him right back to Bedford Falls.
There is no road out of town for George Bailey.
Mr. Henry F. Potter, the richest, meanest man in the whole county, becomes George’s nemesis.
George’s father, Peter Bailey, runs the local Building and Loan. This hometown thrift provided working people a place to deposit their savings. The Building and Loan took those deposits and made loans to residents of Bedford Falls, which enabled them to realize the great American, dream – home ownership. George’s selfless father, tired and worn from the relentless pressures of the office, especially the pressures levied by one cantankerous board member, Mr. Potter, dropped dead of a stroke just as George was about to make his first escape from Bedford Falls.
For the sake of the townspeople and his father’s employees, this young, natural born leader picked up his father’s mantle, put his suitcase back in the closet, and assumed the office of Director at the Building and Loan.
George agrees to take the job until his brother comes home from college. Then it will be George’s turn to leave town and go get his degree. But when Harry returns, degree in hand, at the train station he introduces George to Ruth, his new bride. Ruth informs George that Harry will be working for her father… and once more, George is stuck. No college. Only Bedford Falls, and the Building and Loan. Hee Haw.
He finds a grown up Mary (Donna Reed), at the dance. Who will forget the Charleston contest, or stroll in the moonlight or the off-key harmony of “Buffalo Gals” or the terry-cloth robe and the hydrangea bush or lassoing the moon? Or the telephone call with the soft close-up and the shared receiver when George is overpowered by the captivating presence of Mary? George’s plans to leave town evaporate once more – this time into a mist of irresistible love and affection.
And as they make their exit from the wedding chapel, into the back seat of Ernie’s Taxi, two thousand dollars in cold cash in one hand, a bottle of bubbly from a Policeman named Bert in the other (this Bert and Ernie inspired the names of the famous puppet team), on their way to the train station and a European honeymoon, through the pouring rain, they see trouble.
The Building and Loan is in crisis. Potter, in George’s absence, fuels the rumors. The Building and Loan is about to fail, he warns. Shareholders storm the lobby demanding that their accounts be paid out immediately, in cash. A conniving Potter plots to buy out the Building and Loan for half its value, and win control.
George leaps from the taxi into the pouring rain, to the lobby, dripping wet, and with his forgetful Uncle Billy, cut off Potter’s plan and convince the mob to back off. And in the process, pledges his honeymoon money to rescue the Building and Loan.
The trip was off. Again.
* * * * * * *
George and Mary create a home. They have children. The Building and Loan grows. A project called Bailey Park funded by the Building and Loan provides housing for the people of Bedford Falls.
George and Mary preside over a ceremony as each new family moves into their new home. They present them with three gifts – “Bread – that this home may never know hunger. Salt – that your life may always have flavor. And wine – that joy and prosperity may reign forever.”
George’s brother Harry goes off to war and wins the Congressional Medal of Honor for shooting down an enemy fighter plane in the Pacific just before it crashed into a battleship loaded with American sailors.
One day, a forgetful Uncle Billy fumbles at the National Bank where he makes a daily deposit. Eight thousand dollars in cash ends up in Potter’s wrinkled up newspaper, where an absent-minded Billy left it. Potter instantly recognizes the error, and keeps the money, knowing full well that the loss will push the precarious Building and Loan into insolvency.
George recognizes the threat instantly. It happened as a Federal Auditor examines the books. With that huge amount of cash unaccounted for, the viability of the business and the reputation of its principals are in peril.
George and his uncle swing into action. But it is of no consequence. Potter (who stole the money) moves in for the long awaited kill, grilling George on his personal financial strength, and learning he has none, refuses to help. He calls in the authorities.
“You are worth more dead than alive, George Bailey,” Potter declares.
The Building and Loan will be shut down. George will be charged with extortion, fraud, misappropriation and embezzlement.
George’s wonderful life is over.
* * * * * *
Leaders know the dance.
It’s a tightrope walk between success and failure. Dreams motivate and energize. But the reality never quite matches the original vision. Occasionally leaders wonder where the dreams went.
Sometimes, in the high-pressure process of keeping afloat, the ideals slip away. Cynicism creeps in. Mistakes get made.
Uncle Billy calls it “a pickle.” George, this time it’s a pickle. A real pickle, he said.
And sometimes, we leaders feel like donkeys. Hee haw. Donkeys in a real pickle.
And we’ve got a Henry F. Potter just waiting for that first misstep, ready to move in for the kill.
* * * * * *
So George drops in to Martini’s and takes too much to drink. He slips into such despair that Potter’s words ring all too true. George’s whole life insurance policy has a mere five hundred dollars in equity. That’s all he has to pledge as collateral. But that policy will be worth a bundle as a death benefit to his beneficiaries, he figures.
So he heads out to the bridge on a cold and snowy night to end it all. “I wish I’d never been born,” George sobbed.
And that’s where Clarence comes in. The guardian angel.
He gives George a vision. The vision of a town that might have been, if George Bailey had never lived.
Everything changed.
Bedford Falls lost its name… and its
identity. Now it is called
Pottersville. Harry, George’s
little brother
Harry, drowned in the lake without George to save him. The World War II battleship in the Pacific sank killing all
the American sailors on board because Harry wasn’t there to shoot down the
enemy. Mr. Gower went to jail for
poisoning a customer. There was no
Bailey Park – no home ownership for hundreds of Bedford Falls residents.
The lot was an expanding cemetery. The Bailey building and loan became a
sleazy bar. Main Street a
gathering place for gambling, drinking, crime, addictions. It looked more like Babylon… Sodom and Gomorrah… than
Bedford Falls.
George’s mother, widowed for years, ran a run down boarding house, and slammed the door in the face of the ghastly man who claimed to be her son. He was a stranger. A frightening, menacing stranger.
But George finally hit bottom when he saw Mary.
“Where is Mary?” he asked Clarence. “I can’t tell you,” he said. George shook it out of him. “She’s just closing up the library. She’s an old maid,” Clarence explained. (Here is one place this timeless film betrays its age. Political correctness did not occur to the writers in 1945. She was an “old maid.” That is to say, she is an aging unmarried woman.)
George raced to the library and found her locking up the door at the end of the day. When he saw her, Mary Hatch, years later, as a prim, prudish, strait-laced librarian… with no children, no family, George was horrified. The woman he loved, staring ahead with no recognition of this stranger George Bailey…. Well, that’s when he pleaded with Clarence – “I want to live!” he cried. “I want my life back!”
Clarence granted that wish. And Clarence, for the effort, got his wings.
* * * * * *
You are a leader. What you do matters. More than you know.
The service you provide, the attitude you bring, the care you give, the tone you set… all contribute something meaningful in your world.
This will be a Christmas season to remember. As people look back, years from now, how will they describe you? More than the gifts you give… they will remember the person you are.
That world out there is filled with dangers, toils and snares. It’s grace that brought you safe this far… and grace will lead you home.
George Bailey wanted out. So he thought. But not really. In the end, even in Bedford Falls, he realized that all his dreams really did come true. He just failed to notice it.
Until Clarence came along.
Look around you.
Stand out front after dark and look back at your house. Just look at those lights. Take in a deep breath… fill your lungs with that chilly night air. Sit with the person you love by the tree. Put some music on. Sip on something good. Talk to each other. Laugh together. Take it in.
It really is a wonderful life.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2000
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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