Where to watch It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

Trivia & production notes

• James Stewart agreed to play George Bailey without even hearing the story first, based solely on director Frank Capra's request through his agent Lew Wasserman.
• Ginger Rogers turned down the role of Mary because she thought the part was too bland, later questioning her decision in her autobiography.
• Donna Reed was borrowed from MGM to play Mary after Jean Arthur, Olivia de Havilland, Martha Scott, and Ann Dvorak were all considered or offered the role first.
• Lionel Barrymore, who played Potter, was cast partly because he was famous at the time for playing Ebenezer Scrooge in radio dramatizations of A Christmas Carol.
• The Bedford Falls set covered 4 acres with a main street stretching 300 yards, 75 buildings, and 20 full-grown oak trees that Capra had planted to create an authentic town atmosphere.
• RKO's special effects department invented a new type of fake snow using water, soap flakes, foamite, and sugar, replacing the previous method of untoasted cornflakes which were so noisy that dialogue had to be redubbed.
• Actor H.B. Warner, playing Mr. Gower, was reportedly drunk during the drugstore scene and actually slapped young George actor Bobbie Anderson hard enough to make his ear bleed.
• When Thomas Mitchell's character Uncle Billy crashes off-screen at the party, the sound was actually a technician accidentally knocking over equipment, and Capra kept the ad-libbed dialogue and paid the technician $10 for the improvement.
• Composer Dimitri Tiomkin had a falling out with Capra over the removal of music from the drugstore scenes, feeling his work was treated as merely a suggestion.
• The angelic figures shown at the beginning of the film is an image of Stephan's Quintet, a group of five interacting galaxies.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article It's a Wonderful Life, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.