Failure - The Greatest Gift of All

"The Greatest Gift of All" is the story of an honest, hard-working man who dreamed of a brighter tomorrow, but after years of struggle and bad luck, he found himself facing financial ruin, running from the law, and considering suicide - the story of a failure.

Puyallup Date Night Alert: This Movie is Playing Weds Dec 16th

at the Historic Liberty Theater in Downtown Puyallup.

Full Dinner and This Movie. Link: Liberty Theater for details!

Appropriately, the author's attempt to sell the story to every publisher he could find met with rejection after rejection. Giving up, he eventually just sent it out to 200 friends in a condensed version as his Christmas greeting - realizing that his dream of a big book deal had ended in failure.

By accident, the story came to the attention of the head of one of the biggest Hollywood movie studios. He decided to make it into a movie starring the biggest star of the day - Cary Grant. But three different script-writing teams couldn't to come up with a workable script so the project was shelved and Cary Grant moved on to other projects - another failure.

Finally, "The Greatest Gift of All" was purchased by a top-name director, who tweaked and massaged it, and rolled it out to big fanfare where it was met with - indifference. Even though the director was well-known, the reviews for the movie were excellent, and the studio was thinking "Oscars" - the public stayed away. A box-office failure.

Later that year, it was indeed nominated for five Academy Awards, but it failed to win a single one. But wait! With the attention that Academy Award nominations bring, surely the public would want to see it now? The studio re-release was met with (What else?) - failure.

Since the American public wasn't interested in it, it was taken to London in hopes that a foreign audience might embrace it. Alas, the story was rejected by foreign critics as "too sentimental" and the public stayed away again - failure.

Over the next 25 years, the movie sat collecting dust in storage until, of course, the company that owned the rights to the it went bankrupt - failure. But amazingly, from this final failure sprang another chance for this movie to win the hearts of the public, and this time it didn't disappoint - soon becoming one of the most cherished movies of all time.

You see, the top-name director who massaged and tweaked the story was Frank Capra, who also changed the name of the story to "It's a Wonderful Life". Capra had just returned home after fighting in WWII and was looking for a new project. He had seen great potential in the story and recruited another returning veteran - Colonel James Stewart - to play the lead character. (Capra had also directed Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and other projects before they both joined the military.)

The movie was completed in 90 days and in time for a pre-Christmas release in 1946, but for Oscar considerations, it was held until mid-January so it would qualify for the 1947 Academy Awards considerations. But in a war-weary, post-Christmas America, there was little enthusiasm for the sentimental story of struggle and failure.

But in 1974, through the bankrupt copyright-holding production company's failure to renew the copyright properly, the movie fell into the public domain - meaning any and all television stations could play the movie for free. And play it they did. It was not uncommon that year to find the movie playing at the same time on competing stations - and there weren't that many stations. Finally, after so many failures, the public was ready to receive Frank Capra's "Greatest Gift of All".

Out of the failure of this movie about a failure of a man, many would find a renewed hope and inspiration every year and realize, once again, "It's a Wonderful Life". Feeling like a failure these days? Remember, "No Man is a Failure who has Friends." - Clarence the Angel. Hang in there!

photo by: Tony the Misfit