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Slate Money Goes to the Movies: It’s a Wonderful Life
00:39:18
Cathy O’Neil joins Slate Money to talk about the bank runs of It’s a Wonderful Life
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- [00:10]
A
Hello, and welcome to the It's a Wonderful Life episode of Sleep. Money Goes to the Movies. I'm Felix Salmon of Axios. I'm here with my colleague Emily Peck. Hello. Hello, Hello. And we are going to talk about It's a Wonderful Life, which is obviously a movie about banking, but it's also a movie about Christmas. It's a movie about community. We are going to talk about algorithms, amazingly, we are going to talk about intersectionality. But actually, we're just going to have a lot of fun talking about Jim Stewart and George Bailey and what happens in this movie. Emily, who's our guest?
- [00:52]
B
The wonderful Kathy o'.
- [00:54]
C
Neal.
- [00:54]
B
The former co host of Slate Money.
- [00:56]
A
Herself, Cathy o', Neill, is back from an undisclosed location, so she is going to be joining us to talk about It's a Wonderful Life coming up on Slate. Money Goes to the Movies. Kathy, you chose a classic Christmas movie. You can't, you can't shrug and throw your hands in the air on a podcast, Kathy, no one can see you doing that.
- [01:20]
C
Oh, oh, oh, right. No, no, I, it wasn't a shrug. It was more like a. A smug smile. Listen, I mean, this is not only one of my favorite movies, I would say it's like up there, it makes me cry every single time, including when I was preparing for this this morning. If you see, like cry eyes, that's why it's curious financially to me. It always sparks my curiosity and interest. And I never had, you know, the time or the reason to really delve at all into, like, the storyline, the underlying economic storyline.
- [01:56]
A
Like, this is obviously basically a remake of Dickens Christmas Carol, which had basically nothing to do with banking as far. I think the original book or script that was optioned also had nothing to do with banking. The decision to make our hero the custodian, I guess you would call it, of this little building society, I think happened like, quite a few ways into revisions. Do you think that the fact that this movie has, you know, won lots of Oscars, has become this much beloved favorite of all good thinking people? Do you think the fact that it has that bank at the heart of it, or actually two banks at the heart of it, is part of that, or is. Does that not actually matter?
- [02:46]
C
Oh, I think it matters a lot. I mean, look, I think it's all about the concept of what's worthwhile. Like, what is a man's worth. And it's constantly contrasting the concept of money as a way of measuring yourself versus other currencies, other social types of currencies like family and friends. So I think the fact that it's about a bank or about a system of banks really is critically important to the story.
- [03:14]
A
Spoiler alert. The great finale of this movie seems to be saying that family and friends are basically fungible with money. That's long as you have family and friends, they'll come through and give you $8,000 if you need it.
- [03:29]
C
Yeah, I mean, say that again, because I'm a little confused what you mean by fan family and friends are fungible.
- [03:39]
A
Well, I mean, like, so there is a long standing tradition in movies, and we've talked about this on this in this late. Money goes to the movies many times in the past, where the path to redemption and having a good life and having a happy ending involves giving away a large amount of money that on some level you. I don't know whether you deserve it or not. But however you come into the large sum of money, that's not the happy ending. The happy ending is when you give away the large sum of money and. And then you have the happy ending. Like, you know, we had that in what was that terrible Woody Harrelson movie. But, yeah, that happens all the time where he plays an architect. Indecent proposal. That was it. It's a standard trope in movies. And once you start looking for it, you see it everywhere. And this movie does that a couple of times. We have our hero, George Bailey.
- [04:40]
C
First.
- [04:40]
A
Of all, takes his tuition money and gives it to his brother so that, you know, because he needs to take over the bank. Then he takes his honeymoon money and you and gives it to his shareholders to save his bank. And so, like, that theme of the way you achieve nobility in this life is by giving away money rather than hoarding it. In, you know, a la Mr. Potter, the evil banker runs through the movie up until the very end. And then at the very end, the reason the very end is so happy is because he asks for $8,000 or his friends ask for 8,000. You know, have a kind of whip round for him and say, like, can we come up with $8,000 for good old George? And they seem to come up with, like, some great multiple of that. And there's this huge pile of money sitting in front of him on the table, and no one is claiming any of it. And it's just gifted. It's not even alone. That is like, now we're. Now we're happy at the end because he just has all the money he could ever want.
- [05:40]
D
What's happening? He's so close. Oh, I hear them. Coming now. George, It's a miracle. It's a miracle. Who's got to come?
- [05:49]
A
Daddy.
- [05:50]
D
Come, Daddy. Come in. Uncle Billy. Everybody. George, Isn't it wonderful? So many did it, George. Mary did it. She told some people you were in trouble there. They scattered all over town collecting money. Didn't ask any question, just the George in trouble and count me another run on the bank. Ei, George. Merry Christmas. There we are, the lame arms on.
- [06:21]
C
The right, I mean, and they're mostly ones. So it's actually not clear to me that it is $8,000 in total. But then when, like, whoever it is, the warden or somebody rips up, you know, his. His. The. The. The little piece of paper that says he's going to be arrested, whatever that's called, then. Then it becomes clear that he's in the. That he's. He's off. He's off of the charges.
- [06:48]
A
Yeah. And. And his friend, the. The plastics millionaire, you know, comes through with like $25,000 or something.
- [06:54]
C
Yeah, very, very.
- [06:55]
A
From London.
- [06:57]
C
Yeah. You know. Agreed, agreed. But I would just frame it a little bit differently. I actually think the entire movie is a question, is sort of examining the nature of what money is really for, you know. Agreed. That he gives away the money for college to his brother. He gives the money from his honeymoon to stop the bank run during the Depression. I think that what we're supposed to understand from that is that, like, he had an opportunity to be selfish. Not in a sort of terrible way, not selfish, like horrible. And. But to do something for himself, for an experience for himself.
- [07:34]
A
And most explicitly, he turns down $20,000 a year from Mr. Potter to stay on $2,000 a year.
- [07:41]
C
And he has these choices offered to him. Do you want it to be about you, or do you want it to be about the community? And he consistently chooses the community. And so the point of the movie, I will argue, is that even though we all need money, and that is completely clear and it is contextualized, it is not about money. I mean, one of the sort of first things that Clarence the angel says to anyone in this. In the entire. Well, the actual living people, besides, you know, the angels, the other angels and God, the first thing he says is, we don't have money in heaven. And so that's. That's supposed to set us up to be like, oh, they have a different currency. And indeed, like, that's the whole point. Right?
- [08:30]
A
The whole point is that they have Bitcoin.
- [08:33]
C
It's definitely not Bitcoin. Felix, calm down.
- [08:35]
D
You'll Help me, won't you?
- [08:36]
C
Sure, sure.
- [08:38]
A
How?
- [08:39]
D
By letting me help you.
- [08:42]
A
Only one way you can help me.
- [08:44]
D
You don't happen to have 8,000 bucks on you? Oh, no, no. We don't use money in heaven.
- [08:48]
C
Oh, yeah, that's right. I keep forgetting.
- [08:50]
D
It comes in pretty handy down here, bub. Oh, T, T, T, I found it.
- [08:57]
A
Out a little late.
- [08:59]
D
I'm worth more dead than alive. Now look, you mustn't talk like.
- [09:02]
C
I want to give a shout out to my son who also watched this movie and talked to me at length about it. He's studying economics, so he's interested in this and he put it into two different historical contexts because as. As he pointed out, it's like where the movie set, which is, starts in the Depression and goes up to past the war and then where the movie's made, which is post the war. And he made the point that like a bunch of, you know, World War II veterans came home with, with like all these ideas of sort of positive ideas of communism and sort of anti capitalism. And you think there's a lot of that going to our earlier point, Felix, of like, this movie is, in my opinion, a movie about what is the real purpose of money versus community? Like what, what do we owe to each other versus what do we owe to ourselves?
- [09:51]
A
Certainly if you look at what happened in the UK after the war, that was, you know, the first election after the war. Churchill gets kicked out, the Labour government gets voted in, the National Health Service gets created. There is this move towards socialism, which I guess, you know, the closest thing you would have in the US would be the New Deal, which was before the war. But this movie was made like more or less during the war, at the end of the war. It came out in 1946. So the war is super fresh in people's minds. But yeah, so this question of, of money and the role of money in the movie and how central the role of money is to the movie, I think it's really super interesting. Most obviously, this whole story is dichotomous, right? You have the good money person who's George Bailey, and then you have the bad money person who's Mr. Potter, and they both run banks. Except for George Bailey doesn't actually run a bank, he runs a Building and Loan. He runs a lender so you can borrow money from his institution. He does have depositors, so there can be a run on the bank, but they're not depositors. Like we think about depositors in this age of like, you know, FDIC insurance and Demand deposits and checking accounts. You know, you, you get shares if you deposit money and you. It's basically like a. It's a weird thing. And, and the reason why Uncle Billy is going to the bank. Bank to deposit the building society's money is because the building society isn't actually a bank. And if you, if you want to actually deal in cash, you do that at the bank. And that distinction was a really important distinction back in the 1940s, but it's completely disappeared now. It just doesn't exist. I mean, it does to a little degree, I guess. There are lots of lenders who don't take deposits. There aren't places. It's still very rare. I've come across it like, once or twice in the, in the realm of, like, commercial mortgages and stuff where you'd get, like, shares in lieu of a deposit account. So that was a fascinating, like, look into what was considered, like, good and noble and what was considered bad. And what's considered good and noble is basically not a depository institution. And a depository institution is evil.
- [12:17]
B
Yeah, it was, it was really. I was, I was amazed to find how much this movie was a movie about good banker, bad banker. Because, you know, I remember watching it when I was a kid and that didn't matter to me at all. And I was thinking about how, like, the, the, the divide between these two doesn't really matter now because the way mortgage lending is. Well, this movie, this all happened before the US Government started backing mortgages, I believe. Right. And so going forward from there, you didn't need to rely on, like, good guy George Bailey to help you buy a house. And Bailey park, you didn't have to rely on the nice banker man to get you your house with all your children, the Martini family in Bailey park, you could just get a loan backed if you're a white person, backed by the federal government. And banking sort of moved on from, like, this thing that individual guys do or help you with. Right. Not necessarily for the better.
- [13:17]
C
So one of the reasons I chose this movie was because I am confused by this good bank, bad bank thing. And, you know, like, I guess it was called a Building and Loan that George Bailey was running with his uncle. But it certainly reminded me of the saving and loan banks. And I know that they had so many, so much trouble in the 80s, and probably they were just as corrupt and greedy and looking for a high return as anything else. But as I learned in researching this, in part, that's because they were not given as much regulation post the Depression, as the deposit banks were. So the deposit banks had the FDIC insurance that prevented the runs that we saw. And as you say, Emily, we had the guaranteed for white people mortgages. And by the way, speaking of white people, can we just acknowledge just the problematic nature of the maid in the story? In sort of every single scene that she appeared, it was embarrassing and very cringy.
- [14:27]
A
Yeah. The one person who had no chance of getting a mortgage or a house of her own from the building and.
- [14:34]
B
Learnt she couldn't even sit down at the table with them to eat. That was a joke.
- [14:38]
A
But I mean, she was, you know, not to get too sort of intersectional about this, but I think back in those days it was actually impossible for women to get a mortgage, whether they were black or white.
- [14:51]
B
Yeah, no mortgages, no credit, nothing.
- [14:54]
C
I also, you know, speaking of cringy moments, the horrifying alternative reality for Mary, who was the wife, was to become a librarian. And I was just like, wow. You know, wow. That's the worst case scenario, I suppose.
- [15:10]
A
And the vibrant nightlife of Bedford Falls was like just Sodom and Gomorrah and.
- [15:16]
C
Pretty good to me.
- [15:18]
A
It looked fun to me. I was like, that. That bit. That bit looks fine to me. Yeah.
- [15:22]
C
Yeah.
- [15:22]
B
Well, Mary's really the unsung hero of the film, right? I mean, while George is feeling sorry for himself looking out over the Bedford Falls Bridge or whatever, Mary's like, rustling up the town to save him. She had four kids, but is also remodeled the entire dump haunted house. Like, she's really the gem here. And I don't. I don't know, but I want to.
- [15:44]
C
Go back to Emily's statement about there is no distinction. I really actually think Potter is Warren Buffett. You know, Warren Buffett with his empire of trailer parks. Don't you think that's appropriate as an analogy? Like, it's not that we don't have. It's not that we don't have, like, Potters anymore. It's just that they're not. They're not considered mainstream bankers.
- [16:12]
B
It's funny that you say that because Potter's such a villain in this film. Like, he is just like the worst person.
- [16:18]
C
He.
- [16:18]
B
I think George Bailey's dad, before he dies, says, like, there's something wrong with him. He's sick inside all this badness. And then in my, like, Google research for this segment, I came across like, the House UN American Activities Commission's report on It's a Wonderful Life, you know? Cause it's obviously this communist movie. They think Which, I mean, are they wrong?
- [16:39]
C
No.
- [16:40]
B
But in the, in the report, there's all this language about how they could have made the banker seem nice and better and more like altruistic and how it was like a warped version of what a banker is supposed to be. Which I guess ultimately that's how we think about Warren Buffett, right? He's like, just like you're saying, Kathy, he's like this folksy, folksy guy. So if, like Potter in 2021 would also be this just folksy, folksy banker.
- [17:08]
A
Guy, those of us who are old with long memories will remember that Warren Buffett had a stint as the chairman of a bank, specifically of Salomon Brothers, which was busy inventing mortgage backed securities, I think roughly at the same time. And I think there's. I think what's interesting about Potter is that he is avaricious in a way that bankers still are to this day in the popular imagination, but really nowadays you generally find only in finance rather than banking. And I think one of the big things that you really notice watching this movie is the fact that outside a handful of credit unions, this kind of personal relationship banking with normal people doesn't really exist anymore. And if you walk into your local branch of Chase or Bank of America, there is no lending officer who can basically say, you're a good person, I believe in you. Here's a mortgage. It's all done by some algorithm somewhere. And that has pros and cons, right? Like, on the one hand, if it's all based on, you're a good person, I trust you, then it is all at the whims of humans who are inherently racist and generally consciously or unconsciously biased in all manner of respects. But Kathy will be the first to tell us that the algorithms can be biased too. It's a question of, like, choosing your poison, right?
- [18:51]
C
Yeah, that's a really interesting point, Felix. This idea that, like, I will personally vouch for my friend who should have a real home, and I happen to feel that way, versus Potter, who across town doesn't feel that way, wants to keep them in the slums. I think he called them garlic eaters. The Italians that were moving into Bailey park, that was the way it worked. And to our point earlier, women weren't allowed to get mortgages, black people weren't. And that was just sort of the guardians of that system were the bankers or the folks like George Bailey, if you don't want to call them a banker. That was explicitly outlawed in legislation in the 60s and FICO scores were Invented as a response to that legislation to make things, to make it possible for bankers to still make loans. So FICO scores were a reaction to FICRA and ecoa, Fair Credit Reporting act and Equal Credit Opportunity Act. Then once FICO scores were invented, they got scaled up massively because now you have this automated fast system that seems really efficient that was explicitly built to be legal. And once you had that legal system for denying people loans, it was scaled beyond anybody's imagination and for uses outside of loans. Very quickly, to Felix's point, nowadays we don't even have. Well, we still have FICO scores, of course, everybody knows that. But we also have all sorts of families of other kinds of credit ratings associated to FICO scores. Very correlated, but not exactly the same, built by every lender and every fintech company that has been invented since then. So it's a huge industry and you no longer see that person to person thing, which is good and bad.
- [20:42]
B
Why is it bad? Because at first when you start thinking about it, you're like, oh, it's so nice. George Bailey knows Ernie and he gives Ernie a loan Even though Mr. Potter wouldn't give him the loan because he knows him. And that's more important, important than any like, track record. But then you think about it for 10 seconds and you're like, wait, you could be giving loans to your friends. They could turn out not to be able to pay them. And what a messy situation that becomes. Like, no one wants to loan money to their friends. That's how you lose friends. I would imagine. So isn't it a good thing that this system doesn't exist anymore?
- [21:16]
C
It is often a good thing, you know, I mean, let me. It's probably, it's probably good in, for, in a lot of cases, but I will just caution us to imagine that it's not, it's not certainly not perfect. Like, one of the ways I got into this entire like biased algorithm game is by really listening to the original pitch of Lending Club. Was it called Lending Club.
- [21:44]
A
Oh, Lending Club. They were, they were early on this.
- [21:47]
C
Yeah, they were very early. And I was on top of them listening to exactly what they were saying. Here's what they were saying. We're going to look at your Facebook friends and decide whether you are worth a chance even though FICO hasn't found you yet. So you know, people who, without lending experience, without borrowing experience, people who are young, essentially like college students or immigrants, don't have the credit history required to have a good FICO score. So we're going to find you and we're going to give you loans. Now, who do you think that privileged? Right? It privileged people whose fake Facebook friends were wealthy people, obviously. So it was like, I'm going to give you a hand up, but only some of you. And that was. That is the kind of the system I think we should keep in mind when we think, when we think about who does this.
- [22:34]
A
Although if you look at all of the, you know, we're going to do social underwriting, fintechs who started up, and a lot of people have made that claim. You're absolutely right about Lending Club Affirm came out of the gate saying it was going to underwrite based on that Upstart came out of the gate saying it was going to underwrite based on that kind of thing. They're like, we're going to look at your. Your full social graph and we're going to be able to predict how credit. Whether you're going to be in the future without having to have recourse to a bunch of credit history that you don't have because you're too young, you're an immigrant or something like that. And when you actually look at what they do, they all kind of tried the social graph thing and they gave it up pretty quickly. Like it just doesn't actually work that well.
- [23:19]
B
I have just some little things I wanted to make sure I mentioned first. Why is there a crow in the bank? Why does a crow in the bank. Why does Uncle Billy have a squirrel in his home? Little questions. I read online the crow symbolizes death and the bank is gonna die. I. I don't think that makes any sense. But I'm.
- [23:39]
C
Oh, I thought you had an explanation. You're just asking us.
- [23:41]
B
I'm wondering. Yeah, I think it's because the crow symbolizes like, death or something. I think it's also because Uncle Billy is just incompetent, which sent me down a spiral of like, working with your relatives and how that again, puts a business person in an awkward position. But maybe the, I guess the message of the film is just like, there are things more important than business, so you have to keep your ridiculous uncle employed, otherwise he'll go into a mental asylum, is the message there. You have to take over your father's business even though it's not a good business, et cetera. Because there are things more important than money and business, right?
- [24:24]
C
Yes. I do agree that the argument, the argument of the movie is like, there's things more important than awkwardness, right? Like, it is awkward. It is a Conflict of interest. And yet you do it because you owe it to your family to do it. So it's very, you know, family obligation oriented. Obviously, that's why he never went on his trips. He never went to college. And that's a very important aspect of the movie, which I cannot relate to that well. Like, I kind of feel like, you know, when my kids are grown up, they can leave me. That's cool. You know, like, I say that now. I mean, I'm doing fine. Maybe I'll change my mind. And to your point, though, I wanted to also bring up something which is, like, I know we've already admitted that it's communist, but I'll tell you, this is what makes me cry every time, like, when he is at his worst, he goes to Potter to beg for a loan of $8,000, which is how much Potter stole from his uncle or didn't return from his uncle. And the thing that Potter says that he repeats to himself a couple times later on was, I'm worth more dead than alive. I'm worth more dead than alive because he had a life insurance policy that was paying out more than he had than he owned in assets. That's the first instantiation of that concept of what is a man worth. And then the second one is the very last line of the movie, I believe, which is like, you're the richest man here. You're the richest man alive. Which isn't about money, right? It's about his family and his friends coming together to care for him.
- [25:51]
D
I got him here from the airport just as quick as I could. The fool flew all the way up here in a blizzard.
- [25:55]
B
Harry, now about your banquet in New York.
- [25:57]
D
Oh, I left right in the middle of it as soon as I got Mary stood telegram. Good idea, Ernie. A toast to my big brother George, the richest man in town.
- [26:08]
C
So I feel like that I'm crying just thinking about it. That is beautiful.
- [26:16]
B
Shayna shared with us this really good blog post from Lindy west. And I think she points out, like, kind of just how it's pretty clear that George Bailey has a wonderful life. Like, he shouldn't have needed this angel to show him, like, the fact that this. This boy couldn't go on a global trip after he finished working or going to school, like, and his hopes were dashed of having a harem of women. As he explains to Mary in the soda shop in the beginning. Like, that's not some great tragedy. Like, what is he so upset about, really? It's just such a the whole movie kind of has this very, like, really puts him on a pedestal in a way that sort of, I don't think would maybe would still happen now, where, you know, he makes big speeches and his desires are elevated, like, are seen as just so important that he has to go to Tahiti or whatever. And that's just like, so, so important. And he's really, like, suffering as a result is kind of absurd if you think about it. Like, okay, so he didn't get to go on a trip. He has to stay and run a business and have a beautiful wife who, like, makes a beautiful home for him. I mean, that there's no really dramatic tension there. It's not so terrible. You know what I mean?
- [27:34]
A
Well, it's definitely. I mean, last season we talked about the Fountainhead, right? And. Which was like, the polar opposite of this movie, which is all about, like, the. The singular drive of the individual is the thing that makes America great. And the one thing this movie does a pretty good job of is saying that the singular drive of George Bailey has never been to stay in Bedford Falls and run a stupid building in loan, right? All he wants is to get out, to see the world, to build magnificent monuments, to be a kind of Howard Rourke figure, basically. And he needs to give up on his dreams, or he doesn't need to give up on his dreams, but he winds up giving up on his dreams for the greater good of his family and his community. And that's the, you know, I don't know if it's communist, but it's definitely communitarian aspect of the movie, right? That he. That there's. That there is a loss to him of agency, which is. And one of the reasons that he never really wants to settle down with Mary is it's precisely because he doesn't want to settle down in Bedford Falls.
- [28:52]
C
It's a good question about how sorry should we feel for this guy. And especially when you. And as we have consider his opportunities versus, you know, the maid, the women in the. You know. And yet I would argue that I do relate to him. Like, absolutely. I'm not a white guy from the 40s, but we all want to have the freedom to have dreams. And we. He wasn't asking, to be clear, like, he wasn't rich. He wasn't asking for money. His, you know, remember that line he had was like, oh, then I'll come back and go to college and see what they know. Like, he will. He wanted to, like, go experience the world. And I think everyone can relate to the desire to experience in the world, even if they're not given that opportunity. So that frustrated the thwarted ambition of experiencing firsthand what the world is like is really all he was asking for, and he probably deserved it. And that's what Americans are supposed to deserve. And of course, every American deserves that. But it wasn't like he was on a trust fund or something.
- [30:00]
B
Yeah, yeah, I guess. Yeah. That's the frustration. It's like, if only everyone could have been given the chance to, like, have a dream. And there had been, like, some empathy for the failure to achieve that dream. Like, Mary's dream is what? To be with George in the haunted house. Like, she's not really allowed to have a dream where she gets to go explore. Like, she even tells him at one point, he's like, why do you want to marry me? Or something. And she says, because I don't want to be an old maid. And, like, of course she's, like, joking, but I honestly don't think she's joking that much because, like, that's what you had to do back then. Otherwise, you become an old maid. And like, every. Everyone looks down on you.
- [30:39]
C
Whatever you made was used, was weaponized, I would say, in that.
- [30:44]
B
Yeah. Like, I'm like, women, people of color, like, they weren't allowed to have those kinds of dreams. Like, they wouldn't have dared to. Well, maybe they would have, but a movie wouldn't have been made about it.
- [30:55]
C
All I mean to say is that, like, we should. Instead of shitting on this movie because the white guy got to have a dream, we should just be like, everyone deserved that dream. Right? Like, we should raise the level rather than lower our levels.
- [31:08]
B
Yes. Everyone deserves a dream. And I also cried at several points in this.
- [31:13]
C
Thank you.
- [31:13]
A
Thanks.
- [31:14]
C
That's someone I'm asking for. Felix, did you cry? Felix. Felix.
- [31:18]
A
I cried. We all cry.
- [31:21]
C
I think my son cried, too.
- [31:22]
B
So it's so nice. I forgot just how, like, delightful it is. Like when they're dancing on top of the swimming pool and it starts to move and the crowd is roaring. Every time they get close to the.
- [31:32]
C
Edge, we're dancing, too. I wish we still knew how to dance.
- [31:35]
B
Oh, yeah. I loved it so much.
- [31:38]
A
So, Emily, you can tell us, having watched the swimming pool scene twice.
- [31:42]
B
Yes.
- [31:43]
A
How does it compare if you watch it in color?
- [31:46]
B
Oh, right. Oh, right. So I like Google. I got my Amazon out. I called up this movie, and I just started watching in color. Not even, like, thinking about it. My husband looked over my shoulder. He's like, I thought this movie was black and White. I was like, who cares? And then I said to Felix, like, oh, I watched the colorized version. And he was horrified and I was shamed. So I went back and watched in black and white. And it's. It's better. It's better in black and white. I mean, it looks weird. The colorized version does look weird. The lighting is strange. But I still cried and everything and enjoyed the film 100%. And if I show it to my kids over Christmas next year, I probably might show them the colorized version just because I feel like young kids might like that better. Like they might appreciate, not appreciate. Black and white the same, but 100%. The lighting and the. The way things are staged and shot makes a lot more sense in black and white. For those of you who care, like Felix.
- [32:45]
A
I care because this is. We are meant to be talking about movies here. And movies are visual things and deliberate and. And one of the, you know, one of the things that definitely struck out stands out to me the way that our heroes, George and Mary are just like stunningly gorgeous movie stars. And then the sort of goofy, you know, Uncle Billy or heaven forfend, like Mr. Potter, they are just like, not good looking. All of the other suitors for Mary's attention are kind of nerdy. And, you know, there is this kind of conflation of being good and being good looking does seem to happen in this movie.
- [33:23]
B
Well, what about Violet, who's apparently like the town slut, right? Who is redeemed by George Bailey. She looks. She's attractive too. And it's not necessary. She's not necessarily one of the heroines of the film. Right. She has got a more kind of give and take there. She's more of a gray area character. Right?
- [33:41]
A
It's true. It's true. And she's. And she's the. She's the avatar in. She's like the little hint in Bedford Falls of what might befall it were it to become Pottersville. If you squint at her, you can almost see in her red lipstick that she leaves on George Bailey's cheek that the licentiousness and, you know, sinfulness that might befall this wholesome town.
- [34:11]
B
One question I had about the communist message and the community message was, if community is so important and significant, why would the removal of one person ruin the community? Shouldn't the community be able to.
- [34:25]
A
Good question. I will say that Bailey park and lovely post war houses that he's building there and the whole institution of a Building and Loan are very capitalist. Right? They're houses that are bought with capitalist loans with capitalist money and built with, you know, George Bailey is a property developer, which is a very capitalist job to have. Makes a decent money, but makes a decent living doing it and probably earns more than most of the people in town, except for Mr. Potter himself. And, and that was like, that was the dream of America in the post war era, was really this idea that you could harness capitalism in the service of building a middle class lifestyle and America would be a nation of martinis, basically, which I think is, I think it's oversimplifying to say that it's communist. I mean, it really is. It's capitalist. There's a lot of capitalism going on there. And it seems clear from the movie that Potter could have done it himself. Like they could have got a mortgage from Potter's bank as easily as they got a mortgage from the Building and Loan, were it not for the fact that Potter was conflicted by being a slumlord and he wanted them to keep on paying their overinflated rents in the slums. He didn't want to lose that income.
- [36:01]
B
Is George Bailey a proponent of stakeholder capitalism? Felix?
- [36:08]
A
So one of the other things that was really fascinating about this movie is that it wasn't commercially particularly successful until the studio somehow, by oversight, let the copyright lapse. And then it entered the public domain in 1974 and then it appeared on television every Christmas and then everyone started to love it. Is that right, Emily?
- [36:28]
B
That is absolutely correct, Felix. Bless you for knowing the history to the, to the finest detail. But yes, after 1974, all the network TV stations were like, hey, we have this free, heartwarming little movie here. And they ran it all the time and the whole country fell in love with this film. I remember watching it. I would just put on the TV growing up and there it would be, it would just be on and it was kind of like fun and everyone knew it. And now it's an instant classic.
- [36:53]
A
Which raises the question, why isn't it available for free on Netflix but because.
- [37:00]
B
It'S available for free on Amazon.
- [37:02]
A
Well, it's actually not available for free on Amazon in Ireland. I actually wound up having to pay for it. But it seems like a freebie for Netflix. No, like there's no reason why they shouldn't have it. And I'd love to know why they don't have it.
- [37:17]
B
Yeah. Oh, that's an open question. If people know, they should email us because I don't know the answer.
- [37:22]
A
Yeah. Slatemoneylate.com why doesn't Netflix have It's a Wonderful Life given that it's in the public domain?
- [37:30]
B
It's not like Netflix has all the public domain films there on it.
- [37:34]
A
Why not? But that's the question. Why wouldn't. Why wouldn't they.
- [37:39]
B
But it's interesting to me, like, had the copyright not lapsed, would this film not be something everyone watches every year? Would it just have vanished into the black and white hole of history? So I don't.
- [37:51]
A
Right. It would be something that, like, Michael Beirut would pull out of the memory hole and be like, oh, my God, this is a classic. Who knew? And we'd be like, wow.
- [37:59]
B
It would take our podcast to popularize this film. Actually, that's what would happen.
- [38:04]
A
But we would do it right, and you would come out and you would give it top marks.
- [38:07]
B
Oh, absolutely. What a terrific. What a terrific little film we've got here. I really enjoyed it. It's. It's, it's heartwarming. It's ridiculous. It's anachronistic. But, like, at the end of the day, super entertaining and warm. Like, gives you warm fuzzies in the best way.
- [38:23]
A
I have to say. I agree. I don't want to agree because I'm, you know, a natural contrarian. And if the two of you are saying how much you. I, I'm just going to be like, well, you know, I've got to find a reason to hate it, but I can't, you know, I'm. My. My rubber soul was melted by this darn corn dog of a movie. And I'm slightly ashamed to admit it because I don't think of myself that way, but it's true. It's a genuine classic. Thank you for Kathy for making us all watch it again.
- [38:56]
C
It was a wonderful movie and thank you guys so much for inviting me to talk about it. I really appreciate the opportunity.
- [39:01]
A
Yeah. Thank you for listening to this here show. We will be back on Saturday with a regular slate money.