"George Bailey Was Never Born" Has A New Take On "It's A Wonderful Life"

It's a Wonderful life is a Christmas classic. However, when it was released in 1946, It’s a Wonderful Life was not an immediate hit with audiences. In fact, it put director Frank Capra $525,000 in the hole, which left him scrambling to finance his production company’s next picture, State of the Union.

In addition, though it didn’t make much of a dent at the box office, It’s a Wonderful Life found a whole new life on television—particularly when its copyright lapsed in 1974, making it available royalty-free to anyone who wanted to show it for the next 20 years. (Which would explain why it was on television all the time during the holiday season.) The free-for-all ended in 1994.

Now, iHeartPodcasts and Emmy Award-winning producer Kurt Engfehr and 2022 NAACP Image Award Outstanding Podcast nominee Ray Nowosielski have announced the release of “George Bailey Was Never Born,” a one-of-a-kind podcast experience that takes a definitive look at “It’s a Wonderful Life,” one of the most popular holiday movies of all time.

The series is a co-production of iHeartMedia and Double Asterisk, in association with True Stories, created by Engfehr, editor-producer of Oscar- and Palme d’Or-winning documentaries from director Michael Moore, and Nowosielski, producer of “Gumbo Coalition,” which began streaming on Max November 6th, and a story producer on “The Super Models,” streaming on Apple TV since September.

In the story, Joseph returns to narrate the podcast, reprising the character who tells fellow angel Clarence the story of Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey over the 1947 Frank Capra directed classic.

The podcast features conversations with Stewart's daughter Kelly Stewart Harcourt, co-star Donna Reed's daughter Mary Owen, Capra's grandchildren Frank Capra III and Monica Capra Hodges, original story writer Philip Van Doren Stern’s grandchildren and others, as well as American influencers, artists and real modern small-town corollaries to the characters from the movie.

“George Bailey Was Never Born” details many never-before-told stories, ranging from the failure by Rashida Jones’ grandfather to renew the film's copyright to how Republic managed to regain control of it in 1993, from how the New York Times helped start a popular phenomenon of upside-downing the meaning of “It’s a Wonderful Life” to the abolitionist and anti-fascist intentions behind the movie’s creation, with implications for the MAGA movement today, and much more.

Three episodes take listeners inside the "real" Bedford Falls, Seneca Falls, New York, one spotlighting community banker Menzo Case's efforts to bring affordable housing there through his own Seneca County Habitat For Humanity Bailey Park. Case passed away suddenly of a heart attack on October 13th, leaving that initiative in doubt. Double Asterisk is donating a portion of proceeds to Bailey Park and encouraging listener donations to that, to their local Habitat for Humanity and to AFSP, in honor of the movie's twin causes of affordable homeownership and suicide prevention.

Check out George Bailey Was Never Born. By doing so, an angel may get its wings.