It’s a Wonderful Life at 80: the Christmas-card story, the money it lost and the copyright that lapsed

It’s a Wonderful Life was released in 1946, so this holiday season falls 80 years after its first run, by our arithmetic. The Library of Congress, which holds the pamphlet the story began as, has told the film’s history at least three times on its blogs: in a 2017 guest post on the Copyright Office’s blog by a legal intern, Samantha Kosarzycki; in a 2018 post by the reference librarian Elizabeth Brown; and in a 2022 article by Brown for the Library of Congress Magazine. This guide follows their account, from a story no magazine would take to a holiday fixture, and sets out where the three versions disagree.

A story nobody wanted to publish

The author and editor Philip Van Doren Stern got the idea while shaving on February 12, 1938, according to the 2018 post. It arrived “complete from start to finish,” he recorded in his notes, and he repeated that in the New York Herald Tribune of December 15, 1946. In the story, the hero, George Pratt, is about to take his own life on Christmas Eve when a stranger shows him how much he matters to the people he knows. Stern reworked it now and then until April 1943, when he gave it to his literary agent, who thought magazines would be reluctant to buy a fantasy. None bought it.

So Stern had the story printed privately: 200 copies of a 21-page pamphlet titled The Greatest Gift: A Christmas Tale. Most of the print run, signed, went out as his 1943 Christmas cards to friends; two copies, with a copyright registration form, went to the Library of Congress. One reached his Hollywood agent, who offered it to the studios with his agreement. In March 1944 she wired him that the film rights had fetched $10,000. The buyer was RKO Radio Pictures, which had Cary Grant in mind for the lead.

With a film deal signed, the story found print. Reader’s Scope printed it in shortened form; Good Housekeeping, in January 1945 according to the 2022 article, ran a version a little longer and darker in tone, titled “The Man Who Was Never Born” and credited to the pen name Peter Storme; and the publisher David McKay brought it out as a book.

From RKO to Frank Capra

RKO had three teams of writers draft a script each, but the studio was not happy with any of them. In 1945 Liberty Films, the production company Frank Capra had just set up, paid RKO $10,000 for the rights and all three scripts. Capra brought in Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, a married writing team, to write a new script; it took a few elements from the RKO drafts and added a back-story and more characters. Jimmy Stewart agreed to take the lead. The 2017 post puts the production cost at $2.3 million and calls the film Liberty’s first release.

Most critics were kind, the 2018 post says, but not The New York Times, which on December 23, 1946, judged the film “a little too sticky for our taste.” A 1947 FBI report on communist influence in the film industry called it “very entertaining” but argued that making Mr. Potter a “scrooge-type” was meant to discredit bankers. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards and took the Golden Globe for best director, and its snow earned a scientific-achievement award: the crew made it from fire-extinguisher foam, sugar, water and soap flakes instead of the bleached or painted cornflakes often used before, whose crunch underfoot meant re-recording dialogue. Even so, its first run did not cover the cost of making and distributing it, and it came only 27th in popularity with the moviegoers of 1946-47.

How a missed renewal made it a TV staple

Under the Copyright Act of 1909, the 2017 post explains, a US copyright ran for 28 years “from publication with proper notice or registration,” and a second 28-year term required filing a renewal registration with the Copyright Office. Paramount bought Liberty Films from Capra and his partners, and the film was sold several more times after that. No renewal was filed when the first term ran out in 1974, so the film entered the public domain. With no permission or royalty needed to show it, TV stations aired it again and again, and it was easy to buy or rent on video. In those years, the 2018 post says, the film “reached entirely new audiences” but “earned nothing for its owners”; the post credits that spell without copyright protection, in large part, for the success the film found decades later.

The way back ran through Stewart v. Abend, a 1990 Supreme Court decision over Rear Window, a 1954 film that also starred Jimmy Stewart. The 2017 post says Republic Pictures still owned the rights to Stern’s story and had also bought the music rights, and that in 1993 it invoked that ruling to demand royalties from any television network that wanted to keep showing the film. The 2018 post says that in 1994, once the copyright was back in force, Republic struck a long-term deal letting NBC air the film a few times a year, and that ownership returned to Paramount in 1998.

Where the Library’s three accounts differ

The three agree on the outline: the renewal was missed in 1974, television made the film a holiday habit while it was unprotected, and Republic regained control in the 1990s. They differ on the details in the table. The 2017 post, the only one to give a dollar figure for the loss, puts it on RKO Radio Pictures, though the same post calls the film Liberty Films’ first release. We have not checked these points against the Copyright Office’s own records, so this guide does not choose between the accounts.

On television, and in the Library’s collections

In 2018, according to the Library’s post, NBC stations still showed the film once or twice a year, Paramount was keeping to the NBC agreement, and other broadcasters could license the film too. The 2017 post described the NBC arrangement as two showings a year. Both describe the position at the time they were written. This guide gives no broadcast or screening dates for this season: we have not confirmed any from an official source.

The Library holds pieces of this history itself. The 2022 article lists Stern’s original pamphlet, magazines that carried early forms of the story, the film’s continuity script and promotional posters, and the 2018 post shows a page of the 1946 typescript by Goodrich, Hackett, Capra and Jo Swerling, and a 1987 set of three 12-inch videodiscs of the film from the Voyager Company, now the Criterion Collection.