The "It's a Wonderful Life" Book. In Collaboration with the Trustees of the Frank Capra Archives. Interviews by Leonard Maltin.

From the estate of Kurt Scheel, German publicist. - Rubbed and bleached binding, otherwise good and clean. - Only a few films have ever transcended passing success to become a permanent statement about life. Frank Capra's Christmas classic, It's a Wonderful Life, is one of them. It tells the saga of George Bailey, the Everyman from the small town of Bedford Falls, whose dreams of escape and adventure have been quashed by family obligation and civic duty, and whose guardian angel has to descend on Christmas Eve ro save him from despair and to remind him�by showing him what the world would have been like had he never been bom�that his has been, after all, a wonderful life. Now, using previously unpublished material from the Frank Capra Archives at Wesleyan University, film historian Jeanine Basinger relates in full the story behind this classic film. We witness its beginnings as a little story printed on a Christmas card and then see how it defeated the attempts of many writers, including Clifford Odets, to translate it to the screen. (Both the original story and excerpts from the unproduced screenplays appear in this book, the latter for the first time anywhere.) We share Frank Capra's excitement as he discovers this little story and sees in its comedy and humanity the perfect material for his first postwar film. Still without a script, Capra persuades Jimmy Stewart to star as George Bailey, and then begins the long, obsessively detailed process of production. Through the wealth of notes, journals, and diaries that Basinger has assembled, we are able to observe the creative process of a master filmmaker in a way that has rarely before been possible, following Capra as he considers everything that might conceivably touch on the finished film�from the way angels ought to talk to the way wind should sound on a wet pine branch. Then Basinger documents the film's release, and we are given a detailed view of a first-rate Hollywood publicity machine at work, amply illustrated with posters, press releases, publicity stills, and accounts of junkets and stunts, including a hilarious trip by Capra and Stewart to Beaumont, Texas. We share Capra's disappointment when the film succeeds only modestly at the box office (Basinger settles once and for all the vexed question of just how well It's a Wonderful Life really did) and then we share his wonder as subsequent generations, discovering the movie on television�and moved by his Dickensian vision of the common man�make the film one of the most cherished in the history of movies. The "It's a Wonderful Life" Book culminates with the full text of the final script as shot, illustrated with scores of superb vintage production stills. With a special introduction by Capra himself, this book is both a bible of fact and lore for those who love It's a Wonderful Life and a uniquely detailed look at every aspect of the making of a major motion picture at the end of Hollywood's golden age. It's a wonderful book! ISBN 9781851451708