Film
At the suggestion of RKO studio chief Charles Koerner, Frank Capra read "The Greatest Gift" and immediately saw its film potential. In 1945, RKO, anxious to unload the project sold the rights to Capra's production company, Liberty Films, which had a nine-film distribution agreement with RKO, for $10,000, and threw in three scripts adaptations for free. Capra claimed the script was purchased for $50,000.00. Capra, along with writers Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, with Jo Swerling, Michael Wilson, and Dorothy Parker brought in to "polish" the script, turned the story and what was worth using from the three scripts into a screenplay that Capra would rename It's a Wonderful Life. The script underwent many revisions throughout pre-production and during filming. Final screenplay credit went to Goodrich, Hackett and Capra, with "additional scenes" by Jo Swerling.
In the film, the main character George Pratt (George Bailey in the film) was played by James Stewart, the angel Clarence was played by Henry Travers and Mary Thatcher (George's wife, Mary Hatch in the film) was played by Donna Reed. Other characters were talked about in the story, such as, a Potter who owned a photographer studio. His brother Harry, who drowned in a river because George wasn't alive to save him. His parents were also in the story and instead of Mary becoming an old maid like in the film, she married a man called Art Jenkins.
Read more about this topic: The Greatest Gift (story)
Famous quotes containing the word film:
“I’ll be right here.”
—Melissa Mathison, U.S. screenwriter, and Steven Spielberg. ET, ET The Extra-Terrestrial, saying goodbye to Elliot as he touches Elliot’s forehead—ET’s final words in the film (1982)
“Television does not dominate or insist, as movies do. It is not sensational, but taken for granted. Insistence would destroy it, for its message is so dire that it relies on being the background drone that counters silence. For most of us, it is something turned on and off as we would the light. It is a service, not a luxury or a thing of choice.”
—David Thomson, U.S. film historian. America in the Dark: The Impact of Hollywood Films on American Culture, ch. 8, William Morrow (1977)
“All the old supports going, gone, this man reaches out a hand to steady himself on a ledge of rough brick that is warm in the sun: his hand feeds him messages of solidity, but his mind messages of destruction, for this breathing substance, made of earth, will be a dance of atoms, he knows it, his intelligence tells him so: there will soon be war, he is in the middle of war, where he stands will be a waste, mounds of rubble, and this solid earthy substance will be a film of dust on ruins.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)