There's something about George

  I’ve been trying to figure for some time – what is the deal with George Bailey? What is so compelling about the tale of the executive secretary of a “cheap, penny-ante Building and Loan” that draws me back year after year? Why is the holiday season just not complete without my annual "It's A Wonderful Life" fix? It is as much a part of my pre-Christmas routine as rum-laced eggnog, Bing Crosby crooning "The Christmas Song" and desperate 11th-hour trips to the mall that commence sometime after NORAD has picked up Santa’s sleigh crossing the Arctic Circle.

I think Roger Ebert has helped me finally figure it out.

The veteran Chicago Sun-Times film critic, who is my North Star for all things cinematic, reviewed Frank Capra’s 1946 film classic when it was released in video laserdisk format several years ago, and observed, “The movie works like a strong and fundamental fable, sort of a Christmas Carol in reverse: Instead of a mean old man being shown scenes of happiness, we have a hero who plunges into despair.”

A Christmas Carol in reverse.

By George, he’s got it.

Dickens’ iconic tale was an instant popular and critical hit when it was published in 1843, and it remains the gold standard for Christmas yarns. We have the plot memorized (spoiler alert!): After Scrooge’s trip through time courtesy of the three Spirits, he comes to the realization that a life single-mindedly devoted to accumulation of wealth at the expense of personal relationships is empty; that it is more blessed to give than to receive; that, to paraphrase Jacob Marley, mankind is his “business.”

Good lessons, all, and told in a vivid and entertaining way.

But I think one reason we love A Christmas Carol is that we can distance ourselves somewhat from the miserly, materialistic Scrooge as he gets his comeuppance. After all, “Scrooge” has passed into the language as a term describing a miserly curmudgeon, a mean-spirited person; a skinflint. He’s not us, right? Scrooge is a 19^th century “1 percenter” – if he was on Wall Street today, he’d be a hedge fund manager driving a Ferarri and wearing Armani suits, with a Bluetooth earphone permanently afixed to his ear.

But George Bailey – now there’s a likeable fellow. He’s the quintessential Everyman. As Clarence the Angel remarks when he studies the young George’s face in freeze frame as he demonstrates the size of trunk he needs for his world travels: “It's a good face. I like it. I like George Bailey.”

Yes, Clarence, we all do. Which is why his Christmas Eve journey of self-discovery – a journey that, in Ebert’s words, plunges him into the depths of despair – is so moving. It’s easier for us – well, most of us (I’m talking to you, fellow 99-percenters) – to identify with George Bailey. Unlike Scrooge, George needs no lessons in generosity or self-sacrifice.

What George needs – on this “critical night” for him – is affirmation that the selfless life he has lived has counted for something. As with Scrooge, self-knowledge does not come easily.

Young George Bailey seems to always be in the right place at the right time – to help someone else out at his own expense.

He’s the small town boy who dreams of seeing the world, going to college and building “skyscrapers a hundred stories high.” But his ambitions, and his efforts to shake the dust of the “crummy little town” of Bedford Falls off his feet, are consistently foiled by fate: his father's fatal stroke, his brother's marriage, and the run on the Bailey Bros. Building and Loan that ends his honeymoon before it ever starts.

We don’t see George wringing his hands or bemoaning his lost opportunities as he settles into middle age. There is no weeping or gnashing of teeth. He seems to accept that this is just how his life has evolved.

But the death of the old dreams means a light has gone out in his eyes.

James Stewart portrays this transition with a deftness and understatedness that are nothing short of brilliant. We can see it in his body language, his expression, a world-weariness that contrasts with the beaming young man measuring for his steamer trunk.

If you’ve made the passage to middle age – and beyond – you know exactly how George is feeling. Where has life gone? What happened? Wasn’t I going to win a Pulitzer Prize and write a bestselling novel?

As the Stage Manager in Our Town says, “You know how it is: you're 21 or 22 and you make some decisions, then whisssh! you're 70.”

Whisssh! indeed.

Henry Potter (Lionel Barrymore), George’s longtime nemesis, recognizes what’s going through George’s mind as he takes stock of how his life has turned out:

“He’s an intelligent, smart, ambitious young man – who hates his job – who hates the Building and Loan almost as much as I do. A young man who's been dying to get out on his own ever since he was born. A young man – the smartest one of the crowd, mind you – a young man who has to sit by and watch his friends go places, because he’s trapped. Yes, sir, trapped into frittering his life away playing nursemaid to a lot of garlic-eaters. Do I paint a correct picture, or do I exaggerate?”

No, Mr. Potter, you do not exaggerate.

All of which sets the stage for the climactic Christmas Eve, when Uncle Billy, George’s partner in the Building and Loan, carelessly misplaces an $8,000 cash bank deposit.

George responds in a very human fashion: with anger – at Uncle Billy, and his family – then panic, and finally depression.

“This drafty old barn!” George rages after he returns home to find one of the children sick with a cold. “Might as well be living in a refrigerator. Why did we have to live here in the first place and stay around this measly, crummy old town? ... You call this a happy family? Why do we have to have all these kids?”

Finally, after Potter turns down his plea for an emergency loan and tells him that his life insurance policy means George is “worth more dead than alive,” he winds up on the bridge intent on suicide. Enter Clarence, the “apprentice angel,” who intervenes to not only prevent his suicide but to show him what would have happened if he'd never been born.

The journey through the “parallel universe” version of Bedford Falls, now called “Pottersville,” is a revelation: If George Bailey never existed, that means brother Harry Bailey drowned at age 9, so he didn't grow up to be a war hero and save the lives of all the men on a troop transport; the building and loan closed down after Peter Bailey's death; and – in what is probably the most dated reference in the movie – Mary has never married and is living out her life as (gasp) “an old maid.”

“Strange, isn't it?” Clarence says. “Each man's life touches so many other lives, and when he isn't around, he leaves an awful hole.”

Unlike A Christmas Carol, the message here is not to throw off materialism and become selfless and giving – George was that already.

Unlike Scrooge, George Bailey doesn’t need to start living differently. His “aha” moment  helps him realize the life he has lived has had an incalculable impact on those around him, and even some who were at some distance removed – like the troops on the ship that was saved by Harry Bailey’s heroics.

“You see, George,” Clarence tells him, “you really had a wonderful life.”

Which is why it’s so touching when all the people George has helped throughout the years have a chance to give back to him in his hour of need, setting up the tear-jerking final scene, with the townsfolk pouring money into the basket and singing around the Baileys’ Christmas tree.

Without George’s dark journey into despair – and his transformational return from the brink – the scene would not be nearly as compelling. If we have gone on that journey with George, we should – like he did – come out on the other side with a greater appreciation of what our lives have meant to others.

Everything in life takes on a new meaning for the Transformed George. “Oh look at this wonderful old drafty house,” he exclaims as he runs inside after his epiphany on the bridge. On his way up the stairs, the old familiar knob on the bannister comes off in his hand. This time he kisses it lovingly and puts it back.

George is seeing everything anew, not with rose-colored glasses but with a newfound wisdom and appreciation for all that his wonderful life has meant to himself and to all who have come within his orbit.

Such awareness is not universal, and is an everpresent theme in our literature.

When she has come back from the dead, Emily, the tragic character in Our Town, asks the Stage Manager, “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it ... every, every minute?”

The Stage Manager’s response: “No. Saints and poets maybe ... they do some.”

Saints and poets – and George Bailey.

Which is what draws me back to his story year after year.

It’s impossible to look at the gentleness and wisdom of his countenance and not agree with the assessment of Clarence the Angel: It's a good face. I like it. I like George Bailey.