In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee held a hearing on the role of Communist infiltration into the Hollywood film industry.
Among the films cited as having suggested communist secret messaging was the 1946 Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” directed by Frank Capra. It stars James Stewart as George Bailey, manager of the family run bank Bailey Brothers Building and Loan in the typical American small town of Bedford Falls, New York. After bumbling Uncle Billy misplaces a substantial amount of money for the bank, George is faced with financial ruin. On Christmas Eve, in despair and racked with regret for a circumscribed life, he throws himself off a bridge into the icy river, only to be saved by Clarence, an angel (second class, working on getting his wings). Through a series of flashbacks he shows all the good George has done over the years and what might have occurred if he had not been born. His brother, the war hero, would have drowned were it not for George saving him; a small child would have died after a mistaken prescription by the town pharmacist that George spotted; his wife Mary becomes a spinster librarian, (although there might be something to be said for that); and the town of Bedford Falls the greedy, heartless Pottersville is taken over by the rival banker Mr Potter.
Like a modern day Scrooge, George is made to see what a blessing life can be. He returns home to the embrace of his perfect family and to the news his depositors have stumped up to replace the missing money and save the bank from closure. For his efforts Angel Clarence gets his wings. The film has something for everyone. Funny, heartwarming, Christmassy and Communist!
The 99-page report prepared by the FBI into the communist infiltration of the motion picture industry cited Gregory Zinoviev the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Communist International as declaring in 1925, “The motion picture in the possession of the bourgeoisie is the strongest means for the portrayal and befuddling of the masses. In our hands it can and must become a mighty weapon of communist propaganda and further widen the enlightenment of the working masses.” Soon after, the American Communist party is said to have started the campaign of injecting propaganda through sympathetic writers and directors.
However there was one film that was perhaps too successful, “Mission to Moscow” (1943) which was so overtly sympathetic to Stalin’s Soviet Union (then an American ally), that the tactics were said to be changed to be more subtle, “to insert a line, a sentence or situation along the Communist Party line into an otherwise non-political picture”. In this respect “It’s a Wonderful Life” was, according to the FBI report, a good example.
The basis for their suspicions was that their “source” reported that the film’s screenwriters Francis Goodrick and Albert Hackett were said to be close to known communists and while making a movie for MGM were observed “eating lunch daily with known communists such as Lester Cole and Earl Robinson.”
Among the offences were “a rather obvious attempt to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore (Mr Potter) as a Scrooge-type so that he would be the most hated man in the picture.” The source said this “is a common trick used by Communists.” Indeed Barrymore did a great job playing the hulking mean-spirited Potter. Maybe he was a Communist too?
The report went on to say the source thought the “picture deliberately maligned the upper classes attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters” and that Mr Potter was in fact doing the right thing and protecting his depositors by not helping to save his rival Bailey Building and Loan.
It’s a bit of a stretch and the report should be seen in the light of the growing Reds under the Bed paranoia that swept across America post World War II and that would be whipped up further by the ambitious and scurrilous Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy. Hundreds of writers, actors and directors were subsequently blacklisted by his campaign and unable to work in Hollywood. McCarthy’s spell on the body politic would be broken in 1954 by lawyer Joseph Welch who in a live hearing confronted the senator with the memorable line, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”
The fact is that the director Frank Capra was far from a Communist having made propaganda films for the US Army during World War II. As film historian John Raeburn wrote. “There is a strong libertarian streak in Capra’s films, a distrust of power wherever it occurs and in whomever it is invested. Young people are won over by the fact that his heroes are uninterested in wealth and are characterised by vigorous … individualism, a zest for experience, and a keen sense of political and social justice. … Capra’s heroes, in short, are ideal types, created in the image of a powerful national myth.”
Capra’s equally famous film “Mr Smith Goes to Washington”, also starring James Stewart, shares many of the same themes: Small Man/Town vs Beltway Politics/Big Business. There is however no genuine questioning of the American political/economic system and zero interest in the plight of its minorities. The myth of America in Capra’s world remains intact.
In fact this Main St vs Wall St narrative pre-dates Communism and perhaps has its roots in the early 1800s workingmen parties of New England industrial towns whose members feared industrialisation taking away their trades.
How ironic that in the 1990’s it morphed into the despairing Rust Belt populism centred on the grievances of mid-western cities decimated by de-industrialisation, caused by automation and the offshoring of jobs to Mexico and Asia. So today’s Main St politics is now more aligned with Tea Party/Trumpism than any socialism. And as any election result map shows it is the big cosmopolitan cities which are blue islands in a sea of red. American politics is genuinely sui generis.
Like all good parables there is something for everyone in this film and perhaps for Guyana, we can identify as a Pottersville or Pradoville – a place where the small man is being squeezed out by the interests of big business with the subsequent loss of community and brotherhood that the Potters of the world, not the George Baileys are in charge.
