By Erik Piepenburg
Every year in Seneca Falls, New York, a festival celebrates “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Frank Capra’s heartwarming 1946 drama about the trials and triumphs of a family man named George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart in a beloved role.
Thousands of visitors descend on the hamlet, which boosters say bears a striking resemblance to Bedford Falls, the Bailey family’s charming and tight-knit hometown. The festivalgoers can meet cast members or, as they did this year, attend a dance at a high school gymnasium that hopefully won’t end like the film’s comically disastrous one does, with decked-out revelers cannonballing into a swimming pool.
But this year’s event, which ran through Sunday, emphasized, more than it has since it began in the ’90s, a significant turning point in the film’s otherwise heartwarming message — a moment that some people might not want to dwell on in December when “It’s a Wonderful Life” is their comfort and joy.
It comes down to this: “It’s a Wonderful Life” is achingly, yet redemptively, a movie in which a man almost dies by suicide.
For the first time, that word appeared in the title of a festival presentation (“From Darkness to Light, From Despair to Hope: How ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ Can Save Lives From Suicide,” led by Govan Martin). And the Seneca County Suicide Prevention Coalition received the George Bailey Award, given annually to a person or organization embodying the spirit of the character and “without whom Seneca Falls would be a very different place.” It’s the first time the honor is going to an organization dedicated to such a mission.
Returning to the festival as she has for years was Karolyn Grimes, who at 6 played George’s cutie-pie daughter, Zuzu. The pain of suicide is personal and inescapable for Grimes: In 1989, her son Johnathan took his life, at age 18.
“When people come through the line for autographs, they share with me how their hearts have been broken many times because they lost someone” that way, Grimes, 84, said. Fans of the film, she added, “understand sadness, and happiness.”
Anwei Law, director of the nonprofit It’s a Wonderful Life Museum, one of three organizations that coordinate the festival, said the decision to underscore the difficult subject this year was sparked in part by noticing that the suicide prevention materials the museum offers to visitors “are always gone.”
Law said she hoped the museum’s efforts would remind people “that in this movie, we know hope is coming.”
“The message is that everyone has value and everyone is important,” she said. “It’s a good context for discussing this.”
George’s dark thoughts come in the film’s final stretch, as he grows despondent over his financial dire straits and dashed dreams, and after the miserly Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore) tells him he’s “worth more dead than alive.” George stands at a bridge, ready to jump into icy waters, when his guardian angel, Clarence (Henry Travers), beats him to it as part of a divine plan to get George to come to his rescue.
Clarence grants George’s angry wish that he’d “never been born,” and together they travel to a noir-like alternate world where neither George’s mother (Beulah Bondi) nor his wife (Donna Reed) recognize him. Through tears George pleads with Clarence: “I want to live again.” Clarence returns George to be with family and friends who love that he’s alive. (The film is available on most major digital platforms.)
Karen Burcroff, who heads the Seneca County Suicide Prevention Coalition, said the film’s charms and goodwill can feel like distant pleasures for people struggling with depression, especially during the holidays. It’s not just adults at risk: In the last four years, three local young people, one as young as 10, have died by suicide.
“It still hurts,” she said. “But lives carry on by increasing awareness.”
“It’s a Wonderful Life” received mixed reviews and lost money when it opened just before Christmas, and those disappointments rattled Capra, said Joseph McBride, a Capra biographer and a professor at the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University. In McBride’s book “Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success,” the filmmaker recalled that he “often thought of suicide.”
“I came close to it a lot of times,” Capra told McBride. “I thought I would rid my wife of myself, but when I thought of my family, I couldn’t do it.”
After “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Capra went on to make the political dramedy “State of the Union” (1948) and other films, but his career “was in free-fall after that,” McBride said, adding that “It’s a Wonderful Life” was his “last hurrah.” Capra died in 1991 at 94.
The film turns 80 in 2026, and in preparation, the museum is raising money for an expansion. Donors can place a planet, star or seat plaque in the theater to honor a loved one. Martin, the executive director and founder of the Suicide Prevention Alliance in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who led the festival panel, donated a star in memory of his brother, Michael, who died by suicide at 16 in 1980. Martin remembered Michael as a high school swim team member and lifeguard — a “quiet kid and good brother” who stood up for others.
For people living with survivor’s guilt, “It’s a Wonderful Life” offers a bittersweet wish: That their loved ones had met a Clarence of their own.
“We can’t get them back,” Martin said. “It’s not a movie. It’s real life. But I still see how much the movie has enriched my life.”
For Grimes, December is always busy, with appearances at screenings of “It’s a Wonderful Life” across the country. Audiences know every word, none more so than Zuzu’s memorable line: “Teacher says every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.”
At the screenings and wherever she goes, Johnathan is never far from her mind.
“He was a very shy fellow, and he was kind and sweet — too sweet,” she recalled. “People hurt him all the time. I look back and think I wish I could have prepared him more for life. He was too tender. He couldn’t handle the pain.”
A bird house in Johnathan’s name hangs in his honor at the Kansas City, Missouri, nursing home where he played piano for residents.
Grimes said she’s especially heartened by people who tell her that they too “have been on the bridge and they see the movie and it gives them hope.”
“It heals everything that hurts,” she said.
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