A ‘Wonderful Life’ in Bedford Falls? Bah!

This is the time of year when Frank Capra’s beloved “It’s a Wonderful Life” twinkles on television like Christmas lights. Check out NBC.

Oscar judges doted on “It’s a Wonderful Life” when it was released in 1946, granting it a potful of nominations. And today it stands as possibly the most adored movie ever to beam across the airwaves, all that misplaced affection for something that’s undeniably warm and emotional, but hardly the inspiring masterpiece it’s cracked up to be.

Jimmy Stewart plays the hero, George Bailey, who is pushing 40 when the movie ends, having spent his entire life in wee Bedford Falls, almost as frustrated and out of touch as Truman Burbank in “The Truman Show.” Even Truman gets to leave eventually, whereas George, starting off as a young man hungering for adventure and thinking he can “lasso the moon,” never ventures beyond the borders of his hometown, even accidentally. You’d think that just once he’d make a wrong turn in his creaky antique Ford that would take him outside Bedford Falls. Nope.

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is considerably less than the sum of its grand cast that includes Donna Reed and such character actors from the past as Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell, Henry Travers, Beulah Bondi and Gloria Grahame. As Bedford Falls’ tart with a heart, Grahame provides one of the movie’s highlights when strutting downtown with the wind whipping her skirts.

But here’s the thing: Selfless George is unquestionably a wonderful man, his generosity, loyalty and overall goodness speaking for themselves throughout more than two hours of well-meaning schmaltz.

Contradicting the movie’s title, though, it’s his life that’s tragic.

How could he be having a wonderful one if he doesn’t know it when he lives it, and instead has to be persuaded, as he’s about to leap from a bridge in a fit of depression at Christmastime, by his leprechaun of a guardian angel, Clarence (Travers)? An angel who has yet to earn his wings, no less.

It’s 1928 when we meet the 22-ish George (Stewart was about 38), and he’s exploding with energy and ambition at the prospect of at last being freed from his “shabby little office” so that he can go off and “do somethin’ big, somethin’ wonderful.”

He’s about to flee Bedford Falls after spending much of his youth there helping his father keep the family’s soft-touch Bailey Bros. Building and Loan Assn. barely above water and from the clutches of Mr. Potter (Barrymore), a mean, greedy mogul who’s gobbling up the town.

George’s dreams are mighty, and he has a “hatful,” he crows to his new girlfriend, Mary (Reed), in a burst.

“I’m shakin’ the dust a’this crummy little town off my feet, and I’m gonna see the world! Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Colosseum. Then I’m comin’ back and goin’ to college to see what they know. And then I’m gonna build things. I’m gonna build airfields, skyscrapers a hundred stories high. I’m gonna build bridges a mile long.”

But his father has a stroke and dies, forcing George to postpone his dreams--but just a bit, of course--until he straightens out the tangled affairs of the collapsing Building and Loan, on which the ordinary citizens of Bedford Falls have been relying for years.

Now he can catch that train out of town.

Nope. Keeping the Building and Loan afloat and from Potter requires George to stay. Making another sacrifice, he gives his college money to his younger brother, Harry, with the understanding that the kid will return after graduating and relieve George so he can go to college, too.

Flash forward four years. Now he can catch that train.

Nope. After becoming a college football star, Harry returns home with a wife, whose rich father has offered him a promising job in Buffalo. Making another sacrifice, George tells Harry it’s all right and sends him off.

George stays in Bedford Falls and marries Mary, and they’re about to honeymoon in New York and Bermuda. Now, now he can catch that train.

Nope. As George and Mary are leaving, the 1929 economic crash hits, and they rush to the Building and Loan, where they use their $2,000 nest egg to pay off scores of townsfolk demanding their money.

George’s next train? Misses it, and the next one, and the next one, and the one after that, too, until there are no more trains for him, just distant train whistles as an echo of what might have been as he hangs around making a meager living and doing good deeds in the “measly, crummy old town” he has yearned to leave.

“It’s a Wonderful Life” earns its miraculous ending, affirming that there are far worse things than Christmas corn. Nor would there be anything amiss if George’s life were the one he sought. But it isn’t. No airfields, skyscrapers or bridges, only a surrounding wall he is unable to scale. All his dreams are dashed, and he seems almost resigned and doesn’t protest, for example, when a taunting Potter tells him, “You’re frittering your life away playing nursemaid to a lot of garlic eaters.”

So what’s to celebrate?

The debacle ahead--George’s Uncle Billy (Mitchell) misplacing $8,000 in Building and Loan funds that Potter finds and keeps--pushes him over the edge, requiring that visit from Clarence to convince him--by means of a heavenly forerunner of digital technology--that Bedford Falls would have been really crummy had George never been born.

The worst of these might-have-been horrors affects the person dearest to George. Here on the screen is poor Mary if George had not been present to rescue her from future spinsterhood. Yes, an “old maid,” Clarence observes grimly about the prim, plain, timid, bespectacled woman who earlier was dolled-up Donna Reed.

George buys it, proving that Bedford Falls has shrunk his brain so much that he’s no longer fit for society. Which is why some of us believe that Clarence should let him jump.

* “It’s a Wonderful Life” can be seen Saturday night at 8 on NBC.

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted by e-mail at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.