Christmas Holiday Watch Post-Mortem: Shop Around the Corner and It’s a Wonderful Life and the Cognitive Dissonance of Frank Capra

I really don’t know how many times I’ve seen The Shop Around the Corner, but I have only seen It’s a Wonderful Life a handful of times and I think the last time I saw it, Reagan was president.

Both are Christmas holiday staples and for good reason, but or maybe, and I keep bumping up to a subtext in one that is practically text or context in the other. In It’s a Wonderful Life, we run smack dab into capitalist exploitation and the fight against it writ large. In The Shop Around the Corner, it is not, by any stretch, a main theme, but how the workers are treated struck a nerve with me early on and continues to be struck.

I don’t think a recap for either is needed as both are pretty etched in the popular consciousness, but while one is more fantastical, the other is very much rom-com. The one focuses on George Bailey, whose self-sacrificed and doing the right thing leads him afoul of Mr. Potter and perhaps, fate itself. When his uncle fails to deposit the $8,000 to cover the Bailey’s Savings and Loan capital while being audited - he actually lost it by absentmindedly wrapping the envelope the cash was in in Potter’s newspaper, George finds himself on the short end of the stick and likely doomed to arrest, scandal, and incarceration. George is ready to cash in the chips - he has an insurance policy that would likely take care of his family, so he’s “worth more dead than alive” - and jump into a freezing river, his guardian angel Clarence intervenes by jumping in first. George wishes that he’d never been born and Clarence shows him what his world would be like without him. The town of Bedford Falls would become Pottersville and turned into a developer’s wet dream of nightclubs, saloons, and other entertainments. His friends are mean-spirited and selfish, his brother dies from the drowning that George saved him from and so on.

The other flick’s cynosure is a young couple who work at a shop in Depression Era Hungary and who don’t get along but have been corresponding with each other anonymously, obviously unknown to each other. Jimmy Stewart famously plays the lead in both films with Donna Reed as Mary Hatch Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life and here, in The Shop Around the Corner, the object of his affection and annoyance is Margaret Sullavan. Both have happy endings; George returns to his life, ready to face consequences and with greater appreciation for his life. Alfred Kralik and Klara Novak eventually find each other, overcome their revulsion toward each other when they discover that each had been writing wonderful letters to the other, revealing deep, inner lives and so on. 

Both films are beyond heartwarming. Yes, It’s a Wonderful Life is emblematic of Frank Capra’s sentimentality, but it’s really not the cloying sentiment that cripples movies in the hands of lesser talents. The Shop Around the Corner is Ernst Lubitsch’s favorite among his films with a killer script by Samson Raphaelson (Bob Rafelson's “uncle” - think they’re cousins, but Bob referred to him as “uncle") and an uncredited Ben Hecht. So why write about two films that are so well-known? Just because you want to tell people what you watched for Christmas? Well, sure. But wait! There’s more!

I mentioned above how I was struck by how the workers were treated in The Shop Around the Corner. Frank Morgan’s Hugo Matuschek is, basically, a warm-hearted boss. He owns the eponymous shop and for the most part treats his employees well, though only Stewart’s Kralik tells him what he really thinks while others dissimulate or hide (George Schildkraut is quietly hilarious). But at some point, things go south, and through no fault of the staff, Matuschek turns on Kralik and begins to treat his staff harshly. He fires Kralik, and talks down to the others and wields the “do you know how lucky your are to have a job” canard like a cudgel. 

Admittedly, I’m putting a lot on a beloved and enjoyable movie, but it got me thinking and reflecting on how shitty labor relations are in the U.S. today, how collective bargaining is under fire, and how little recourse employees have to standing up to managerial malfeasance or executive malevolence. This really isn’t my main takeaway, just a consideration that adds a particular shading to a romantic comedy. Like the best of the genre, there is a sense of subversion layered within the text and although I don’t believe that an anti-management message was intentional, it amuses me to see it there.

Of course, the film is set in Hungary during the world wide depression. By the time of the film’s release, Hungary was on the verge of being invaded by Germany and the world was on the cusp of entering the Second World War. Had it been set in 1930s America, I could see that anti-management moment expanding to include a strike and scenes of collective bargaining as the principles rally around the horrid dismissal of Kralik, the oldest and most faithful employee at Matuschek’s. Of course, I’m kidding about this. While that’s a flick I might want to see (and you get a taste of it in My Man Godfrey), that would really top-load the romance with more baggage than could be fit comfortably into an hour and a half or so running time.

It’s a Wonderful Life, however, is another matter, and here that subtext becomes increasingly obvious as the film progresses and we see Lionel Barrymore’s Potter go after the Bailey Savings and Loan and how the S&L is the town’s buffer against hostile buy outs and acquisitions. No mergers, just takeovers. Potter serves on the board of Bailey’s S&L and wants to dissolve the organization at the beginning fo the movie but is voted down by the rest of the board. He cannot tolerate the idealism that afflicted George’s father and George himself, who now runs the show. 

Later in the narrative, when the money for the deposit goes missing, George appeals to Potter for aid and after Potter turns him down and calls the police, we find ourselves on the bridge with George getting ready to jump. By that point, though, something began to gnaw at me. Here’s where this is less about the film and much more about the filmmakers, particularly Capra and Stewart.

It is unlikely that there were more staunch conservatives in Hollywood (well, there were, but allow me my hyperbolic indulgence) than Frank Capra and James Stewart. That said, they were certainly patriots with Capra working on the Why We Fight series to keep in mind why young men were on the front lines and with Stewart, a professional pilot joined the Army Air Forces. He began with training pilots and was eventually sent to England with 703d Bob Squadron. He was promoted to major in 1944 and then to full colonel a year later. He served with Strategic Air Command after the war and trained as a pilot for both the B-47 and the B-52. He trained actively with the reserves every year through the 1950s and was promoted to brigadier general in 1959. He flew and an observer on a B-52 bombing mission in Vietnam and altogether had served 27 years in the Air Force by his retirement in 1966.

Capra was born Francesco Rosario Capra and emigrated from Sicily with his parents in 1903. After graduation college, he was commissioned in the Army as a second lieutenant, taught math to the artilleryman at Fort Point in San Francisco, survived the Spanish flu and became a naturalized American citizen in 1920. He suffered from an undiagnosed burst appendix and as a young man, lived in flops, hopped freight trains, took odd jobs like working on forms, as a movie extra, playing poker and selling local oil well stocks. Eventually, he found his way into the movie business and the rest is history.

He quit directing four days after Pearl Harbor and received a commission as a major in the U.S. Army. It’s worth quoting a paragraph from his autobiography: “I had a guilty conscience. In my films I championed the cause of the gentle, the poor, the downtrodden. Yet I had begun to live like the Aga Khan. Thee curse of Hollywood is big money. It comes so fast and imposes its own mores, not of wealth, but of ostentation and phony status.”

Durning the next four years, he headed a special section - partly educational and partly for morale - to explain to soldiers “why the hell they’re in uniform”. The idea was the brainchild of Chief of Staff George Marshall himself who wanted to create something more than propaganda. He wanted to “sensitive and objective troop information films” and provide films based on factual information and what the principles were of why the U.S. was at war and what was at stake.

Capra produced the seven episode Why We Fight series as well as propaganda films like Tunisian Victory, Know Your Enemy: Japan, and Here is Germany. Capra used footage from military sources, animated charts were created by Disney animators, and background music was composed by the likes of Dmitri Tiomkin and Alfred Newman. General Marshall, President Roosevelt and the U.S. Army staff were all very impressed. The Why We Fight series entry Prelude to War won the 1942 Oscar for Best Documentary feature. At the end of the war, Capra was discharged as a colonel. He had been awarded the Legion of Merit in 1943, Distinguished Service Medal in 1945, the World War I Victory Medal (for his service in that war), the American Defense Service Medalist he American Campaign Medal, and the World War II Medal. 

I mention all this because I want to make it clear that I do admire their service to their country in no uncertain terms but/and that they were complicated men who could hold conflicting views despite their work in films rooting for the little guy, the poor, and the marginalized. Capra was not a fan of FDR’s during the Depression and opposed government intervention in a national crisis. He was a lifelong Republican who celebrated American individualism and by extension, exceptionalism. That said, he was later in life, highly critical of the war in Vietnam.

Stewart by contrast was a hawk on Vietnam, despite losing his son there and believed that the war was just and his son did not die in vain. He campaigned for Goldwater in 1964. Interestingly, after Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1968, Stewart, along with Charleston Heston, and Kirk Douglas issued a statement supporting President Johnson’s Gun Control Act of 1968. And yet, and yet, he supported Reagan for President, and contributed to Bob Dole’s campaign in 1996, and most mind-blowing of all, supported Jesse Helms re-election to the Senate.

This is where the cognitive dissonance comes in. It is somewhat baffling that these two men could support a politics that even 80 years ago privileged the rich over the poor and supported what I call Movement Conservatism Lite. Stewart was against the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Hollywood blacklist. Capra, however, was not. Following Cecil B. DeMille’s leadership, he felt that Hollywood should institute a loyalty oath and he claimed that “blacklist” was a harsh term. I don’t know if Capra supported the HUAC hearings, but it’s obvious his career declined in the fifties. Whatever the case, both instances are of men who on the one hand were “staunch conservatives”, but who I think, genuinely believed in fighting for the little guy.

And here is where and why I think being aware of a filmmaker’s philosophy and perhaps his biography provide a key in some circumstances to a greater understanding of a film or an ouevre. At the same time, it might well be that neither philosophy nor biography matter. It’s a Wonderful Life is just such an example.

Consider also, the the FBI were investigating Capra over the film. I want to quote from History.com’s overview:

“…FBI informants viewed It’s a Wonderful Life as potentially subversive. Using (Ayn) Rand’s criteria, they argued the the character of banker Mr. Potter, described by George Bailey as an “old money-grubbing buzzard,” unfairly villainized bankers and the upper class.

“This picture deliberately maligned the upper class”… as “mean and despicable,” the FBI argued. “The film represented a rather obvious attempt to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a ‘scrooge-type’ so that he would be the most hated man in the picture.”

One informant even suggesting rewriting the character to emphasize that he was responsibly safeguarding other people’s money. In their view, George Bailey appeared less like a community hero and more like a anti-capitalist challenger to the town’s tycoon. “A subtle attempt was made to magnify the problems of the so-called ‘common man’ in society,” the FBI warned.

The bureau also targeted th film’s credited screenwriters, husband-and-wife team Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, saying they “practically lived with known communists and were observed eating luncheon daily” with two communist screenwriters. It failed to mention, however, that Dalton Trumbo, who penned an early version of the script, and several uncredited script contributors - including Albert waltz, Michael Wilson and Clifford Odets - were current or former Communist Party members.

Despite the informants’ report, HUAC ultimately took no action against the cast and crew of It’s a Wonderful Life.”

One aspect of the film that does get noticed is how either by accident or design, the censors allowed Potter to go unpunished. It was pretty much a mandate that all villains should find their comeuppance in American cinema under the Hayes Code and here we have an interesting example of that not happening. Did the censorship board decide that Potter, as a banker, was not a true villain? Did they agree with the FBI informants? We’ll likely never know, but it’s food for thought. It could, of course, just be an oversight.

I’ve been taken to task for thinking about films too much through a political filter, but in a case like It’s a Wonderful Life (or for that matter, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or any of a number of Capra’s other films), the social critique is baked into the fabric of the film. It is intended to provoke some thought along these lines and to not pursue that line of thought is to, I think, prove a disservice to the work itself.

Whether intentionally or not, Capra produced a work critical of capitalism and the effects of its exploitation when left unchecked. He produced a work that actually does take a stand for the “little guy” and does show what happens when people care for each other. In today’s climate, we need this more than ever. We are living under the shadow of late stage capitalism and its reduction of our lives to mere commodities is striking. We don’t exist to live fulfilling lives or even to pursue to dreams of higher education or intellectual betterment; we live to buy, to consume whatever trinket is dangled before us and to ignore the wholesale selling off of the country itself and our rights along with it. We need more George Baileys.