The Story of The Most Inspirational Movie of All Time with “It’s A Wonderful Life” Actor, Jimmy Hawkins

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Speaker 1: This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. Jimmy Hawkins is best known for his starring TV roles in shows like Annie Oakley, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Leave It to Beaver, and The Donna Reed Show. He co-starred as Elvis Presley’s sidekick in two movies, Girl Happy and Spinout. Most notably, he played Tommy Bailey, son of George Bailey, in the nineteen forty-six film classic It’s a Wonderful Life. Without further ado, here’s Jimmy Hawkins with the story of It’s a Wonderful Life.

00:00:47
Speaker 2: Heavy Cash Kids, Jenny, Jenny Camy.

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Speaker 3: My name is Jim Hawkins, and I had the pleasure playing Tommy Bailey in the Frank Capra classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life. This was back in nineteen forty-six, and I remember my mom getting me up very early in the morning to go to shoot the movie. But let me start from where the actual story began.

00:01:22
Speaker 4: I owe everything to George Bailey. Help him, deal Fott. Joseph, Jesus, and Mary, help my friend, Mister Bailey. Help my son, George.

00:01:35
Speaker 3: Tonight, he never thinks about himself.

00:01:38
Speaker 5: God, that’s why he’s in trouble.

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Speaker 6: Change is a good guy.

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Speaker 3: Give him a break, God. I love him. Dear Lord, what for him tonight? Please?

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Speaker 7: God, something’s the matter with Daddy?

00:01:52
Speaker 3: Please bring day back. So one morning, a man by the name of Phili Van Doren Stern was shaving, and a story came to him. He was a very popular writer at that time, and so he thought about this story. He called it “The Greatest Gift” and was the story about a man who gets to see what life would have been like if he had never been born. So he finished shaving, and he went to his typewriter, and he finished the story, and he sent it out to his different publishers. He knew that liked his work, and they all rejected it, and he didn’t understand. He thought was really good. But he put it away for five years, and he’d bump into friends of his along the line and they say, “Hey, whatever, I happened that story about the guy in the bridge?” And he said, “I know, I like that too.” So he took the story out and changed a couple of things, and then sent it around to all the publishers again, and they all rejected it. He didn’t understand why it was being rejected because he thought it was very good. So he printed two hundred Christmas cards with this story in it. It was about twelve, thirteen pages, and he sent it to his friends. One person he sent it to was a Hollywood agent, and she got back to him. She said, “I like your story.” “I think it could make a movie.” He didn’t think of it as a movie, but she did, and she sold it to RKO Studios for a project for Cary Grant. They hired one of the town’s biggest writers, Dalton Trumbo, to do a screenplay, and he turned it in, and it just didn’t feel it was right. It didn’t say what was in that Christmas card to the studio, so they ended up hiring two more writers. One of them was Marc Connelly, and they didn’t come up with a good story, good script at all. So about that time, World War II was ending, and Frank Capra had spent four or five years in World War II making documentaries films, and now he’s out, and he wants to get back in the business. But he didn’t like working with a studio, so he started his own company, independent company called Liberty Films, so he could do his films his way. Nobody was there to tell him what to do or how to do it.

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Speaker 8: I’m Frank Capra Jr. Although I was pretty young at the time, I do remember how excited my father was when he formed Liberty Films with his partner Sam Briskin and his fellow directors William Wyler and George Stevens. This was a real first because in those days, directors were thought of his studio employees. Liberty Films gave this talented group unprecedented creative freedom.

00:04:42
Speaker 3: Now he’s looking around for material. The head of the studio’s wife said, “You know, you have Frank Capra over at your studio.” “Now, you’re going to distribute his films.” “I understand.” “Yeah, yeah, he’s there.” She said, “You know that holiday Christmas card.” “I think that’d be perfect for Frank Capra.” He says, “You no, I think you’re right.” “Let me go over to his office tomorrow.” So he showed up at Capra’s office and asked him, “How’s it going?” He said, “Well, I don’t know.” “Still looking.” He said, “Well, I’d like to present you with something. We did this project,” and he gave him the background and all the writers, and, “We think you might be good for it.” He said, “Well, if you had all these great writers, why do you need me?” “I mean, why didn’t you shoot one of the movies?” He said, “Didn’t capture what’s in this little Christmas card.” “So I’ll make you a deal.” “Give me all three scripts and the Christmas card for fifty thousand dollars.” “That’s what we have in it.” “So read it and get back to me.” “See what you think.” So Capra read all three scripts, read the Christmas card, and he said, “They’re right.” “Those scripts don’t capture what this is all about.”

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Speaker 9: It was my first picture after being the army for about five years. I was scared to death. I have not looked through the eyepiece of a camera. I’ve act heard all that length of time. Read were my first film about a man from RKO. He came and he says, “I got the story for you.” “Well, boy, you know what happened, oh, many times a day.” “I’ve got just the story.”

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Speaker 10: We got three scripts on it: one script by Marc Connelly, one by Dalton Trumbo, one by the Clifford Odets. Three powerhouse guys had written scripts on this thing. They missed the idea, has. What idea is the idea I got when I bought this Christmas card? And then about nine paragraphs, there was this story: man who was a failure was given the opportunity to come back and see the world as it would have been had he not been.

00:06:39
Speaker 9: Born, and he finds out no man is a failure. Well, my goodness, this thing hit me like a ton of bricks. So I wrote my own script, and that’s the story of “Under the lit.” This is to me novel k new, and a wonderfully humane way of pinning this idea down of the importance of the individual, which has always been that main see with all of my films.

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Speaker 3: He said, “It’s the film I was born to make.” So he just concentrated on “The Greatest Gift,” which later became It’s a Wonderful Life.

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Speaker 8: It was when my father started to cast the film that his second piece

00:07:15
Speaker 5: of good luck came along.

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Speaker 8: The role of George Bailey went to my father’s old pal, Jimmy Stewart.

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Speaker 9: Jimmy Stewart got out of the eye at the same time I did. And he said, he said, “Agent said said to me that Jimmy wants to make a picture with you.”

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Speaker 3: “Would you like to do it?”

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Speaker 4: A contract with MGM ran out during the war, and I just got a phone call one day that it was Frank Capra, and he said, “I have an idea for a story.”

00:07:44
Speaker 3: “Why don’t you…”

00:07:45
Speaker 4: “Come down, and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll tell them to you.” “Well, I couldn’t get down there quick enough. When I sat down, and he said, ‘You’re a fellow on a small tom, Mary.’” “I know what I’m going to do tomorrow and the next day, and next year and a year after that.” “I’m shaking the dust of this crummy little town off my feet, and I’m going to see the world.’” “Then you get married, you have all these kids. When your father dies, and you have to take over the building A loan, three, two.”

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Speaker 3: “Why, we made a cold door.” “We made a look.” “Look, we’re still in buser! We can still got two bucks!”

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Speaker 4: “Left, and flinning.” “You’re going to kill yourself.” “You’re going to jump off a bridge, and an angel but the name of Clarence, she comes down to help you. But he can’t swim, so you go down and save the…” He said, “This, this really doesn’t sound very good.” “I said, ‘Frank, if you want me to be in a picture about a guy that wants to kill himself and an angel comes down and Clarence, and he can’t swim, and I saved…’”

00:08:55
Speaker 3: “When do we start?’”

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Speaker 8: Casting the important role of George’s wife, Mary, Dad had to look beyond RKO to another studio.

00:09:03
Speaker 9: I don’t know whether Donna Reed’s from MGM or simprif MGM. “Yeah, she was, and she was perfect for the pot.”

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Speaker 11: It’s George Bailey, Mother! George Bailey!

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Speaker 12: What do he want?

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Speaker 7: I don’t know what you want.

00:09:23
Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to the man who played Tommy Bailey, Jimmy Hawkins, but also you’re hearing from Frank Capra himself and others.

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Speaker 5: And what Capra said,

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Speaker 1: about his own work, about all of his work being the importance of the individual, came straight from his Catholic upbringing, no doubt. When we come back, more of this remarkable story, the story of It’s a Wonderful Life, told by Jimmy Hawkins and others here on Our American Stories. And we continue with Our American Stories, in one of the most inspirational movies of all time, It’s a Wonderful Life, and with actor Jimmy Hawkins, who played the role of Tommy Bailey.

00:10:23
Speaker 5: Let’s pick up where we last left off.

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Speaker 8: Not only did he cast the leads perfectly, he stocked the film with some of the greatest character actors in Hollywood.

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Speaker 4: Thomas Mitchell, “Wh-wh-oh, thank you, Georgie. This is mine, the Medal.”

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Speaker 8: One, Gloria Grahame.

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Speaker 4: “Well, when I don’t care how I…”

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Speaker 8: Love, Frank Albertson, Frank Faylen, and Ward Bond, the original Burton Ernest.

00:10:52
Speaker 4: “I’m a rich tourist today. How about driving me home in…”

00:10:54
Speaker 8: “Style.” “Hop in.” And the great Lionel Barrymore.

00:11:00
Speaker 3: I am an old man.

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Speaker 9: Most people hate me, but I don’t like them either, so that makes it all.

00:11:05
Speaker 8: Even. My dad brought in two great writers, Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, to help him polish the script. But my father always felt that although a movie is a collaboration among dozens, sometimes hundreds of people, there must always be one single creative mind behind it all. You put more of himself on screen in Wonderful Life than in any other film. In fact, I remember he once told me, “It’s the picture I waited my whole life to make.”

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Speaker 3: Then he made the film, and it flopped. It just destroyed him because he thought it was the greatest movie he had ever made. He said, “It’s, in fact, I think it’s the greatest film anybody made.” But if Capra had won the Academy Award, this movie never would have been what it is today, never close to it.

00:11:52
Speaker 4: Look, I’m the force.

00:11:53
Speaker 5: You want a drink, or don’t you?

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Speaker 3: I was talking to Sheldon Leonard.

00:11:58
Speaker 5: Okay, it’s double apartment when you have…

00:12:00
Speaker 12: Oh?

00:12:01
Speaker 3: He was doing a favor for me and talking about the movie to take back to Donna Reed’s hometown for the fiftieth anniversary, and he could make as he went out, “I’d like to tape something for you.” So we were talking through the taping and everything. And then I said, “And that’s something, that this picture with a flop, and now it fell into public domain, and now everybody’s watching it!” They have It’s a Wonderful Life trivia parties. It just keeps growing and growing and growing. He said, “You know, something’s interesting, though, Jimmy: the movie never changes.” “The people change.” “The people need that message more than ever.”

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Speaker 6: Now, that’s a great film. I love that film. It’s my favorite film, and in a sense, it epitomizes everything I’ve been trying to do and trying to say any other films, only does it very dramatically with a very unique story. The importance of the individual is a theme that I’m that it tells, and the domain is a failure. Man has something to do with his life. If he’s born, he’s going to do something.

00:13:04
Speaker 5: Suppose been better if I’d never been born at all?

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Speaker 3: “What’d you say?”

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Speaker 4: “I said, ‘I wish I’d never been born.’”

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Speaker 11: Wait a minute. That’s an idea!

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Speaker 12: What do you think?

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Speaker 6: And this idea is carried out in this unique plot because a man who thought he was a failure and thought everybody around HI would have been better off had he not been born, was given the chance to see how the world around him would have been, his own small little world would have been, had he not been born.

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Speaker 11: Your brother Harry Bailey broke through the ice and was drowned at the age of nine. That’s a lie!

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Speaker 4: Harry Bailey went to war. He got the Congressional Medal of Honor. He saved the lives of every man on that transport.

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Speaker 11: Every man on that transport died. Harry wasn’t there to save them. Because you weren’t there to save Harry. You see, George, you really had a wonderful life. Don’t you see what a mistake it

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Speaker 3: would be to

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Speaker 11: throw it away?

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Speaker 3: We went to Attica Prison a few years ago and showed the film to all the inmates. In fact, the superintendent of all ninety-some-odd prisons was sitting next to me. He said, “Jimmy, I know you had a tough time getting here, but let me tell you some. I’m head of all all the correctional facilities in the state of New York, and if there’s anyone you want to go to, consider it done.” “I’ve never seen this reaction.”

00:14:29
Speaker 13: Isn’t it wonderful about Harry?

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Speaker 12: It was George that I had fifty goals today about the parade, the banquet. Your mother’s so excited.

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Speaker 3: Capra was with him, and I asked him, I said, “What was the most difficult scene in the whole movie to direct?” “He said, ‘That’s, he’sy the one with you kids.’” And I said, “What happened? What did we do wrong?”

00:14:51
Speaker 12: Oh?

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Speaker 3: “No, you guys were great.” “It’s just that so much was going on in the scene.”

00:14:58
Speaker 5: What should keep playing?

00:15:00
Speaker 7: I have to practice it for the party tonight.

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Speaker 3: Daddy, Moms. “We could stay up for midnight and seeing Christmas carols!” “Can you see Natty?” He’d lost the eight thousand. He’s thinking of his brother’s coming home. He’s going to be disgraced. He’s won the Medal of Honor. And then he’s got the kid. Hey, I spell this. And the girl pounded on the piano, and he said, “And then you excuse me, excuse me.”

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Speaker 13: “Good me, excuse me. Excuse you for what? I tell your, ‘Excuse me now, going upstairs,’ and…”

00:15:33
Speaker 3: He put that in there. He always went to humor to break up a dramatic scene, and he said he wanted to capture a family really being a family. And he came up with the “Excuse me” line because his son always used to say that it was a running gag in their family. And then the little boy would go, “Excuse me,” and then go, “Oh, he’s doing it,” and then, “Excuse for what? I burped!”

00:16:04
Speaker 4: Aha!

00:16:04
Speaker 3: Everybody liked it. So he threw that in, and that next, the night before, my mom would tell me what I’m gonna do tomorrow. But that was never there until Frank squatted down. Told everybody, Jimmy Stewart, down to read, “Stop right here.” Then he scrunched down and talked to me, eyed eye, here to see where we are here. And the carpet is, “Yes, I want you to pull on this man’s coat and say ‘Excuse me’ right here.” “When you get right to this spot, say ‘Excuse me.’” “Okay, you get that? Yes, sir. All right, everybody, let’s go!” And we walked two, three more feet. “Stop! Everybody, stop!” And he came back to me and, you know, talked to me, eyed eye. He stooped down and told me again, “And I see you here, you’re here. Say that ‘Excuse me’ line again here?” And he did that three times, and then I got it.

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Speaker 13: Go doubt me, “Excuse you for what?”

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Speaker 3: So that’s what makes this thing so much fun, because people want to talk about It’s a Wonderful Life. They want to know, “Oh my God, somebody’s still alive from the movie! Oh, what? Tell me about it!” Or, “What was it like?” And so this will live for reverend mother. “What do you want, Mother?” “This is George.” “I thought sure you’d remember me, George. But nobody, nobody could have dug down with George.” Bailey, there’s insurmountable things when your mother says she doesn’t know who you are, and “Get out of here!” And you run down that lane into that big close-up. Capra director, that’s great direction and filled that picture with Jimmy story. And you saw in his eyes, “Oh my God, where is this man gone?” To get that look in his eyes? It told everything. It scared you. You go, “Where did he dig down?” Well, he was on that bomber pilot World War II, seeing his crew get shot and killed by them coming by, ba-ba-bomb. “Strange, isn’t it?”

00:18:25
Speaker 11: Each man’s life touches so many other lines.

00:18:28
Speaker 3: When he isn’t around, he leaves an awful hold, isn’t he?

00:18:32
Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to Jimmy Hawkins tell the story of It’s a Wonderful Life, and also Frank Capra. What Capra said? It was just so fascinating. He said, “It’s a picture I’d waited all my life to make.” And then, of course, it flopped. It flopped until it didn’t, until we got cable and we got

00:18:51
Speaker 5: more channels, and there it was!

00:18:53
Speaker 1: It’s a Wonderful Life, almost as if in syndication, running continually. “It epitomizes everything I ever wanted to do in my work,” Capra said. And there he was again, stressing the importance of the individual as the driving theme of all of his work.

00:19:11
Speaker 5: What he also wanted to

00:19:12
Speaker 1: do was capture a family being a family on film. When we come back…