THE ANGELS CONSPIRE TO SAVE GEORGE

"Please, God. Something's the matter with Daddy."

— Janie Bailey

We begin our journey by eavesdropping on the urgent prayers of several Bedford Fallsians this Christmas Eve 1945. In order, we hear from Mr. Gower, Mr. Martini, Mrs. Peter Bailey, Bert the cop, Ernie the taxi driver, Mary Bailey, Janie Bailey, and Zuzu Bailey. The common theme of these prayers? George Bailey is in trouble and could use some help from above, and fast. For reasons that will be made known to us shortly, George has convinced himself that "he's worth more dead than alive." And on his current course, he'll be putting this theory to the test just as soon as he can find a bridge suitable for jumping.

Enter the angels, who have heard this chorus of prayers and are now scrambling to come up with an intervention plan. The head angel and his assistant, Joseph, eventually assign good old Clarence to the project. Joseph doesn't have much confidence in Clarence's abilities, but we know better — Clarence is just the right man for the job. All Clarence needs is a little background on this Bailey character, and he and Joseph begin by reviewing a few defining moments from George's youth.

In the first of two such vignettes, we find George and his pals sledding down a riverbank during the winter of 1919. Everything is going swell until George's younger brother, Harry, eager to prove himself equal to the task, pushes off a little too hard, overshoots the bailout zone, and tumbles through an opening in the ice. George instantly jumps in after his brother and implores the other boys to help pull them out. Thanks to George's quick thinking, Harry will be around at the end of the film to toast his older brother!

The second vignette from George's youth is the infamous "poison capsules" incident at Gower Drugs. It is now late spring 1919, and George has recovered from last winter's sledding mishap, though he does have permanent hearing loss in one ear. George is working as Mr. Gower's store hand, and by all accounts he is an honest, hardworking young boy, if also a bit of a dreamer.

After getting scolded by old man Gower upon his arrival, George waits on two young girls, Violet Bick and Mary Hatch, both of whom will be vying for George's attention for years to come. There are some hints as to which girl will eventually win out, but it's going to be a while before George figures it out for himself.

While tending to Mary's order, George stumbles across a telegram containing news that Mr. Gower's son has died suddenly and under tragic circumstances. George suspects that all is not well with Mr. Gower in the back room and decides to investigate. Sure enough, Mr. Gower is stone drunk, and worse yet, he's filling prescriptions with poison capsules! This is not good. George is not sure how to handle this rather delicate situation, so he hightails it over to his dad's office at the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan Association.

Unfortunately, there's trouble brewing at the Building & Loan too. Henry F. Potter, the "meanest and richest man in town" and the Building & Loan's chief competition in the Bedford Falls real estate market, is in the house for a business meeting, and, invariably, these meetings are contentious. George slips into the meeting to find his father arguing with Potter about a loan that Potter is holding over the Building & Loan's head. The exchange gets more and more heated, and when Potter calls George's father a "miserable failure," George steps in with a few choice words — and a gratuitous shove — for the wheelchair-bound Potter. George is quickly shown the door by his father; and so ends the first of many skirmishes to come between George and Potter.

Forced to solve the drugstore dilemma on his own, George returns to the store, where he takes some serious heat from Mr. Gower for failing to deliver the prescription. But eventually he confronts Mr. Gower with the facts —"you put poison in those capsules, you rummy!"

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George's Friends and Family Pray For Him (0:01:17)

CLOSER LOOK: We're not even ten seconds into the film and we already have a gem for you. Take a close look at the shot accompanying Mr. Gower's prayer. It shows the downtown Bedford Falls street that George runs down on his way home at the end of the film. After a few seconds, a man appears in the boulevard's median running wildly and waving his right hand. (0:01:29)

That, folks, is most definitely George Bailey. So what gives here? Did director Frank Capra purposefully and sublimely synchronize the prayers with George's triumphant return home? Are George's friends and family supposed to be praying for him at the very moment he is headed home to see them?

We think not. Remember, in the next scene the angels hear and respond to the various prayers. And the angels' meeting in heaven occurs at 9:45 P.M. earth time (the head angel says George will be on the bridge at 10:45 P.M., prompting Clarence to remark that he only has "an hour to dress"). But George doesn't arrive home until 11:55 P.M., which would place him downtown around 11:45 P.M.

This leads us to conclude that George's cameo during the opening prayer scene is completely inadvertent. Our theory is that Capra needed a wintertime shot of the street in front of Gower Drugs to go with Mr. Gower's prayer and used an outtake from George's run through downtown, unaware that the seemingly actionless footage actually included Jimmy Stewart in midtake.

CLOSER LOOK: Accompanying the prayer of George's mother is a shot of a local church. (0:01:37) Look for this church later in the film across the street from where George crashes his car after leaving Martini's. (1:37:34) It's also visible when George returns to the scene of the accident in Pottersville. (1:45:54)

CLOSER LOOK: Bert's prayer is accompanied by a shot of a house, which presumably is supposed to be his. Later on in the guide we'll clue you in to the exact location of this house in Bedford Falls. For now, take a look at the very end of this clip, where you will see a mysterious man suddenly, and for no apparent reason, sprint off the front porch of the house next door. (0:01:43)

The Angels Talk in Heaven (0:02:10)

FILM ANECDOTES: Although the "head angel" is never actually mentioned by name in the film, the final script identifies this character as Franklin. This less-than-angelic-sounding name is a remnant of an earlier script that had...