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IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE
and
Dimitri Tiomkin's Film Score
by Roger L. Hall
The Film
It ranked high on the American Film Institutes Top 100 List (No. 11 in 1998) and the film was No. 1 on its "100 Cheers" list.
Here are the nominees and one Oscar received for this 1946 film (from Wikipedia):
Surprisingly, even though it received six Oscar nominations, the film only received mixed reviews when it premiered on December 20, 1946 at the Globe Theater in New York and then nationwide on Christmas Day.
It took several decades to attain the popularity it now has after the film was shown on hundreds of television stations after it became a film in public domain.
It is now one of the all-time film favorites, especially during the Christmas season and has a 94% rating from the film critics on the Rotten Tomatoes site.
I first watched the film on television many years ago and I have loved it ever since.
Like many who love this film, I've continued to follow it through all the various media technologies -- first on VHS tape, then on DVD and most recently on Blu-ray which includes a colorized version which I did watch -- but only once. The black & white original remains the best since it was filmed that way and for good reason since the contast between good and evil is much more apparent with the black and white cinematography. The colorized version distorts that original concept.
The film was directed by Frank Capra who said it was his favorite film. Likewise for one of its stars, James Stewart, and his co-star Donna Reed said it was one of her favorites as well.
There is a stellar supporting cast, including:
Lionel Barrymore, Ward Bond, Frank Faylen, Thomas Mitchell, Beulah Bondi, Gloria Grahame, Henry Travers, H.B. Warner, and those adorable Bailey youngsters: Bobbie Anderson (young George), Larry Simms (Peter), Carol Coombs (Janie), Karolyn Grimes (Zuzu), and Jimmy Hawkins (Tommy). Several of these youngsters have since become celebrities when they were older, especially Karolyn Grimes who has had a thriving business selling memorabilia through her newsletter. Many have been touched by her stories about the film in her newsletter and on her personal appearance tours.
The interest in this film and its message of hope winning over despair remains strong.
Many of the cast can be seen in this photo:
Here is a rare autographed copy of the film script:
The Score
Even though there were six Oscar nominations, Dimitri Tiomkin was not nominated for his film score.
Perhaps that was not so troubling to him since in his autobiography, Please Don't Hate Me (1959),
Tiomkin was not pleased with how some of his music was used in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE:
The picture was in the best Capra style. Frank thinks it the finest he ever made. I never saw it after it was completed. After the music was on the sound track, Frank cut it, switched sections around, and patched it up, an all-around scissors job. After that I didn't want to hear it.
Stephen Cox in It's a Wonderful Life: A Memory Book, expresses a similar opinion:
The film that eventually became one of Tiomkin's most famous works actually became a disappointment for the composer, both personally and professionally, when Capra replaced much of his original orchestration with existing music from other sources.
Actually most of Tiomkin's score remains.
But there were some awkward substitutions. One of them was Alfred Newman's "Hallelujah" music from THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1939), used instead of Tiomkin's much more approrpiate quoting of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" in the scene near the end where George Bailey jubilantly runs through town in the snow.
Cox mentions that album producer, Willard Carroll, found Tiomkin's entire original score in the 1980s in the archives of the University of Southern California:
Carroll, along with composer and conductor David Newman, set out to release the unaltered Tiomkin score," Cox wrote.
He goes on to write:
"In 1988, their CD (which also includes suites from MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET and A CHRISTMAS CAROL) was released by Telarc, with music richly recreated and recorded by London's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Cox quotes Carroll as saying:
The score as it stands in the movie is a hodgepodge. Most of it is Tiomkin, but because of the accelerated release date, a great deal of it was chopped up, switched around, and in many cases, replaced by cues from other movies...We recorded the complete score as Tiomkin originally intended it, unheard since 1946.
Tiomkin had a special fondness for using familiar tunes in his film scores and he uses "Buffalo Gals" (for George and Mary/ James Stewart and Donna Reed) as his main theme. This old song was actually a big hit arranged as "Danced With A Dolly (With A Hole In Her Stocking)" written by songwriters Terry Shand, Jimmy Eaton and David Kapp in 1944. It was featured on the popular radio show, " Your Hit Parade," for fifteen weeks and was a big hit recording by The Andrews Sisters. Another song used by Tiomkin was "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" representing Clarence Odbody AS2, played by the lovable actor, Henry Travers.
Next time you watch the film, listen closely to the music, for example the ghost-like effects Tiomkin wrote for the Pottersville Cemetery scene with George Bailey and Clarence Odbody, AS2 ("Angel Second Class").
Both the film and Tiomkin's score deserve to be remembered and cherished for years to come.
On this 70th anniversary of the film and the score I'm pleased to celebrate them but especially Dimitri Tiomkin, who composed one of his most memorable scores for this "wonderful" film
about "a wonderful life."
--December, 2016
New for 2021!
See the CD review of the
75th Anniversary Edition of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE - click here
Roger Hall is a film music critic and
Managing Editor of Film Music Review.
He is the author of the popular
multimedia publication with
this book plus audio and video bonus features:
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To read his article, "Dimtri Tiomkin's Golden Decade" -- click here
CDs
Dimitri Tiomkin's music has continued to grow in popularity along with the film.
Here are two recommended CDs with Tiomkin's film score:
Total playing time = 64:34 (16 tracks)
This CD contains the Tiomkin score for IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE including music cut from the film. Also included are suites from
Richard Addinsell's A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1951) and Cyril Mockridge's MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET (1947). The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is conducted by David Newman. This is a superb release in the unfortunately short-lived Sundance series and the CD is now a collector's item. Highly recommended!
Hear a sample from this CD on YouTube -- click here
Are you a fan of Jimmy Stewart?
Did you know he sang in a few other films in addition to
IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE?
Click this link to read about his singing and more on the
James Stewart Centennial
100 Essential Film Scores
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See the list of Tiomkin scores on the list of...
100 Essential Film Scores of the 20th Century
Books and DVDs
Read about the music in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE
and listen to a radio broadcast about the music score
on this multimedia DVD-ROM with the book and audio examples.
To read how to get your copy of this
special
limited edition disc -- click here
This is a highly recommended DVD edition:
IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (60th Anniversary Edition)
The Tiomkin score plus "Buffalo Gals" and other songs used in the film
are discussed
in this highly recommended book:
It's a Wonderful Life: A Memory Book
by Stephen Cox
Foreword by Bob Anderson
(who played young George Bailey)
Another recommended book:
The Essential It's A Wonderful Life:
A Scene-By-Scene Guide to the Classic Film
by Michael Willian
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