Christmas leftovers

This year, I read more than the usual posts about the film “It’s a Wonderful Life.” One thing that was new to me was the suspicion the film drew by the FBI as being a work of socialist/communist propaganda. Even seen in the context of the Cold War and red scare politics, this idea seems absurd on its face. Both George Bailey and his nemesis, Mr. Potter are businessmen; Bailey is a banker and Potter is a landlord. If this were socialist propaganda, Bailey would be a government official. And the crisis in the film is resolved (spoiler alert!) when George’s wife rallies the citizens of Bedford Falls to voluntarily donate their own money to make up the bank’s debt. No taxation was involved. This is libertarian propaganda, not socialist propaganda.

What may have saved the film from J. Edgar Hoover’s depredations was that Frank Capra’s and Jimmy Stewart’s political credentials were impeccable:

“While known for their work on populist “little man vs. the system” features, most notably in 1939’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, both men were in fact registered and staunch Republicans. Capra himself had openly expressed admiration for the fascist regimes of both Benito Mussolini and Francisco Franco. While he would work with known left-wing screenwriters such as Jo Swerling, Robert Riskin, and Sidney Buchman, he also worked to preserve his own establishment credibility and distance himself from the proclivities of his collaborators by serving as an informant for the FBI on his left-leaning contemporaries.” https://jacobinmag.com/2021/12/its-a-wonderful-life-fbi-hoover-red-scare-communism/?fbclid=IwAR33SVSqjmiaW2mNDM3-R-lfOlwl8xG9kWrfS4VR_cuK43RjKXAjVP75V2k