First post­ed at Bill​Moy​ers​.com.

There are still a lot of Mr. Potters in the world. We know who you are and we’ll keep calling you out.

A num­ber of years ago, I was telling a long­time city dweller friend of mine yet anoth­er sto­ry about the small, upstate New York town in which I grew up.

Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly baf­fled and cap­ti­vat­ed, he said, ​“I think you were born and raised in Bed­ford Falls,” the fic­tion­al burg at the cen­ter of Frank Capra’s clas­sic Christ­mas movie, ​“It’s a Won­der­ful Life.”

Well, I wasn’t. Actu­al­ly, I grew up about 27 miles west of there. Its real name is Seneca Falls, NY — yes, the same place that’s also the birth­place of the women’s suf­frage move­ment. While not absolute­ly cer­tain, there’s a com­pelling body of cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence that Capra had the town in mind when he cre­at­ed his cin­e­mat­ic ver­sion of Bed­ford Falls. The steel bridge over the canal, for exam­ple, like the one from which the hero George Bai­ley con­tem­plates jump­ing in a sui­cide attempt, only to dive in to save his guardian angel, Clarence. The old Vic­to­ri­an homes, the design of town streets, a large Ital­ian pop­u­la­tion, men­tions of near­by cities Rochester, Buf­fa­lo and Elmi­ra are just a few of the oth­er sim­i­lar­i­ties. There’s even the per­haps apoc­ryphal tale of Frank Capra find­ing inspi­ra­tion after stop­ping in Seneca Falls for a hair­cut on his way to vis­it an aunt.

Enough coin­ci­dences abound that Seneca Falls now holds a year­ly ​“It’s a Won­der­ful Life” fes­ti­val, and although it may not draw as many vis­i­tors as the near­by Women’s Rights Nation­al His­tor­i­cal Park, there’s also an ​“It’s a Won­der­ful Life” muse­um. What­ev­er the ulti­mate truth, there’s no deny­ing that the movie is a sto­ry­book evo­ca­tion of bygone small town Amer­i­ca, places like Seneca Falls and my own home­town, right down to the under­side of greed and mal­ice that often lurks just around the cor­ner from the film’s com­pas­sion and whole­some neigh­bor­li­ness. As for Frank Capra, as he pre­pared to make the movie, he told the Los Ange­les Times, ​“There are just two things that are impor­tant. One is to strength­en the individual’s belief in him­self, and the oth­er, even more impor­tant right now, is to com­bat a mod­ern trend toward atheism.”

Which makes it all the cra­zier that when the movie first came out, it fell under sus­pi­cion from the FBI and the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee (HUAC) as Com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da, part of the Red Scare that soon would lead to the black­list and witch hunt that destroyed the careers of many tal­ent­ed screen and tele­vi­sion writ­ers, direc­tors and actors.

Screen­play cred­its on ​“It’s a Won­der­ful Life” went to Frances Goodrich and her hus­band Albert Hack­ett, Capra and Jo Swer­ling, although a num­ber of oth­ers took turns at dif­fer­ent times, includ­ing Clif­ford Odets, Dal­ton Trum­bo and Marc Con­nel­ly — not an unusu­al sit­u­a­tion in Hol­ly­wood. But a 1947 FBI mem­o­ran­dum, part of a 13,533-page doc­u­ment, ​“Com­mu­nist Infil­tra­tion of the Motion Pic­ture Indus­try,” first went after the writ­ers Goodrich and Hackett:

“Accord­ing to Infor­mants [REDACT­ED] in this pic­ture the screen cred­its again fail to reflect the Com­mu­nist sup­port giv­en to the screen writer. Accord­ing to [REDACT­ED] the writ­ers Frances Goodrick [sic] and Albert Hack­ett were very close to known Com­mu­nists and on one occa­sion in the recent past while these two writ­ers were doing a pic­ture for Metro-Gold­wyn-May­er, Goodrick [sic] and Hack­ett prac­ti­cal­ly lived with known Com­mu­nists and were observed eat­ing lun­cheon dai­ly with such Com­mu­nists as Lester Cole, screen writer, and Earl Robin­son, screen writer. Both of these indi­vid­u­als are iden­ti­fied in Sec­tion I of this mem­o­ran­dum as Communists.”

The memo goes on to cast doubt on the movie’s sto­ry­line, in which Jim­my Stewart’s George Bai­ley and his strug­gling build­ing and loan fight on behalf of the good peo­ple of Bed­ford Falls against the avarice and pow­er of banker and slum­lord Hen­ry Pot­ter, played by Lionel Barrymore:

“With regard to the pic­ture ​‘It’s A Won­der­ful Life’, [REDACT­ED] stat­ed in sub­stance that 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. This, accord­ing to these sources, is a com­mon trick used by Communists. “In addi­tion, [REDACT­ED] stat­ed that, in his opin­ion, this pic­ture delib­er­ate­ly maligned the upper class, attempt­ing to show the peo­ple who had mon­ey were mean and despi­ca­ble char­ac­ters. [REDACT­ED] relat­ed that if he had made this pic­ture por­tray­ing the banker, he would have shown this indi­vid­ual to have been fol­low­ing the rules as laid down by the State Bank Exam­in­ers in con­nec­tion with mak­ing loans. Fur­ther, [REDACT­ED] stat­ed that the scene wouldn’t have ​‘suf­fered at all’ in por­tray­ing the banker as a man who was pro­tect­ing funds put in his care by pri­vate indi­vid­u­als and adher­ing to the rules gov­ern­ing the loan of that mon­ey rather than por­tray­ing the part as it was shown. In sum­ma­ry, [REDACT­ED] stat­ed that it was not nec­es­sary to make the banker such a mean char­ac­ter and ​‘I would nev­er have done it that way.’”

This was part of an FBI eval­u­a­tion of sev­er­al Hol­ly­wood movies – oth­ers includ­ed ​“The Best Years of Our Lives” (which beat ​“It’s a Won­der­ful Life” at the Oscars for Best Pic­ture and Best Direc­tor), ​“Pride of the Marines,” and Abbott and Costel­lo in ​“Buck Pri­vates Come Home.”

Wait — it gets nut­ti­er. Accord­ing to the media archival web­site Aphe­lis, ​“Among the group who pro­duced the ana­lyt­i­cal tools that were used by the FBI in its analy­sis of ​‘It’s a Won­der­ful Life’ was Ayn Rand.”

“Abbott and Costel­lo Meet Ayn Rand” — what a com­e­dy hor­ror pic­ture that would have made, scari­er and fun­nier than their encoun­ters with Franken­stein or the Wolf­man. Rand’s group told the FBI:

“The pur­pose of the Com­mu­nists in Hol­ly­wood is not the pro­duc­tion of polit­i­cal movies open­ly advo­cat­ing Com­mu­nism. Their pur­pose is to cor­rupt non-polit­i­cal movies — by intro­duc­ing small, casu­al bits of pro­pa­gan­da into inno­cent sto­ries and to make peo­ple absorb the basic prin­ci­ples of Col­lec­tivism by indi­rec­tion and impli­ca­tion. Few peo­ple would take Com­mu­nism straight, but a con­stant stream of hints, lines, touch­es and sug­ges­tions bat­ter­ing the pub­lic from the screen will act like drops of water that split a rock if con­tin­ued long enough. The rock that they are try­ing to split is Americanism.”

But redemp­tion of an odd sort came for ​“It’s a Won­der­ful Life” at the infa­mous Octo­ber 1947 House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee hear­ings. Just days before the appear­ance there of the Hol­ly­wood 10 — writ­ers (and one direc­tor) who refused to tes­ti­fy and sub­se­quent­ly went to prison — a parade of ​“friend­ly wit­ness­es” (includ­ing Ayn Rand, Gary Coop­er, Ronald Rea­gan and Walt Dis­ney) came before the com­mit­tee to insin­u­ate and weave dark tales of Com­mu­nist infil­tra­tion and sub­ver­sion in the movie busi­ness. One of them was a for­mer Com­mu­nist and screen­writer named John Charles Mof­fitt. Aphe­lis reports:

“When asked by HUAC Chief Inves­ti­ga­tor Robert E. Stripling if Hol­ly­wood is in the habit of por­tray­ing bankers as vil­lain­ous char­ac­ters, Mof­fitt takes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to try to clear the rep­u­ta­tion of Frank Capra’s movie ​‘It’s A Won­der­ful Life:’ he tries to argue that the film isn’t, in fact a Com­mu­nist movie.” MR. STRIPLING. The term ​“heavy” has been used here as a des­ig­na­tion of the part in which the per­son is a vil­lain. Would you say that the banker has been often cast as a heavy, or con­sis­tent­ly cast as a heavy, in pic­tures in Hollywood? MR. MOF­FITT. Yes, sir. I think that due to Com­mu­nist pres­sure he is over­fre­quent­ly cast as a heavy. By that I do not mean that I think no pic­ture should ever show a vil­lain­ous banker. In fact, I would right now like to defend one pic­ture that I think has been unjust­ly accused of com­mu­nism. That pic­ture is Frank Capra’s ​“It’s a Won­der­ful Life.” The banker in that pic­ture, played by Lionel Bar­ry­more, was most cer­tain­ly what we call a ​“dog heavy” in the busi­ness. He was a snarling, unsym­pa­thet­ic char­ac­ter. But the hero and his father, played by James Stew­art and Samuel S. Hines, were busi­ness­men, in the build­ing and loan busi­ness, and they were shown as using mon­ey as a benev­o­lent influence.

At this point, there was a bit of com­mo­tion in the hear­ing room.

THE CHAIR­MAN. Just a minute. Come away. Every­body sit down. Will all you peo­ple who are stand­ing up please sit down? And the photographers. MR.MOFFITT. All right. THE CHAIR­MAN. Go ahead. MR. MOF­FITT. Well, to sum­ma­rize, I think Mr. Capra’s pic­ture, though it had a banker as vil­lain, could not be prop­er­ly called a Com­mu­nist pic­ture. It showed that the pow­er of mon­ey can be used oppres­sive­ly and it can be used benev­o­lent­ly. I think that pic­ture was unjust­ly accused of Communism.

Since then, the movie has been more than redeemed as it slow­ly became a sen­ti­men­tal and beloved hol­i­day peren­ni­al. And if any­thing, its por­tray­al of a vil­lain­ous banker has been vin­di­cat­ed a thou­sand fold as in the last sev­en years we’ve seen fraud­u­lent mort­gages and sub­se­quent fore­clo­sures, bankers unre­pen­tant after an unprece­dent­ed tax­pay­er bailout and unpun­ished after a mind­bog­gling spree of bad calls, profli­ga­cy and corkscrew invest­ments that raked in bil­lions while oth­ers suf­fered the consequences.

It’s a won­der­ful life, alright, but not if you’re home­less or unem­ployed tonight, not if your kids are hun­gry and you can’t pay for heat. There are still a lot of Mr. Pot­ters in the world. We know who you are and we’ll keep call­ing you out. God rest ye mer­ry, gentlemen.