George Bailey Was Never Born

Dec 26 2023 12 ep. 57 mins 74

George Bailey Was Never Born Podcast artwork

George Bailey Was Never Born, a one-of-a-kind podcast experience, takes a definitive look at It’s a Wonderful Life, one of the most popular movies of all time, the story of Americans’ decades-long love affair with this cultural institution and how it may offer a light down the path we walk today, all 10 episodes available Nov 21, 2023. Created by Kurt Engfehr, the editor-producer of Oscar- and Palme d’Or-winning documentaries, and Ray Nowosielski, 2022 NAACP Image Award nominee for Outstanding Podcast, the series is a co-production of iHeartMedia and Double Asterisk, in association with True Stories. Narrated by a familiar angel, he takes listeners back and forth between the part of the multiverse where the events of Wonderful Life really happened and our own, one where George Bailey was never born! SaveGeorgeBailey.com

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Introducing: George Bailey was Never Born

Nov 01 2023 3 mins

George Bailey Was Never Born, a one-of-a-kind podcast experience, takes a definitive look at It’s a Wonderful Life, one of the most popular movies of all time, the story of Americans’ decades-long love affair with this cultural institution and how it may offer a light down the path we walk today, all 10 episodes available Nov 21, 2023. Created by Kurt Engfehr, the editor-produc

Part 01: The People's Movie (1974 to '92)

Nov 21 2023 64 mins

A fan love letter to It's a Wonderful Life, this episode dives deeply into the period over the 1970s and ‘80s when the movie played around the clock on local TV and Americans fell in love with it, asking why writer Philip Van Doren Stern’s sliding-doors butterfly-effect concept of each person’s value and impact on all others acquired such currency with Americans of that place

Part 02: You Are Now in Bedford Falls

Nov 21 2023 47 mins

A deep dive into the Wonderful Life Festival in western New York's Seneca Falls, a town that makes a powerful case that it is “the real Bedford Falls.” Annually every December, one of the last surviving people associated with the production of It's a Wonderful Life, Karolyn “Zuzu” Grimes, travels there to join thousands of fans. What about this nearly 80 year old movie keep

Part 03: Henry F Potter, American AntiHero

Nov 21 2023 72 mins

Going in search of the reason why “up-side down” takes on It's a Wonderful Life have eclipsed traditional ones in recent years, this episode quickly becomes a history lesson about the U.S. government’s attack on the movie’s writers, and an examination of the state of heroes and villains today. What does this phenomenon tell us about the nature of how our culture has changed

Part 04: The Corporations' Movie (1993 to 2023)

Nov 21 2023 67 mins

How was it that It's a Wonderful Life went from a local TV free-for-all to only airing during the holidays on NBC for most of the past three decades? In search of the answer, the podcast unearths a never-before-told story that up-ends many of the broadly-held assumptions and reveals much about the Potter-dominated state of modern media. Generally, once a piece of art falls into the

Part 05: Pottersville

Nov 21 2023 61 mins

If western New York's Seneca Falls is the “real Bedford Falls,” then what can that town tell us about what happened to the people of that place in It's a Wonderful Life? We come to know real corollaries of the beloved characters from that movie today, learning about their hopes and struggles, and discovering much about the state of small-town America. Seneca Falls is filled wit

Part 06: The George Bailey Generation

Nov 21 2023 63 mins

The much-admired George Bailey was not a stand-out but an almost perfect representative of his Greatest Generation, as historians argue in this episode that spotlights the relationship of parents and children and the yin and yang of eras, seeking a culprit to who upside-down’d America from the ethos of It's a Wonderful Life. Those of George’s generation, born between 1901 and �

Part 07: Bailey Park Returns, a.k.a A Couple of Decent Rooms & a Bath

Nov 21 2023 49 mins

George Bailey’s do still exist today, as we witness with Seneca Falls’ community banker Menzo Case, following his efforts to create much-needed affordable housing via his own Bailey Park. Ordinary Americans “do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community,” George famously chastises Henry F. Potter, suggesting they ought to be able to do so “in a

Part 08: The Creators' Movie (1938 to '73)

Nov 21 2023 46 mins

Probably the episode most fans came to this podcast seeking. After spotlights of so many influential fans' interpretations across the series, here we ask: what did the creators of It's a Wonderful Life actually intend, and for what did they stand? With their next of kin, we come to know them intimately, unearthing the stories of how a literal dream inside a Brooklyn apartment durin

Part 09: Mary Hatch, Hero (For Our Times)

Nov 21 2023 57 mins

The most controversial moment in It's a Wonderful Life for modern fans is the fate of George Bailey’s spouse Mary in the part of the multiverse in which he had never been born. An examination of Mary as the true hero of Bedford Falls leads to the stories of Donna Reed as unappreciated feminist, femme punk Zuzu’s Petals' Laurie Lindeen's “woman behind the man” relationship w