Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine It's a Wonderful Topic!

In re-reading this thread, I was thinking about "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington". I like the little touches that also affect the characters. In this Movie Jean Arthur plays Jimmy Stewart;s secretary. She is world-worn from all the politics. But when she call's Jimmy Stewart's mother, she calls her by her first name and Jean Arthur is touched by that and realizes just how real Jimmy Stewart is.

I got to watch every minute of my beloved saga of George Bailey last night. DVR'd it and watched it straight through while the wife and kids were fast asleep.

I found myself lingering on Violet again, this time. In the Pottersville timeline, I was wondering why she was in trouble. I couldn't hear the dialogue super-well, but it sounded like she may have lifted someone's wallet? And I'm certainly intrigued by her and George's relationship. I know there was nothing untoward going on between them, but I wonder how often he gave her money. She is an intriguing character who I still want to know more about!

It's interesting always to see how circumstances continually pull George away from his getting out of Bedford Falls, even denying him a honeymoon. I noted this time that even though George tries to resist his attraction to Mary and the symbolism of her further tying him to the town that it is she who begs him to stay in the cab when the Building & Loan is having the run on it. She's trying in her own way to keep his dream alive. But he can't resist, and she offers up their honeymoon money to keep the business alive.

I also love the quick cuts in the wartime scenes showing Mary continually fixing up their house and slowly making what was the old wreck at Sycamore into a lovely home.

And apparently, rampant Jitterbugging is the single activity that shows what a slum Pottersville was in the alt-Bedford Falls!

I've always interpreted Violet's "in trouble" as euphemism for pregnant. Even as a kid in the 1970s, lots of my elders from that generation used the same phrasing.

Others earlier in the thread have suggested the same thing. I've never heard of that phrasing used in that situation before. If true, then this would have been very obvious to viewers for a long time until the euphemism became less common.

In retrospect, my feminist self finds the extreme melodrama around alt-universe Mary the "old maid" to be unwittingly hilarious. Sure, she might've kept her high standards & stayed single for life in that reality. But I'm much happier imagining her smacking alt-universe George in the head with an umbrella while yelling for the cops than the wilting flower we saw.

I've known my share of librarians who worked in... ah, difficult environments for years. They're made of stronger stuff than that.

That's the main reason I can't stomach it. Waste of a great performer, and when you think of the Second World War & so many women either performing acts of daring or just rolling up their sleeves & entering "man's world" to do what was needed...? It just compounds my annoyance. I can't watch it.

This would explain why there was a real threat behind Potter's noting George's association with Violet. A married man who paid for a female friend's abortion or for her to "go away" and have the baby (who would then be discreetly put up for adoption)? No one would ever have believed he was just acting out of brotherly feeling. At least in Potter's eyes: career predator that he was.

I still have issues with the conceit of last act because it's a bit of a cheat. George's life demonstrably had an impact on other people, if only because he saved his brother's life and ran one of the central institutions in town. I know part of the point is he's lost perspective on all of that, but I think it would have been much more powerful if he really WAS a hapless loser and then saw how much positive impact he had without being aware of it. For me it makes the difference between "everyone's life has meaning" and "George is a whiny drip".

Well, I get really whiny when I'm depressed, too. And I think everyone hates me, even though they don't. So I'll cut him some slack for that.