It Happened Here -- "It's a 

Wonderful Life"

This week NYSHM'S:  It Happened Here strays a little from its regular subject matter, those (usually) blue and yellow,  (usually) free standing,  (usually) cast iron or aluminum signs that dot New York State to consider a small brass plaque on an aging steel girder bridge in Seneca Falls, NY.  Given the season, its a story is too good to pass up! 

 

According to local legend, Hollywood film director Frank Capra visited Seneca Falls back in 1945, coming to the region after interviewing an actress in New York and heading to visit an aunt in nearby Auburn.  Capra was drawn to the south side of town, a neighborhood populated by Italian immigrants, like himself. Though his presence in town went largely unnoticed, a local barber recalled in later years cutting Capra's hair and bantering back and forth about their surnames.  Tommy Bellisima's name in Italian meant "beautiful one;" Capra's name meant "goat." At the time, Bellisma, a recent immigrant had no idea he was talking to a famous Hollywood director.

For Capra, this was a difficult time in his career.  After several years of making films for the War Department he was now, for the first time, re-entering the commercial marketplace, and he was head of a new independent film company that had broken away from the major film studios. He had acquired the rights to a short story "The Greatest Gift" from RKO Pictures as part of a package deal that included two other scripts. It had originally been a short story enclosed in a christmas card written by Phillip Van Doren Stern.  Though he had bought the whole package, this was the property he wanted.  So what was Frank Capra doing during his short stay in Seneca Falls? Was he simply relaxing, passing through, escaping from the Hollywood glitz and urban bustle? Was he trying to reconnect with "small town--main street America?" Or was he actively searching out images and settings he would recreate when he built the set for Bedford Falls on a studio lot in California?  His autobiography and two biographies* written about him make no mention of his visit to Seneca Falls.

Town residents firmly believe he was profoundly influenced by a stroll across the Seneca Falls Bridge Street Bridge.  In the original short story the central character, George Bailey is standing on the town's bridge over its fast moving river, contemplating suicide when the hero's guardian angel intervenes, telling him "I wouldn't do that if I were you."  In the movie, George Bailey is on the bridge contemplating suicide, when his guardian angel throws himself into the water, distracting Bailey from thoughts of suicide, to an overwhelming concern for saving another person's life.  When he saves the angel and they reach shore together, Clarence, his guardian angel uses what just happened to introduce to George the notion that his life matters to others, then he goes on to show George what would have happened to his town and those he loved if he had never been born. 

On the Seneca Falls Bridge Street Bridge was a plaque Capra would have undoubtedly seen that honors Antonio Varacalli.  In 1917 Varacalli heard the cries of a girl who had jumped from the bridge in a suicide attempt. Though he couldn't swim, he jumped in and managed to get the girl to shore, into the hands of onlookers, before he, himself succumbed to the cold and rushing water, and was swept to his death. 

Did Varacalli's selfless act lead Capra to change the scene? Was Capra inspired by the village of Seneca Falls? Certainly the bridge in the movie looks like the Bridge Street bridge and after the movie came out in 1946, and especially after it fell into the public domain and became regular Christmas fare on television from the 1970's on, people in Seneca Falls began to recognize places in their town in the 1940's that resembled places in the movie. Besides the bridge, there was the divided main street, Lower Falls Street, part of the Genesee Turnpike, resembling (without trees) Genesee Street in Bedford Falls; there was the Falls Street business district, reminiscent of the Bedford Falls business district; 32 and 54 Cayuga Street, reminiscent of George Bailey's old Granville house; the Strand Theater with its 1920's marquee over the sidewalk; the 1940's train station, a bar that resembles Martini's in the movie and the hotel at 108 Fall Street--now named the Clarence, in honor of George Bailey's Angel.**

A tissue of plausibility can be spread over much of the town. A skeptic can say that if Seneca Falls in the 1940's resembled Bedford Falls it was because Frank Capra was trying to create a typical small town of the 1940's and Seneca Falls happened to be the type of town he was trying to create.  An historian could argue the only documentary evidence we have that Capra got anything from the town, was that he got a haircut!  But then, the Holidays are a season for belief and if you want to believe that Seneca Falls was the inspiration for one of the great holiday classics, I'm okay with that.

From the Bridge. Another sign declares this "George Bailey Ln."

Marker of the Week -- Another Street, a More Certain Inspiration

Norman Rockwell, the famous artist/illustrator frequently came
to Troy for backdrops and scenes to stage his illustrations. He would take photographs and later incorporate elements of them in
his paintings. (He also often did this with his live subjects, catching  the expression he wanted on film, then transferring it to canvass.)
In 1952 Ford Motor Company
offered him a commission for a painting commemorating their company's 50th anniversary.  The result was "The Street was Never the Same, Again" and featured a Model A Ford chugging down the street with throngs of Rockwell characters hanging from windows, transfixed on stoops and gawking from the street as this first automobile sputtered along in front of the buildings at 594, 596 and 598 4th Avenue.








*Frank Capra. Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title. 1971; Joseph McBride. Frank Capra, The Catastrophe of Success. 1992; Richard Schick. Frank Cappra, A Life in Film. 2011.

**An organization, The Real Bedford Falls promotes an "Its a Wonderful Life" weekend in Seneca Falls a few weeks before Christmas every year. They have produced a walking tour brochure with over a dozen sites with reputed connections to the movie.