Like George Bailey, he's 

been to the bridge

Ron Meador; Staff Writer
Publication Date: December 19, 1996  

When "It's a Wonderful Life" opened 50 years ago this weekend,

no one could have predicted it would become as common as carols at
Christmas. Reviews were tepid, ticket sales were slow. A few months
later, it went 0-for-5 on its Oscar nominations - hardly a
blockbuster.

Nor has it achieved its longevity as some kind of a cult

classic. Virtually the entire baby-boom generation has fallen
sloppily in love with this film since an accident of timing
propelled it from the forgotten-movies vault.

From 1974, when the film's copyright expired, until 1994, when

NBC bought exclusive broadcast rights, any TV station could pay a
few bucks and show the film around the clock from Thanksgiving till
Christmas Eve. Most of them, it seemed, leapt at the chance.

Meanwhile, the eldest boomers were reaching the age where

dreams of greatness yield to realities, limits and obligations.
Watching George Bailey give up his visions of touring Europe and
building mile-long bridges, these twenty- and thirty-somethings knew
just what he meant when he disdained "this business of nickels and
dimes and spending your life trying to save three cents on a length
of pipe." And some knew what it was like to wind up in the middle of
a bridge at the center of a blizzard, grasping for a reason not to
jump.

For many years, and to the disappointment of many friends, I

just couldn't understand the appeal of the movie, any more than I
could understand how quickly and completely George Bailey lost his
grip on life. The film seemed cartoonish, as sweet and insubstantial
as Christmas cookies, centered on a character so decent and unawares
that I wanted to slap him just to wake him up.

But this was before I had been to the middle of the bridge
myself.

Dark passages

I have been there more than once in the last 10 years or so. It
wasn't because of wanting to die, particularly. Nor was it directly
because of a death or a divorce, or a lost love or upended career,
although I've known all those dark passages and some others.
Like George, I was propelled to the bridge by a swirl of events
that might have been manageable in other circumstances, but now
combined to overwhelm me. Like George, who suddenly found he was
"worth more dead than alive," I lost any sense that my life had
value, and all confidence I might recover any.

And, like George, I had no sense of where I was going when I

set out on the trek that led to the bridge. It's just where I ended
up.

It would be embarrassing and painful to say these things in

public if I did not know how common this experience is. In the last
few years, especially, I have met a few dozen other people who had
been on that same bridge and were able to talk about it, either in
an effort to help me or - better yet - in allowing me to say or do
something useful for them.

And yet despair, even a past and vanquished despair, remains a

shameful thing for most people to acknowledge or discuss. It's as if
admitting you'd been to the bridge was the same as disclosing that
you'd jumped. Or that you're still there, waiting to be saved.

I cannot say there's anything enjoyable about reliving my own

trips to the bridge. I would like to be able to say I'll never go
again, but I know that's out of my hands.

At the same time, I'm not particularly afraid of it anymore.

You learn a lot from the experience, especially about your ability
to withstand it. You realize that it's a pretty good life - even,
from time to time, a wonderful life.

Saving an angel

Amid all the corn and clever talk in "It's a Wonderful Life,"

the screenwriters take this brilliant step: Instead of having
Clarence Odbody, Angel Second Class, pluck George from the river and
lead him on a tour of Christmas As It Might Have Been, they make
Clarence take the plunge as a way of inducing George Bailey to save
his fellow man.

One thing you learn from being on the bridge is that friends
and total strangers will do what they can to help you. But the more
powerful lesson comes from finding out that, however miserable and
worthless you may feel, you always have a hand to extend to
another.
That's one of the messages in "It's a Wonderful Life" that seem
to come through louder than usual this season. Some others:

- Like Henry Potter, the skinflint financier who drives George

nearly to doom, many an evildoer gets away with his crimes. Others
escape with a slap on the wrist. It's not right, it's not fair, but
it's common. Better to invest in justice for those who do good than
for those who do evil.

- Often it's not the evil Potters who do us the most real

harm, but the well-meaning incompetents, like Uncle Billy. These are
the blithe spirits who can shower us with generosity and good cheer,
but are careless when it counts. Love them, enjoy them, help them,
forgive them - but don't trust them with your heart, your
livelihood, or anything else you can't afford to lose.

- Loss is always painful, even when you're giving up something

you've never wanted and always disdained - like "a broken-down old
building-and-loan association."

- You will never meet anyone who can't teach you something out
of their own life, even a doughy old man in a frilly nightshirt,
"with the IQ of a rabbit but the faith of a child," who claims to be
some kind of angel.

- Your family may rally around you in times of need, and even
a whole community may shower you with quarters and tinsel to help
you through a patch of bad luck. But when you're in the middle of
the bridge, and the angel is nowhere to be found, you've got to make
your own way home. It's all right. You know the way.

- Ron Meador is a Star Tribune editorial writer.

 1 of 1