#292 It's a Wonderful Life: The Story Behind America's Favorite Christmas Film w/ Eric Smoodin
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 11 December 2023
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dr. Eric Smoodin, film historian at the University of California- Davis and author of Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity and American Film Studies, 1930-1960, joins Bob and Ben for the history of the people, the industry, and law that made Frank Capra's 1946 film It's A Wonderful Life into one of America's quintessential Christmas films.
Ben & Bob are taking a few weeks off for the holidays- we'll be back with all new episodes on January 8!
This episode was edited by Ben Sawyer.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Bob Crawford. |
| 0:06.6 | I'm Ben Sawyer. |
| 0:08.5 | And this is the road to now. |
| 0:11.1 | Ben, are you on the mend? |
| 0:13.4 | I am on the mend. |
| 0:14.7 | I am on the men. |
| 0:15.6 | I'm on the up and up at a rough weekend. |
| 0:17.7 | But yeah, feeling a lot better now. |
| 0:20.5 | Thanks to, can I just say shout right now |
| 0:22.5 | thanks to having such a great family and good friends uh and a great graduate assistant this |
| 0:27.7 | semester uh Logan spruce and a great s i Elijah uh yeah i've yes i am the better and it's moments |
| 0:35.7 | like these that you realize how important it is to be surrounded by the people who support you and love you. |
| 0:42.6 | And you hope that your life actually interacts with theirs in a way that makes things better for them. |
| 0:48.8 | We can't imagine, Ben, how much we impact one another's lives. |
| 0:57.6 | How deep the impact. If one of us was not here, |
| 1:04.0 | the world would be a different place. It would. Bob, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have this show. I wouldn't have this show if it weren't for you. I mean, this show came out of |
| 1:05.8 | conversations with us, you know, and I think about like how important this show has been to my work and how |
| 1:11.6 | important has been to sharing and building relationships with people who listen to the show. |
| 1:15.8 | So Bob, like right there, man. Ben, if you weren't here, this show would have no social media |
| 1:21.3 | presence whatsoever. It would barely be edited. I would not know how to do any of the things that you do that no one knows that you do |
| 1:30.3 | on a weekly basis. |
| 1:31.3 | It wouldn't even be posted. |
... |
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