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
🗓️ 8 December 2025
⏱️ 68 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.
This episode originally aired as #292 on December 16, 2024. This rebroadcast was edited by Ben Sawyer.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Ben Sawyer and this is the Road to Now. |
| 0:08.0 | The holiday season is upon us and with it the final exam season here at the Road to Now, |
| 0:13.3 | or at least at half of the Road to Now, the half that I'm on. |
| 0:15.7 | And it's the gift that keeps on giving that you wish wouldn't. |
| 0:18.9 | But it's been a great semester with my |
| 0:20.9 | students, so I'm happy to do it. But this week, we are sharing with you a far better gift, |
| 0:26.9 | honestly. Actually, a significantly better gift. It is a rebroadcast of our episode on the film |
| 0:34.7 | It's a Wonderful Life with Dr. Eric Smuddin, film historian at UC Davis. |
| 0:39.6 | This episode is incredible. I mean, just the simple background on why this becomes the film |
| 0:46.3 | for Christmas with the legal aspect of it is incredible. And I need to add two things here. First |
| 0:52.8 | of all, last week I said this was our ninth Christmas at the Rose Now. It is not. This is our 10th Christmas. And that's mind-blowing. Second of all, I got to say, you know, we originally recorded this two years ago. It's been part of the holiday canon already. But this is the first time I can really enjoy it. The first time we recorded it, |
| 1:12.7 | I was suffering from terrible symptoms of what turned out to be stage three colon cancer. |
| 1:19.7 | Last year, I was about to go in for a 10-hour surgery. Here we go. It is a wonderful life. |
| 1:25.3 | This is going to be my first Christmas and who knows how long |
| 1:29.3 | that cancer free. So I am pretty excited about that. Guys, we're recording more episodes. |
| 1:35.4 | In fact, Bob and I are recording an episode this week with the former National Archivist |
| 1:39.8 | for the United States. We've got those coming up. For now, we hope you enjoy these holiday re-airs as much |
| 1:45.7 | as we do, sharing them with everybody. One last thing to add, speaking of the holidays, if you're |
| 1:50.1 | going to be in Nashville on December 21st, I host a comedy game show called Perfect Timing. |
| 1:55.3 | It is at the Lab at Zanee's Comedy Club here in Nashville, legendary institution, and we got a show going on December 21st. |
| 2:02.8 | That's the Sunday before Christmas at 6.30 p.m. |
| 2:05.5 | For more info on that, you can go to at PT Game Show on Instagram. |
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