Paramount Home Entertainment has tabbed Nov. 16 as the street date for a double-disc Blu-ray edition of director Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life: 75th Anniversary Edition.
The backstory to Philip Van Doren Stern's 1943 Christmas card story insert is every bit as entertaining as the film itself. Cary Grant talked RKO into buying the film rights, but before it would go into production, RKO made a quick profit on the purchase by selling the screen rights to filmmaker Frank Capra’s start-up production company, Liberty Films.
It then became a vehicle for returning veteran James Stewart, who had risen from a Private to the rank of Colonel during the war. He hadn’t done a film in four years and was actually thinking of retiring when Frank Capra approached him. With Stewart on board, the search began for “Mary,” with Jean Arthur being the leading candidate, but a scheduling conflict prevented her from taking the role … others considered included Ann Dvorak, Olivia de Havilland and Martha Scott. But after strong performance in They Were Expendable and The Picture of Dorian Gray, Donna Reed got the part.
The film was nominated Best Picture (losing out to The Best Years of Our Lives), James Stewart was nominated Best Actor (his third of five nominations … winning for The Philadelphia Story) and Frank Capra was nominated Best Director (his sixth and final Best Director nomination … winning three times during his career for It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and You Can’t Take it with You … only John Ford had more, with four).
Bonus features include both the original black and white presentation, plus the colorized version … and numerous vintage featurettes from previous DVD and Blu-ray editions.
In other release news from Paramount Home Entertainment, the next “Paramount Presents” Blu-ray selection will be director Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky: 20th Anniversary Edition, which also streets on Nov. 16.
This is a new 4K film restoration supervised by the filmmaker himself.
Bonus features include commentary from writer/director Cameron Crowe and composer Nancy Wilson (who was Crowe’s wife at the time), an alternate ending (with commentary by Crowe), a gag reel, deleted scenes, the newly prepared featurette titled “Filmmaker Focus: Cameron Crowe on Vanilla Sky” and several vintage featurettes.
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