For the past 15 years, Mary Owen — Reed’s youngest daughter — has been appearing at annual screenings in small independent theaters that have become a cherished seasonal ritual throughout the country. “It’s become a tradition,” she said recently from her home in Iowa City, 200 miles from where her mother grew up in Denison, Iowa.
But that tradition faced an existential threat on a par with George Bailey’s earlier this year, when some small theaters thought they wouldn’t be able to play “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Although several venues were able to book the film as usual, others say they were told they wouldn’t have access to it until January, after an exclusive run sponsored by Fathom Events, Turner Classic Movies and distributor Paramount Pictures.
“The first time I heard about it I thought, ‘We have left Bedford Falls,’” recalls Owen, referring to the fictional town where Bailey grows up and, by the end of the film, discovers that he has been a force for good all along. When she heard that her local nonprofit art house, FilmScene, might be barred from showing “It’s a Wonderful Life,” she was incensed.
“I’ve been part of this momentum of showing the movie in small, independent theaters since 2007, and it’s become a tradition,” said Owen, 65, who moved to Iowa in 2020 to help organize her mother’s centennial. Preventing small theaters from showing “It’s a Wonderful Life,” she says, “goes completely against the essence of the movie” and its ideals of community, generosity and self-sacrifice.
[This is one of my favorite films, and yet I have never seen it in a theater. Next year, I’ll look around more for an opportunity. — Ed]
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