MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: There was a gender-reversed version of It's a Wonderful Life released as a made-to-TV film in 1977.

All this month, it's Christmas-themed legends!

The history of It's a WonderFul Life is an odd one. You see, the film was actually a significant failure when it came out at the end of 1946...

This, though, has been a bit misrepresented over the years. It WAS a significant financial failure, but only because it was an independent production company and it had a high budget. In other words, it did well at the theaters (it was the 26th highest-grossing film of 1947), but it lost money and since it was a small production company, it could not afford the losses the same way that a large studio could. Thus, its status as a flop has become a bigger deal in the years since. Still, it WAS a failure in general.

Not only that, but as the decades passed, the film fell into obscurity. It was so obscure that in 1974, Republic Pictures accidentally forgot to renew the copyright on the film, which led to the film entering the public domain. This was why, during the 1980s, the film began to air constantly during the holiday season, since all people had to do was to pay a small fee for the use of the short story that the film was based on (which I talked about in a recent Movie Legends Revealed). Eventually, though, the Supreme Court ruled that if the original work was under copyright, then the film BASED on the copyrighted work could be de facto copyright protected (this is likely why Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer's TV special is not really in the public domain despite a typo that could have resulted in the film losing its copyright protection, which I covered in this TV Legends Revealed), so It's a Wonderful Life is now back under copyright protection.

Okay, so anyhow, in the mid to late 1970s, TV companies had not yet actually figured out that the film was up for grabs, so It's a Wonderful Life was not well known at all at that point in time.

Thus, it was obscure enough that screenwriter Lionel Chetwynd and Donald Wrye thought that it was a good time to take the film and re-do...with a twist!

It Happened One Christmas was a gender-reversed It's a Wonderful Life, with Marlo Thomas and Cloris Leachman playing the George Bailey and Clarence roles, respectively, with Wayne Rogers in the Donna Reed role and Orson Welles as Mr. Potter (they kept Potter a man)...

The film was a hit at the time, but soon, networks picked up on the public domain status of It'a a Wonderful Life and it became ubiquitous on TV, pushing It Happened One Christmas to obscurity itself. It has only NOW become publicly available, as it is is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

The legend is...

STATUS: True

Thanks to TJ Edwards, of Cinema Sightlines, for the suggestion!

Be sure to check out my archive of Movie Legends Revealed for more urban legends about the world of film. Click here for more Christmas-related Movie and TV Legends.

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com.