A soaking wet George Bailey and Clarence, warming up by the fire in the toll house on the bridge, discuss why Clarence jumped into the freezing water. It was to help George, Clarence tells him.
“Only one way you can help me,” George says sarcastically. “You don’t happen to have 8,000 bucks on you?”
The film then cuts to an elated George running through town, gleefully shouting “Merry Christmas” to the “You are Now in Bedford Falls” sign, Mr. Potter, the bank examiner and eventually his family.
Wait, what?
That’s the surprise you got if you selected the “abridged” version of the Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” on Amazon Prime Video. By the thousands of confused and outraged comments posted on social media on Christmas Day — you weren’t alone if you did.
Amazon streams the full version of the movie for Prime members, but the abridged version is available free for anyone, with ads. The abridged version cuts about a half hour out of the 1946 Frank Capra film’s runtime, axing the entire “Pottersville” scene, where Clarence the angel (second class) guides George through an alternate reality in which he never existed.
Of course, the movie makes no sense without that pivotal part of the story. So why cut it?
Copyright law. Well, an interpretation of it, anyway.
‘The Greatest Gift’
“It’s a Wonderful Life” is loosely based on the 1943 short story “The Greatest Gift,” written by Philip Van Doren Stern.
In “The Greatest Gift,” the main character, George, confides in a stranger on a bridge that he wishes he had never been born. The stranger tells him to go back to town, where George finds his life in disarray. No one knows him, and George’s brother, whom he had saved as a boy, had drowned. George returns to the stranger, who explains that life is a blessing and the world is better with George in it.
“The Greatest Gift” plot is closely mirrored in the Pottersville scene, but the film greatly expands upon it with a long backstory and a short conclusion.
Stern obtained the original copyright for the short story and he renewed it in 1971. Upon his death, the copyright license was left to Stern’s daughter and her three daughters, who formed The Greatest Gift Corporation to manage the rights to his works, according to Jason LeBlanc, the playwright who partners with Stern’s estate to license “It’s a Wonderful Life” for the stage.
The film enters public domain
In 1974, the copyright for “It’s a Wonderful Life” expired, when then-owner Republic Pictures failed to renew it, according to an article published on the Library of Congress’ website.
It’s not clear why Republic Pictures allowed the copyright to expire. The Library of Congress cites a “clerical error,” which may have been caused by the film’s late-December 1946 release to qualify for the 1947 Academy Awards, even though its run in cinemas was mostly in 1947. It’s conceivable that Republic Pictures mistook the release date — and therefore when the 28-year copyright expired.
Regardless of the reason, the expiration of the copyright became a happy accident for the film’s success: The movie had flopped in theaters and was mostly forgotten for decades. But when it entered the public domain, television networks jumped at the chance to broadcast the film to fill the airwaves on Christmas, and it became a beloved classic three decades after its initial run.
Republic Pictures reasserts control
That continued until 1993, when Republic Pictures sent broadcasters letters claiming that it had the copyright to “It’s a Wonderful Life,” after all, and they could no longer broadcast the film for free, the Los Angeles Times reported at the time.
Republic Pictures had just been acquired by Viacom, now part of Paramount. The new company’s executives were surprised to learn that it had been giving away “It’s a Wonderful Life” for free, especially after the 1990 Supreme Court decision Stewart v. Abend, which found actor Jimmy Stewart and director Alfred Hitchcock had to pay licensing fees to release a new version of “Rear Window” because the short story on which it was based remained copyrighted, even though the film’s copyright had since entered the public domain.
Republic argued that it maintained the exclusive rights to film adaptations to “The Greatest Gift.” The company also acquired the rights to the film’s score. It used both of those arguments in the letter it sent to the broadcasters, which acquiesced. Republic then entered into an exclusive agreement with NBC to broadcast “It’s a Wonderful Life” from then on.
Stern’s granddaughter Sarah Robinson, who runs The Greatest Gift Corporation, maintained in a 2023 iHeartRadio interview that Republic never actually obtained the underlying story rights, and her grandfather’s estate had the right to sue the broadcasters who aired and streamed the movie — but her company has chosen not to. Regardless, the public domain status of “It’s a Wonderful Life” was in doubt.
The abridged version
With the movie’s licensing complexities, some creative types opted to test the limits of copyright law, according to film historian Mikhail Skoptsov.
For example, in 2020, parody site RiffTrax released a cut-down version of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” dubbed over with a comedic commentary and streamed on free streaming platform Tubi. The missing portion: the Pottersville scene.
In a blog post about their parody version, RiffTrax said it cut the Pottersville scene because it believed the rest of the film to be in the public domain.
“The main copyrighted stuff comes down to 1) material from the short story ‘The Greatest Gift’ that part of the film was based on, and 2) some musical rights for background songs,” the site said.
RiffTrax distributor Legend Films in 2021 released the same cut of the film, without the commentary. It was originally streamed on Tubi as the “Legend edition,” and it remains available on Hoopla, a free site for library card holders. Legend did not respond to a request for comment.
That version then began streaming on Amazon Prime in 2024 as the “abridged version,” but the shortened film’s credits continue to cite Legend Films as the distributor. It’s not clear why Amazon streams it. (Amazon also didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
But here’s a possibility: Legend’s expertise is in colorizing old films. In addition to Legend’s abridged version of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Amazon also streams Legend’s colorized version of the film for Prime customers.
The story of the abridged version of “It’s a Wonderful Life” is as complex as the copyright saga itself. As interesting as the story may be … the original version of the movie is better.
The Mercury News
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