By: Martin Merritt, esq.
Past President, Texas Health Lawyers Association
Past Chair, DBA Health Law Section
martin@martinmerritt.com
“Please Tell Me you Didn’t. . . How to Keep Clients Out of the Jailhouse, Poorhouse and Lawyers Out of the Nuthouse” -Blog
As you can tell, I love talking about health law & litigation issues, and general wellbeing, if you have any health law questions or better yet, need to refer a case, just call or drop me an email and I will happily talk.
It’s A Wonderful Life is the beloved 1946 Frank Capra Christmas film which you might never have heard of (it was a flop), despite the fact it starred Jimmy Stewart, one of Hollywood’s all-time favorite “everyman” good-guys and my personal favorite leading lady, Donna Reed. If you were to Google “perfect mid-century Hollywood film husband and wife in a small town,” Google might likely answer, “Oh, you must mean, Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed.” If you add the search term “Christmas,” there is no doubt of the answer.
And yet, the film flopped. It lost a whopping $500,000 in 1946 dollars and was placed on a shelf and did not appear on television for 28 years. You would likely never have had the chance to love it, but for a solid case of legal malpractice (or a “Christmas miracle” you decide.) Somebody forgot to renew the copyright.
The way things used to be, we had to go to the movies. As the staircase in my house keeps reminding me, I was born in 1962 and grew up with both television and the movies. If you wanted to watch television between 1962 and 1975, you had to get up, cross the room and turn on the television to one of three channels, a process which worked to varying degrees depending on how strong a local signal could be detected by your “rabbit ears.” When the knob broke off, we used “vice-grip” pliers as a replacement.
If you wanted to see a movie, on the other hand, you had to go to the movies. Unless the network or local television station that came through the rabbit ears was willing to pay expensive royalties to the production company which owned the copyright, which rarely happened.
One such “royalty rich” film that played every year is The Wizard of Oz. As my Google query reports it:
“First broadcast in 1956, The Wizard of Oz, was a massive ratings hit, turning it into a cherished holiday event for families who had limited ways to watch movies then, with the yearly showing creating anticipation, especially as it showcased the then-novel experience of color television, making it a cultural rite of passage until VHS and widespread TV access changed viewing habits. We got to watch it on television once per year, and that was it.”
It’s A Wonderful Life had the opposite reception at the box office and never got the chance to appear on network television for nearly three decades. Here’s what happened.
Copyright Malpractice or a “Christmas Miracle”? A significant copyright mistake—specifically, the failure to renew the film’s copyright in 1974 due to a “clerical error” by owner Republic Pictures—caused It’s a Wonderful Life to enter the public domain, allowing local TV stations to broadcast it endlessly for free, over and over again, all day and night, which is how it became a beloved holiday classic after initially flopping at the box office.
“It’s a Wonderful Mess.” As if to prove that there is a “just and loving God,” who has a Christmas gift for everyone’s stocking (including filthy rich studios and highly paid lawyers), Republic Pictures (now Paramount) and their lawyers figured out a way to argue that, “although the movie had entered the public domain, the story upon which It’s a Wonderful Life was based, was still protected by copyright.”
This created enough of a mess that Paramount was able to secure exclusive licensing rights with NBC. But not before we all got to watch it for free for most of my formative years. Something for everyone! If you are enough of a legal or film nerd, you can also Google articles, like one from the UCONN Thomas J. Meskill Law Library article, “It’s a Wonderful Life….How a Copyright Glitch Created a Christmas Cult Classic.”
Happy Holidays from all of us at Martin Merritt PLLC!