Target Village - Ernie's Taxi Cab

Ernie's taxi is a fun vehicle. It was a collection point around which friends gathered to talk, it was a means by which a man was able to earn a living to buy a home for his family, it took George and Mary to their ill-fated, very soggy honeymoon, and it was in this back seat that George Bailey began to come to terms with a sobering truth.

Target village - Ernie the Taxi Driver

Ernie the taxi driver is the jokester among the friendship of George, Ernie and Bert. And his friends know him well, cutting him off when he begins to make Trump-worthy inappropriate comments about Violet Bick.

Ernie is also a little more suspicious of people in the Pottersville sequence. During that time, we can see the negative effect a rough life has had on him, and we can't help but realize the positive influence of George Bailey on his life.

Target Village -The Bedford Falls Garage

The Bedford Falls Garage is located in the same block as Gower's Drug Store and the Bijou Theatre.

The side of the box reads, "If you need a tune-up, a flat tire fixed or even an engine overhaul, the local Bedford Falls mechanic was your man. No doubt George Bailey was a regular customer, for he always needed to squeeze another mile or two out of his old, rickety, rundown Model T."

Front

Left side 

Rear

Right side

Can You Tell Me How They Got to Sesame Street?

Bert the Cop and Ernie the Taxi Driver in It's a Wonderful Life. 

Source: Wiki Commons

A myth has grown out of the story that the characters of Bert and Ernie in It’s a Wonderful Life inspired the names of the characters on the children’s show “Sesame Street.” 

Stephen Cox, author of It’s a Wonderful Life: A Memory Book, debunks this claim: “It’s purely coincidence, admits Henson representatives who were there in the late 1960s when Sesame Street first paved its way on television” (87).

(Left to right) Ernie and Bert
Source: http://www.factfixx.com/2011/08/10/urban-legends-bert-and-ernie-are-lovers/

Even the “behind the scenes” book about “Sesame Street,” titled Sesame Street Unpaved, by David Borgenicht, tackles the topic: “Sesame writers insist that it’s just a coincidence” (23).

A quick Google search of the phrase "bert and ernie sesame street it's a wonderful life" will also disprove the myth.

Please help me educate America. Please stop this pop-culture lie.

Sources:

Borgenicht, David. Sesame Street Unpaved. New York: Hyperion, 1998.

Cox, Stephen. It’s a Wonderful Life: A Memory Book. Nashville: Cumberland House, 2003.

Blogging From A to Z - R is for Rain

Welcome to the It's A Wonderful Blog's Blogging From A to Z April (2015) Challenge. For this challenge, I will post every day in April (except for Sundays) about topics related to the Frank Capra/Jimmy Stewart film, It's a Wonderful Life.

Rain:

Wedding days are meant to be beautiful. They are days of celebration, optimism and love.

But sometimes it just needs to rain. And for some people, that rain coincides with one of the most important days of their lives.

On the day George and Mary wed, the audience does not see the wedding. The event itself is not important. What IS important is that we see George genuinely happy for the first time in this film.

Looking out the taxi window at the bank run
Source: https://www.pinterest.com/lizchris610/its-a-wonderful-life/

As the happy couple runs outside, we see them doused by rice and rain. Rain typically is considered to be bad luck on a couple’s wedding date. We soon will learn that while it is a happy day for the couple because of their wedding, it also is a day of trial and success for the building and loan.

As Ernie drives the couple away in his cab, George and Mary tell him about their planned adventures. As they do this, the audience can see through the back window of the taxi that people are running down the street in the rain, some without umbrellas. We soon learn why the residents are running, as Ernie pulls his cab over and tells George that there is “something funny going on” at the bank. He adds that he believes it is a bank run.

George and Mary stop kissing and turn to look. We see the couple in close-up, framed by the rain-streaked cab window. When George climbs out of the cab to see what is going on, Mary is left framed alone and lonely in the cab's window. The rain streaking down the window is symbolic of the sadness she feels at that moment and the tears she is not crying. They are supposed to be on their way to their honeymoon. Instead, they are facing a challenge to the family business.

According to Jeanine Basinger, author of The It's a Wonderful Life Book, Frank Capra learned while researching for the film that the “weather in the New York State area that Bedford Falls was allegedly situated in had rain during the bank run of 1933” (Basinger 41). Capra added rain to the scene to make it more realistic.

Blogging From A to Z - E is for Ernie and Eight Thousand

Welcome to the It's A Wonderful Blog's Blogging From A to Z April (2015) Challenge. For this challenge, I will post every day in April (except for Sundays) about topics related to the Frank Capra/Jimmy Stewart film, It's a Wonderful Life.

Ernie the Taxi Driver:
With George Bailey in his life, Ernie Bishop is a happy, friendly guy who earns a modest living driving a taxi. He isn't rich and relies on his relationship with George to get a home loan. That comes back to bite George in the rear end a little bit. Ernie doesn't default on that loan, but Potter finds out about it and twists the facts.

Ernie the Taxi Driver is on the right.
Source: http://bytesdaily.blogspot.com/2014/10/trivia-tuesday_14.html

In Pottersville, without George, Ernie is a suspicious, angry man.

George and Ernie's friendship goes back to childhood. While he is not identified in the film, he is one of the youth sledding down the hill at the beginning of the film.

Ernie holds up his end of the friendship by taking them to their honeymoon (even though they get stopped), standing by Mary as they face the mob during the bank run, and guiding the crowd as they enter the Bailey house in the famous final scene.

This is a valued friendship that stands the test of time.

Eight Thousand Dollars:
It's not a lot of money by today's standards, but the modern equivalent is quite a pocket full. In 1947, it represented not quite two years' wages for George.

It's also the amount of money Uncle Billy lost. He didn't really lose it, so much as misplace it in Potter's newspaper.

Billy (right) taunting Potter (sitting). You can see the envelope
containing $8,000 in Billy's left hand.
Source: http://www.cracked.com/funny-6716-its-wonderful-life/

We have all heard the saying "pride comes before the fall." It's not a direct quote from the Bible, but it has its origins there. It applies here. Uncle Billy snatches the newspaper out of Potter's hands and starts bragging about the Bailey boys. And when he hands the newspaper back to Potter, he accidentally folds the envelope containing $8,000 into the newspaper. If you aren't paying attention, you miss it.

That money represents the Building and Loan's operating expenses and profits. What the Baileys are doing depositing it in Potter's bank instead of putting it back into their own business is beyond me. Regardless of the reason, with it missing, the future of the Building and Loan is in trouble, and so are Billy and George.

After a futile search and a selfish profit- and power-driven decision by Potter, it is the final factor that drives George to contemplate suicide.

When did money gain so much power over our lives?