![when was it when was it](http://sugartownpublishing.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/images/Same_River_Twice_large.14784824_std.jpg)
![when was it when was it](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f0/b5/0f/f0b50f2a2243c46de3afc210d50980de.jpg)
The company announced in November 1945 that its first production would be James Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life, produced and directed by Capra. The production offices of Liberty Films were housed at RKO Studios. Liberty contracted in August 1945 to produce nine features for distribution by RKO, three each from the three producer-directors, who were each expected to deliver one picture per year. By dissolving Liberty a few years hence, as the partners planned, they would pay only a 25% capital gains tax on the profits instead of the 90% income tax they would pay on their high salaries at a studio. The ownership was divided unequally among the partners: 32 percent to Capra as president and organizer, 18 percent to Briskin, 25 percent each to Wyler and Stevens. Liberty was capitalized at $1,000,000, and it had a standing bank credit of $3,500,000, for which the four owners were individually and collectively responsible. Within months of Liberty's incorporation, directors William Wyler and George Stevens became partners. īriskin had been production chief at Columbia Pictures, where Capra had worked since 1927. Thus the creative side of film-making, from the selection of the story, the writers who would put it into script form, the casting of the players, the designing of their costumes and the sets which provided their backgrounds, the direction, the cutting and editing of the final film was tailored (consciously or unconsciously) to the tastes of the studio's head man.
#WHEN WAS IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE MADE FULL#
The efforts and achievements of the individual producers and directors had to meet with the approval of each studio's chief executive.… Producers and directors working under him found that instead of creating as they pleased, letting their own imagination and artistry have full rein, with the public the final judge of the worth and merit of their efforts, they were of necessity obliged to make pictures for the approval of the one man at the top. And in applying the mass-production yardstick to both the mechanics and creative side of film-making, the latter became molded into a pattern.
![when was it when was it](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/u56OqFjs1dg/maxresdefault.jpg)
But unfortunately it was, and is, a combination of mechanical perfection and creative endeavor. Had the motion picture been a product which demanded uniformity as its ultimate goal, the results would have been highly satisfactory. Capra explained his dissatisfaction in an article for the New York Times: Later during World War II he unsuccessfully sought a production partnership with director Leo McCarey.Īll four eventual partners in Liberty Pictures had spent most of World War II as officers making motion pictures for the Army Signal Corps, and were hesitant to return to working under the Hollywood studio system. He formed Frank Capra Productions in 1939 and produced Meet John Doe, but dissolved it when he joined the U.S. Capra had made two previous attempts at independent production.