The FBI Story

Not a very well known movie, but one that I found on the shelf at the library. And I'm a sucker for old movies.

The FBI Story stars Jimmy Stewart as Michael "Chip" Hardesty who joins the FBI just prior to J. Edgar Hoover's reign. The movie then unfolds through his years in the FBI and how it affects his family. His wife Lucy, played by Vera Miles, is torn with his career and her fear of losing him and the constant hopping from one town to another and her desire for a stable happy family.

Stewart is giving a lecture to a new class of recruits and tells his story, which is a narrative of his life. He has run-ins with the Chicago mafia, Nazi's in South America, oil busters in Oklahoma, and bank fraud.

In one interesting scene, indicative of the time, he is chasing the communists. These communists were being un-American, trying to unionize workers to help increase living standards and wages and stand up against the exploitative big businesses. In the 1950's, this was a communist activity. Today, we call this collective bargaining. So it appears that even Jimmy Stewart was anti-working man back in the day.

The movie is a bit long at 2 1/2 hours, but for the time, many movies were that long. (think Lawrence of Arabia and Ben-Hur.) The movie is not rated because it's older than the MPAA and their stupid little rating system, but I would suspect that it would get a PG or PG-13 rating. Jimmy Stewart was caught saying, "Shucks", "Gosh", and the ever explicit "Darn" several times. And there is some gun violence, but no blood, but the victims grasping themselves as they are shot and falling to the ground could be disturbing to some mild-mannered church ladies.

I give this movie 4 stars, because despite the things that I mentioned, it does tell a good story and the story for the most part is accurate. And it's classic Jimmy Stewart. I don't think movie critics are allowed to give Jimmy Stewart movies a rating of less than 4 stars.

It's A Wondeful Life

If you can believe this, I had never seen It's A Wonderful Life until last week. Yes, I know. It's un-American. What's wrong with me? What rock have I been living under? Whatever.

So I finally saw it. This 1947 classic features Jimmy Stewart, one of the most likable guys in this history of movies, plays George Bailey, just an all-around nice guy who helps everyone in town (as you would expect Jimmy Stewart to do). He has grown up and married Donna Reed's character, Mary Hatch Bailey. However, mean big banker Henry F. Potter, played by Lionel Barrymore, is out to crush Bailey.

If Barrymore sounds familiar, then know that he is the brother of actor John Barrymore, uncle of actor John Drew Barrymore, and great-uncle of Drew Barrymore.

Bailey starts to get frustrated with life and becomes a big ole' curmudgeon. When Bailey's uncle loses $8000 from the bank that they run, Bailey becomes so distraught that he contemplates suicide. He climbs up on a bridge, but before he can jump off, he sees an old man fall in. Bailey jumps into the icy waters to save him.

Finally in a safe warm place, Clarence identifies himself as Bailey's guardian angel. Bailey wishes he would never have been born, afterwhich Clarence grants his wish and Bailey must see what life is like without him ever being there.

Bailey doesn' believe what is going on, but no one seems to recognize him and he gets really frustrated. Even the local cops, Burt and Ernie (were the muppets named after a couple of cops from the movie?) do not recognize him and threaten to take him to jail for being insane.
Bailey gets so frustrated that he runs back to the bridge in the snow and declares that he "wants to live again!" Suddenly everything returns to normal and Bailey joins his family and they sing a horrible rendition of Ole Lang Syme.

The movie was directed by Frank Capra, who's known for other great movies such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, It Happened One Night, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

I give this movie 4 stars. The movie is 130 minutes long or just over 2 hours for those of you who cannot do math. It didn't quite have that sentimental appeal that I was hoping for, but it is classic story line that is often repeated. Or was the movie itself repeated from a classic story line? A Christmas Carol seems to have many of the same themes. Hmmm….