Growing Up Laughing_ My Story and the Story of Funny - Marlo Thomas [80]
Marlo: Why do you think people find self-deprecation so funny?
Kathy: Because they can relate to it. I think more people can relate to me than they can to Nicole Kidman. I mean, if you’re going down the line and ask women, “Well, who do you really relate to?” they’re not going to say Nicole or Charlize Theron or Jessica Biel . . .
Marlo: Right, right . . .
Kathy: I mean, I wish I was Nicole Kidman! And I think women admire those people who are all perfect and put together. I just don’t think they look at those people and say, “Hey, she’s just like me!”
Marlo: So in a way, they need you.
Kathy: Yes. And I need them.
Chapter 40
Capra, Orson (the Other One), and Me
I got a call from Fred Silverman, the programming chief of ABC.
“I’d like you to make a Christmas special for us,” he told me. “Something we could play for a few years.”
“Me?” I said. “I’m not Sammy Davis. I don’t sing and dance. What kind of Christmas special could I possibly make?”
“Just think about it,” Fred said.
“All right,” I responded, “but it’s already February. You mean for a year from this Christmas, right?”
“No,” he said. “I mean this Christmas.”
Really?
IT SEEMED IMPOSSIBLE to create a brand-new anything in such an incredibly short time frame, but I talked it over anyway with Carole and Bruce Hart. We had done the Free to Be album, book and TV special together a few years before. Both of them were writers who were sharp on story and structure, and Bruce was a lyricist, as well. I loved working with them, and we were also good pals.
We agreed that a musical show was out of the question, unless I wanted to play host, like the Ed Sullivan role. So we started thinking about classic movies we might remake. We didn’t have much time, and coming up with the perfect Christmas movie for me wasn’t so easy. I was too old to play the little girl in Miracle on 34th Street, too tall to play Tiny Tim, and no matter what the film, Santa always had to be a guy.
We finally hit on it—we’d remake the Frank Capra classic It’s a Wonderful Life. It wasn’t really a Christmas story, but the plot builds to a moving and memorable scene on Christmas night. And the message was pure Capra—that each and every life mattered, and if one person was removed from the tapestry, all the other lives around him would never have been the same.
In the original, Jimmy Stewart played George Bailey, the man whose life mattered. For our movie, we’d turn George into a part for me, and call her Mary Bailey.
But remake Frank Capra—wasn’t that a mortal sin?
I’d grown up on Capra’s films—Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, You Can’t Take It with You, It Happened One Night. They were Dad’s favorites, along with Preston Sturges’s films. Terre and I could recite almost every line from Sturges’s Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, starring Eddie Bracken. We’d even practice Bracken’s famous triple takes in our bathroom mirror. (Anybody can do a double take, but only Bracken could do three.)
Universal owned the rights to Wonderful Life, but Freddie loved our idea, so he arranged for us to produce it with Universal as our partners. “Partners”—they keep the money.
Out of respect to Mr. Capra, I knew that I had to let him know that I was going to remake his film. So I called him and asked if he’d have lunch with me. He lived in Palm Springs, but was coming to L.A. the following week, and he agreed to meet me. What a thrill it was to talk with him about his movies, and to have this icon all to myself. I asked him why he wasn’t making movies anymore. There was no one like him, and we needed more of him.
His answer was fascinating. “A good director doesn’t just shoot the script,” he told me. “He has his eyes and ears open to any new idea that might come along. For example, you remember the school dance scene in Wonderful Life?”
“Of course,” I said. “What Capra buff doesn’t remember when the gymnasium floor opens up, and Stewart and Donna Reed fall into the swimming pool underneath