20 Things You Didn't Know About It's A Wonderful Life

12. Donna Reed's Baseball Skills

This was Donna Reed’s first starring role. She had beaten out names such as Olivia De Havilland, Martha Scott, Bea Arthur and Ann Dvorak for the role of Mary. Reed would later become a pop culture icon for her series The Donna Reed Show, but prior to It’s A Wonderful Life, very little was known about her.

In the scene where teenage George Bailey and Mary Hatch explore the town and come across the Granville house, Mary throws a rock at the window. Frank Capra hired a marksman to shoot it out on cue. But it surprised everyone with Reed broke the window by herself. She had played baseball in her high school years and had literally grown up milking cows, so she had since developed a strong throwing arm.

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