2. In Technicolor
While you've seen this image before-it's the first time we see Stewart in the film-the difference is it's in colour. That's right, there's a colorized version of
It's A Wonderful Life. In the 1980s, many films were being colorized under the reign of Ted Turner, who had acquired the rights to many MGM films. In fact,
It's A Wonderful Life went through the colorization process twice. In the mid eighties, Capra was actually in favour of colorizing
It's A Wonderful Life, and he planned to invest in the company Colorization, Inc., which would perform the colorization. When the company discovered that the film was in the public domain, meaning anyone could just show it on TV or colorize it without buying the rights, they gave Capra back his investment money, which made Capra a leading figure in the opposition to the colorization of classic films. Barry Sandrew walked away from a career in neuroscience at Harvard to colorize movies for Turner. Sandrew eventually received complete control over American Film Technologies in the late eighties, the company in charge of colorizing films for Turner. They tried to do a better job of colorizing
It's A Wonderful Life than what had been attempted previously. Sandrew eventually started another company, Legal Films in 2oo1, in order to restart the colorization process of classic. The new colorized version of
It's A Wonderful Life, recently released on DVD and Blu ray, along with the original black and white version, is deemed the best colorized version of the film yet.