THIS WONDERFUL LIFE BACKSTAGE GUIDE 17 Oscar-winning score composer Dimitri Tiomkin also fell out with Capra, despite “It's a Wonderful Life” being the sixth collaboration between the pair. Having read the script and meeting with Capra, Tiomkin devised a richly bleak and surreal score, that picked up on Americana traditions. Capra, however, found it too depressing and cut several pieces of Tiomkin's music, and pared down and moved others. Tiomkin would later refer to it as "an all around scissors job" in his autobiography. However, the director maintained good relations with Jimmy the raven Capra first used Jimmy the raven in his 1938 film “You Can't Take it With You” and cast him in every picture he made subsequently. In “It's a Wonderful Life”, Jimmy the raven played Uncle Billy's pet, kept at the Building & Loan. James Stewart, in particular, was a fan: "When they call Jimmy, we both answer," he remarked while filming, calling the bird "the smartest actor on set." The set contained 20 full-grown oak trees The wintertide classic was actually made in late spring in Culver City, California, on the remnants of a four-acre set for the 1931 film “Cimarron”. Bedford Falls was constructed out of a 300-yard main street, complete with 75 stores and buildings, and a residential neighborhood. There was a working bank built and 20 fully grown oak trees were planted. To make the set look more convincing, pigeons, cats, and dogs were invited to roam through it. There's a dispute about the town that was thought to have inspired Bedford Falls The picturesque Seneca Falls in New York state has proudly stated its association to Capra's film since the mid-nineties, when a local reporter made the connection: there's a well- established tourism industry around "the Real Bedford Falls", with a festival and museum dedicated to the film. The evidence supporting their claim includes a story from the town's barber, who claimed he cut Capra's hair in 1945. The director allegedly asked about the town and a plaque on one of its bridges, dedicated to Antonio Varacalli, a local who drowned saving the life of a woman who jumped off it. However, Jeanine Basinger, who wrote a book about the film, declares the notion "utter nonsense", and has found no evidence of Seneca Falls being referenced in Capra's diaries or any of the film's production materials. She never heard Capra mention the town. Lionel Barrymore lost a cow-milking bet Part of the charm of casting Stewart and Donna Reed as George and Mary Bailey was that both had grown up in small-town America. Reed was born Donna Belle Mullenger and grew up the eldest of five children on a farm in Iowa. Barrymore didn't believe her when she claimed she could milk a cow, and challenged her to prove it: she promptly did, calling the subsequent $50 prize money (somewhere near $670 in today's terms) the easiest money she ever made. Capra received hate-mail over his treatment of Mr. Potter While Barrymore may have been nursing his empty pockets, no such fate befell his character, Mr. Potter, who successfully swindled the Baileys out of at least $8,000 and got away with it. One requirement of the Film Production Code at the time was that criminals receive punishment for their crimes – something that Capra broke with “It's a Wonderful Life”. The director later said that he received more mail on the matter than any other aspect of the film. And the FBI weren't impressed either “It's a Wonderful Life” was identified by Ayn Rand as one of the more pernicious threats to Americanism, and the film was subject to an investigation for communist beliefs by the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). They found that George Bailey's story contained several subversive tendencies, including "demonizing bankers" and "attempting to instigate class warfare," and was "written by Communist sympathizers." (edited from Telegraph.co.uk) Jimmy Stewart with Jimmy the raven in “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946)