Classic Its A Wonderful Life started as a box office flop that critics dismissed: Embarrassing

Everybody knows the famous line “Every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings.”But there’s an even more inspiring message to be gleaned from Hollywood history: Sometimes when a movie flops, it gets a second chance.That, bewilderingly, is what happened to “It’s A Wonderful Life,” Frank Capra’s seasonal classic that many today regard as the greatest Christmas movie of all time.You’d never know it from the cherished title’s fame and ubiquity, but the film starring James (Jimmy) Stewart and Donna Reed wasn’t a big hit at the box office in its day and got a shrug from many critics who found it too sappy.“[Capra] is trying for the big, meaningful sentiments and as often as not falling into embarrassing theatrics,” wrote Archer Winsten in The Post.“The weakness of this picture, from this reviewer’s point of view, is the sentimentality of it,” echoed Bosley Crowther in the Times.George Bailey would eventually become the richest man in town.However, after almost being lost to history, it took more than 30 years.When “It’s A Wonderful Life” hit theaters on Dec.

20, 1946, it wasn’t unpopular, per se.The starry premiere was here in New York at the Globe Theatre on Broadway (now the Lunt-Fontanne, home to the musical “Death Becomes Her“).The film from the renowned director of “It Happened One Night” went on to gross $3.3 million at the box office — a strong haul under most circumstances. The trouble is Capra’s budget had ballooned, and the movie needed to do nearly double that business just to break even.

One of only two pictures made by Capra’s Liberty Films, “It’s A Wonderful Life” failed to recoup its high costs.In short, ’twas a flop.Still, the movie was nominated for five Oscars — including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor — but won none.

The big winner at the Academy Awards and the box office was William Wyler’s enduringly brilliant “The Best Years of Our Lives.” How, then, did ‘Life�...