Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, December 7, 1993 TAG: 9312070076
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL E. RUANE KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: INDIANA, PA. LENGTH: Long
Bundled against the cold in scarves and caps, the youngsters hold candles as they jostle and whisper. Behind the wreathed door, the lights are bright with merriment.
After a pause, the kids lift their voices, filling the night air with the hymn, "Jubilate Deo." The door opens. The Bailey children come out - Janie and Zuzu. Then Ruth, George's sister-in-law. In the background stands George's war-hero brother, Harry.
It is an emotional moment - the captivated listeners, the beautiful singing - perfect for the famous 1946 movie about the Baileys and Bedford Falls. Except . . .
This Zuzu is not the curly haired, 6-year-old angel of the movie, but Karolyn Grimes Wilkerson, 53, of Stilwell, Kan., who played the part in the film. This Janie is not the shy 10-year-old who cries at the piano in one memorable scene, but Carol Coombs Mueller, 58, who had the part in the movie and whose last name has been misspelled in the credits for 47 years.
And this house is not actually the Bailey house, but the four-bedroom, boyhood home of Stewart, who portrayed the movie's tortured but triumphant main character.
No, the scene that unfolded over the weekend on Vinegar Hill overlooking the spires of this small northwestern Pennsylvania borough was not part of the legendary movie.
It was, instead, a scene from real life, featuring the real people whose lives stretched beyond their movie roles, who, after singing "Auld Lange Syne" in the film's last act, grew up, grew old and lived real lives of joy and sadness.
It was, indeed, a touching moment and all part of a festive and bittersweet weekend as the town, where Stewart was born in 1908, honored the movie and some of its surviving makers. It served to contrast past and present, myth and reality, and set up a kind of twilight zone in which a large sign outside a downtown bank read, "You Are Now in Bedford Falls."
The festivities were built around a reunion here of six members of the cast and one of the crew from the 125-minute, black-and-white movie directed by Frank Capra. Stewart, 85, who lives in Beverly Hills, could not attend because of his ill health and that of his wife, Gloria.
In the film's story, which spans the 1920s, '30s and '40s, Stewart plays George Bailey, an honorable man who dreams of leaving the small town of his youth, but who takes over the family building and loan association after the death of his father.
Bailey marries - the late Donna Reed, then 24, played his wife - has four children and many worries. One Christmas, despondent over looming financial disaster, Bailey is saved from jumping into the river by his guardian angel.
Bailey says he wishes he had never been born. But when the angel shows him how mean the town might have been without him, George is transformed and runs shouting through the streets to a joyous reunion with his family and many of the townfolk.
In addition to Wilkerson and Mueller, the reunion was attended by Todd Karns, 72, who, then 25, played George's younger brother, Harry; Virginia Patton Moss, who played Harry's wife, Ruth; Argentina Brunetti, 86, who, then 40, played the Italian housewife, Mrs. Martini; Jimmy Hawkins, who played the youngest Bailey child, Tommy; and Bob Lawless, a member of the crew.
Most of the guests were attending a private dinner in the stately brick-and-stucco Stewart house, now owned by a local lawyer and his wife, when the children serenaded them Friday night.
Through all the festivities, the guests seemed genuinely moved at the little town's salute - saying over and over again how grateful and honored they were and how much this beloved, but corny, movie meant to them.
Carol Coombs Mueller played the Baileys' eldest daughter, Janie. She said she was picked to play the role because she resembled Donna Reed and because she played the piano. It is Janie who is practicing "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing" when an anguished George Bailey comes home from work and shouts at her, "Haven't you learned that silly tune yet?" Crushed, she later whimpers the famous line, "Ohh, Daddy."
But in the credits at the end of the movie, her last name, then Coombs, is misspelled Coomes. Why? "I haven't a clue," she said in an interview during a break in the weekend of festivities. "You know, you saw the movie and your name's misspelled and you're just glad its up there. You praise God it's up there at all."
Mueller acted until she was 21, but felt a calling to teach and went on to kindergarten and elementary school classrooms in California for several decades.
She believes the movie "has a message for people: that you are important, and if you weren't here, there would be a real void . . . This just has real good attributes in it, things that people are searching for now."
"Wow," she said, "what a picture to be in."
Karolyn Grimes Wilkerson had perhaps the best of the children's roles in the movie. Paid $75 a day, she played Zuzu, the curly haired Bailey daughter who is sick in bed when her angry father first comes home from work. She offers him a damaged flower she has won at school and asks him to "paste it." Later, in the closing scene, she rides piggyback on the 6-foot-4-inch Stewart as he bounds down the stairs.
Wilkerson worked in several other films. But when she was 13, her mother died. Then, at 15, after her father was killed in a car crash, she was sent to live with relatives in Missouri. She never returned to the movies, instead raising a large family and discovering that "real" people lived in small towns of the Midwest, not in Hollywood.
"There's a lesson in this, and it's helped me get through life in the last 10 years," she said. "I really have followed the guidelines that George Bailey set there. I have had much adversity in my life, and this gives me a balance."
Hovering over the weekend's activities was the spirit of the aged and absent Stewart. With frequent references to "Mr. Stewart," visitors were shown not only where he had lived, but where he had gone to church and the site of his father's large hardware store, where the actor's Oscar once stood in the window.
And there was great talk of how much Indiana was like Bedford Falls - solid values, hardworking citizens, caring friends.
But at one point, with dignitaries and TV cameras gathered around the bronze statue of Stewart on the courthouse steps, Tina Jones, 30, passed by, pushing her little boy, Zachary, in a baby stroller.
She grew up here, moved to a big city for several years, and came back last summer. Yes, she said, Indiana was like Bedford Falls in some ways. But Indiana is a real place stuck in the real life of the present, and Bedford Falls was a mythical place in the past.
It might be nice, she said, if Indiana was entirely like Bedford Falls:
"But I don't think any place could really be like that."
by CNB