Cutting Out Copyright: The Legally Gray Versions of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’
How partial public domain status led to the Abridged and other Editions
If you were on Twitter this Christmas Eve, you might’ve caught wind that Amazon is streaming an “Abridged Edition” of the Frank Capra classic It’s A Wonderful Life (1946), which is about 25 minutes shorter than the theatrical and, among other things, entirely omits the ‘Pottersville’ alternate reality sequence in its third act.
Film purists and cinephiles were aghast at the notion that Amazon had performed such a sacrilegious, disgusting act of mutilation upon a classic of American cinema. As I discovered though, Amazon didn’t make it. Rather, the abridged edition turned out to be one of several ‘legally gray versions’ of the film that were made possible by its strange and confusing relationship with copyrights and the public domain.
In this article, I will delve into the history of these legally gray versions. And in the process, I will debunk a number of popular myths and misconceptions about both the abridged edition and the original that are now spreading over the internet.
Table of ContentsQuick Links to Watch Different Versions
There are many versions of It’s a Wonderful Life that come up in this article. Here is a quick guide with links to where they can be seen:
Original (Amazon, 131 min., black-and-white)
Colorized (Amazon, 131 min., color)
Re-Scored “Dickens” Edition (Roku, 131 min., alternate Raijman score)
Rifftrax (Tubi, 106 min.)
Legend/Abridged (Amazon, 106 min.)
Escape (Archived Site, 45 min.)
Public Domain and Parodic Mockdubs
One very simple fact about It’s A Wonderful Life that arguably eludes the general populace is that it is today, to some extent at least, a public domain film. What does that actually mean? Well, the term ‘public domain’ commonly refers to:
“... content that isn't protected by copyright law. Works that are in the public domain may be used freely, without obtaining permission from or compensating the copyright owner.”
Source: What is the Public Domain?, CopyrightLaws.com, 7 March 2023
Basically, any movie in public domain is essentially owned by the public, meaning that one should be able to download, alter, revise, re-edit, remix, reissue and even resell, without fear of violating copyright and getting into legal trouble.* Because of this, it is common for public domain titles to become source material for ‘mockdubs,’ which are parodic versions of the original work that have an alternate soundtrack, voiceover and/or dubbing, the purpose of which is to make fun of the source material.
*Now, of course, there can be caveats with this, as individual elements you might add to the remix (such as a pop song) could also be subject to copyright, but in general, you are allowed to do with a public domain film whatever you wish.
Consider, for instance, the case of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, a very popular, well-known film that ended up in public domain upon its initial release in 1968 as a result of a copyright error. As it could be revised and distributed by pretty much anyone with a copy, hundreds of different editions and derivatives appeared across home video formats over the years.
In 1991, indie filmmaker James Riffel released on VHS a parodic mockdub of Night featuring new footage that is known under the abbreviated title of NOTDOT, which has since become something of a cult movie in and of itself.
Riffel’s work bore similarity to the TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K), wherein people would make funny, derisive comments while watching old, usually low-quality films. In addition to licensing movies, MST3K regularly used public domain titles as the basis of its episodes.
Here is a passage from an article on the series by Steven L. O’Donnell:
“The show is mostly silhouettes of a person and a couple of robots in front of a movie screen playing a bad movie. So, obviously, the critical step in producing such a show is to secure the proper rights to not only rebroadcast a movie, but to recut it, and completely reframe it…. An obvious way around the licensing issue is to simply use a movie in the public domain. At least, one might think so. The problem is public domain isn’t necessarily absolute. A movie itself might fall into the public domain but still have other copyright issues. ”
Source: In the not-too-distant future, Mystery Science Theater 3000 and copyright licensing, January 3, 2024
The Copyright Issues of It’s A Wonderful Life
This brings us to It’s A Wonderful Life, a film that’s technically been in public domain since 1974, when its then owner Republic Pictures failed to renew its copyright.
Now, there are many different, often conflicting accounts of the film’s history with copyright and the public domain. The two most accurate ones, as far as I can tell, can be found in a 2024 article by playwright Jason T. Leblanc, who made a dramatic stage adaptation of It’s a Wonderful Life, and a 2023 article from The Nation by journalists Ray Novosielski and David Cassidy, who had created a 10-part documentary podcast about the film called George Bailey was Never Born for I-Heart Radio. Thus, I will mostly be drawing on these accounts for this section.
It’s a Wonderful Life was based on a short story called The Greatest Gift by writer Philip Van Doren Stern. Stern had copyrighted the story in 1943, prior to its adaptation by Frank Capra, and renewed the copyright in 1971. So, when the film fell into public domain in 1974, the story still remained copyrighted. And notably, the underlying rights to the story remained with Stern, who had only ever sold the rights to create film (and perhaps other media like TV and radio) adaptations of the story to RKO in 1944. A series of transfers would then move the rights to Republic Pictures years later.
The film was famously a critical and commercial flop upon its initial release in December 1946. Once it became public domain, however, networks and stations en masse began to regularly broadcast it on television, especially around Christmas, and the picture received video releases. This post-theatrical life (hah!) introduced the film to a new audience and allowed it to attain the status of a beloved classic. Of course, the popular assumption was that the film could now be shown legally by anyone for free. This, however, was not entirely correct. Per Leblanc:
“Notably, while the film's ownership was legally in the public domain, the rights of the underlying story were still held by Stern, and thus he would have been owed some royalties from these thousands of airings. In an interview with Sarah Robinson, Stern's granddaughter, she states that, for reasons she did not share, Stern and his estate decided not to pursue action against the TV stations at this time.”
Unlike Stern, Republic Pictures was arguably not owed any royalties due to the film’s copyright lapse. But in 1993, the studio regained a measure of control over the picture’s exploitation by stopping the royalty-free airings and entering into an exclusive licensing agreement with NBC.
How did it accomplish this? First, Republic purchased music rights. Accounts vary, however, as to whether they purchased the rights to the entire music of the film, including the whole Tiomkin score, or just to specific songs used in the film.
For instance, Leblanc states:
“In 1993 they purchased the ownership rights to the film score and music used in the film from composer Dimitri Tiomkin, who had renewed the music copyrights correctly. ”
By contrast, here is the account by Nowosielski and Cassidy:
“When the movie fell into the public domain, it’s generally understood that all the screenplay drafts and the musical score written for the production fell too, part and parcel of the broader movie’s copyright. In a rather clever move, however, Goldsmith and Tierney went to four music publishers to purchase rights to songs created before the movie was made but used within the soundtrack.”
So, it is not entirely clear to me, as to whether Republic had the copyright to Tiomkin’s entire score or if the score went to public domain.* But based on other evidence I’ve found, including additional information from Nowosielski and Cassidy’s podcast, I believe that theirs is the more precise account.
Putting aside the exact status of the Tiomkin score then, there were several songs (or musical compositions) used in the film that had been copyrighted separately and Republic had purchased the exclusive right to copy and use said music in the film.
*Indeed, some claim that Tiomkin did not write all of the music for the film, but was only ‘credited’ as the sole composer for the film.
Next, Republic had its attorney send letters to TV stations and home video companies that had been exhibiting It’s a Wonderful Life, where he argued that any exploitation of the picture constituted a violation of Republic’s copyright on the grounds that:
a) Republic had exclusive rights to use the previously copyrighted songs in the film
b) Republic still owned the ‘the exclusive rights to exploit’ (aka adapt) the original story, which had been copyrighted separately by its author, Stern.
According to this logic, because the songs were copyrighted and the original story was copyrighted, showing the film without paying royalties to Republic was illegal. In effect, the studio claimed to have copyrights by proxy.
It didn’t have to actually sue anyone, as It’s A Wonderful Life was quickly removed from television and video. The company then signed an exclusive deal to show the film on NBC, allowing it to receive financial compensation for years.
But contrary to popular belief, Republic did NOT change the status of the film itself, which technically was and still is a public domain film. And this strange, paradoxical situation opened the door towards the proliferation of alternate versions of the film that are defined by their attempt to excise all copyrighted content and so leave behind only the public domain parts. This is why I termed them “legally gray versions.”
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The Logic Behind Legally Gray Versions
How could one possibly derive a true public domain version of the film that avoids infringement under the given circumstances?
According to Nowosielski and Cassidy, if the music rights were the only obstacle, it would simply be necessary to remove and replace the copyrighted music.
“Though the visual images and performances and much of the story heard in the movie now belonged to the public, unless television stations wanted to find a way to strip these songs from the soundtrack and replace them, they suddenly had to deal with Republic. And no such deal was being offered… Thanks to advances in digital technology, it’s now quite possible for any enterprising company or individual to create and release “the people’s version” of this holiday classic with those particular songs replaced.”
The bigger issue would be circumventing the underlying story copyright owned by Philip Van Doren Stern, which following his death in 1984 passed to his relatives: his daughter Marguerite Stern Robinson and three granddaughters. Just one year after Republic signed the NBC deal, the four of them “created The Greatest Gift Corporation on March 1st, 1994 in order to manage the many literary works Stern had created” (Leblanc) and help enforce their rights.
As long as the underlying story copyright is maintained by The Greatest Gift Corpo-ration (GGC), there really can’t be a definitive answer to the question posed earlier, simply because there is no consensus over precisely which parts or elements of It’s A Wonderful Life are protected by the underlying story rights and which are not.
Much like in the case of a “fan edit” or “remix,” the legality of an individual case would be up for courts to decide. One could argue, for instance, that the underlying story copyright should apply to the entire film, as it is an adaptation of that short story, while a counter-argument would be that much of the on-screen visual material is original to the film, which greatly expands on the source material.
Unsurprisingly, all subsequent legally gray versions would present their own inter-pretation of what qualifies as copyrighted story content in the film and what doesn’t.
The ‘Escape’ Remix (1996)
Just a mere three years after the Republic deal with NBC, basic cable channel Comedy Central was preparing to air Escape From It’s a Wonderful Life.
Created by a group called the “Upright Citizens Brigade,” Escape was a 45-minute parodic mockdub consisting of footage from the original film with new dialogue, sound and music, resulting in a new storyline.
As explained in a 2014 article by Nathan Mattisse:
“As Comedy Central President Kent Alterman tells it, Republic’s newly rekindled copyright only applied to the underlying story and soundtrack---not the visuals. So while other networks gave up their annual broadcast in light of the NBC agreement, the early Comedy Central team had an idea: what if they recut the film and added a new soundtrack?”
Source: Wired Magazine, Dec 25 2014
In ths remix, George Bailey is tired of acting in the same movie over and over for 50 years and wants to do something different. Thus, the story becomes about him ultimately recognizing what a bad idea it is to get out of It’s A Wonderful Life, with the Pottersville segment of the picture becoming a reality where George has annulled his contract only to realize that he’s unemployable.
I have to say the mockdub overall is very creative, funny, and quite reminiscent of contemporary fan parodies. I also believe that it would have the biggest chance of being considered non-infringing due to its transformative nature, in that it doesn’t really retain the ‘underlying story’ of the original version, nor the music. Indeed, I believe it could very potentially qualify for the ‘fair use’ defense.
Per Wired, Republic “disagreed with Comedy Central’s copyright interpretation” but they never took the creators of Escape to court, with one reason being that both Republic and Comedy Central were subsidiaries of the same company - Viacom.
Nonetheless, Escape from It’s A Wonderful Life was canceled shortly before its planned December 18, 1996 broadcast. Consequently, it could only be seen for free on the internet, again calling to mind the circulation of fan remixes.*
*I’ve found only two parts of the special on YouTube but it’s possible to download all three in ‘real media’ format from the archived Upright Citizens Brigade Official website.
NoteOver the next few years, the adaptation and music rights held by Republic kept passing to its successor companies, leading to It’s A Wonderful Life ending up at Paramount. I don’t know what the relationship between GGC and these various companies was but in 2000, GGC revoked the adaptation rights, leaving Paramount only with the music rights as the sole means of enforcing control over the exploitation of It’s A Wonderful Life.
This suggests that, from this point forward, Paramount would not really have cause to sue anyone for making new versions of the film unless they used the copyrighted songs without permission. GGC, however, could still sue due to possessing the underlying story rights.
The RiffTrax Version (2020)
“Copyright by Rifftrax, all rights reserved.”
End credits of It’s A Wonderful Life
22 years later, another company would similarly remix the movie in a parodic way: RiffTrax, a spiritual successor to MST3K that was founded by some its former stars.
On December 18, 2020, RiffTrax released its own mockdub version of It’s A Wonderful Life, which at the time of writing is available to stream for free on Tubi. In addition to adding a mocking voiceover commentary track to the film, RiffTrax cut it down to 106 minutes, making it 25 minutes shorter than the original version.
Here’s how they explained the process:
“As some of you know, It’s a Wonderful Life was in the public domain for decades, then back out again — it’s a complicated history. The main copyrighted stuff comes down to 1) material from the short story "The Greatest Gift" that part of the film was based on, and 2) some musical rights for background songs.
Well, since we wanted to offer this Christmas treat to you as a video on demand, we have meticulously excised all such parts. Which leaves... quite a bit, as it turns out! One hour and forty-six minutes worth, in fact. You may not even notice any difference at all — unless you’re a big fan of depressing Pottersville.”
Though I don’t have a full list of cuts available, the most notable change was made to the film’s third act: the new version now cuts from the moment George Bailey asks the angel Clarence if he has $8,000 to the shot of him running happily back to Bedford Falls. This completely skips over the extended “Pottersville” alternate reality segment, where George sees what life would’ve been like had he never been born.
Removing it is meant to both circumvent the underlying story copyright - this segment of the adaptation is by all accounts the one that most corresponds to the source material - and to elicit audience laughter by creating the implication that Clarence really did give George $8,000!*
*Despite all this, the original ending of the picture, where everyone in town comes out to support George in his time of need is pretty much all intact.
RiffTrax’s claim to legality is thus primarily based on the notion that the literary source material can be limited to specific parts of the adaptation. By cutting them out, RiffTrax positions its version as a transformative remix that can be commercially exploited due to the basis of its source footage in the public domain.
I’d say that, if sued by GGC for infringement, the RiffTrax version has a good chance of passing as a distinct and transformative work. That could explain how it has managed to remain in circulation for four years now without reported issues.
The “Legend” or “Abridged” Edition (2020)
All this finally brings us to Amazon. You see, the much maligned “abridged edition” now streaming on Prime Video is basically an undubbed variant of the 106-minute RiffTrax Cut. I have not performed a frame-by-frame comparison, but the durations of the two cuts are about the same and the removal of the Pottersville sequence is identical. It is safe to assume some of the original version’s songs are also gone.*
*To be clear, like the RiffTrax Cut, at least some of the Tiomkin score is clearly still in there, as evinced by the opening and closing credit sequences. This arguably supports the idea that a part of the music score indeed fell into public domain as well but it’s hard to be absolutely sure.
The key difference between the two is the lack of the mocking voiceover commentary that qualified the RiffTrax cut as parody. Thus, the Abridged edition is positioned as a straight-up recut of the original version, rather than a distinct transformative work.
This is made evident by the description of the edit:
“This Abridged Edition is a shorter version of the Jimmy Stewart Christmas classic with a condensed ending but still contains all the sweetness and Christmas wonder. A series of setbacks causes a man to reflect on his life. With the help of his guardian angel, he finds the true meaning of Christmas.”
Now, I want to be clear that, as far as I can tell, this version was not made by RiffTrax, but rather by a company called Legend Films, which is listed as the “Copyright holder” of the Abridged Cut in the final frames of the end credits. A restoration, colorization, and home video distribution company that specializes in making classic movies available on modern formats like DVD, Blu-Ray, and HDTV, Legend Films has created colorized editions of various classic studio films.*
*In fact, it produced the latest (and, by all accounts, best) Colorized Version of It’s A Wonderful Life for Paramount back in 2007.
Legend has an interesting relationship with Rifftrax. Apparently, Rifftrax began as a Legend subsidiary before spinning off in 2012 into a separate company. And multiple Legend Film ‘titles’ have Rifftrax editions, which are listed and linked on the site’s official page. All this leads me to believe that Legend Films saw what Rifftrax was doing and decided to emulate it, thinking it could be a good way to generate some licensing revenue from FAST (free, advertising-supported television) streamers.
Currently on Amazon’s Freevee service, the Abridged edition initially appeared as early as December 2021 on Tubi, though at the time it was subtitled as the “Legend Edition.” Even the poster artwork is the same.
Like its predecessor then, this edition rests on the presumption that the GGC’s underlying story copyright encompasses only specific parts of the adaptation, rather than the whole, and so that excising them (in addition to the songs) maintains its legal status. Unlike RiffTrax though, this version would likely lose a copyright infringement suit if GGC were to begin one against it, as it would not even have any claim to a parody defense. Not to mention, this version was clearly made in order to profit off the original version’s popularity without paying any royalties.*
*I’d be surprised if GGC hasn’t already begun some form of legal action but have not found any reports of this.
I thus agree with the assessment of Ryan W. Mead, whose twitter thread on the abridged edition led me to find key sources in this article:
“The stuff before and after the attempted suicide and revelation… were wholly original to the film and, thus, presumably in the public domain. What Legend Films has done, then, is exhume which parts of “It’s a Wonderful Life” are taken directly from “The Greatest Gift” to avoid paying royalties on the original short story - something that is theoretically legally plausible, but, as established, ruins the point of the entire film, for the copyrightable portion - a man talked out of suicide by being reminded that he means so much to so many in his community - is, indeed, the heart of the film.”
The “Rescored” or “Charles Dickens” Edition (2022)
“It is important to note that correctly licensed and authorized derivative works will always credit Philip Van Doren Stern as the author of The Greatest Gift and note that it is the basis for the work. Typically credit is listed as: "Based on the short story The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Doren Stern." Any works not providing this credit are unauthorized.”
Source: Jason T. Leblanc, https://itsawonderfullifeplay.com/copyright, 2024.
The Abridged edition is not the only legally gray version of the film created for streaming. In 2022, a version that has no official label but one that I like to call the “Rescored Edition” and the “Charles Dickens Edition” began to pop up on FAST services, such as The ROKU Channel, where it remains available to this day.
Despite having a nearly identical runtime to the original, this version carries alternate opening credits and completely replaces the entire music score of the film (credited to Dimtri Timokin) plus individual songs with that of a contemporary composer named Daniel Raijman. So, while it retains the editing of the original, it has a very different feel, to the extent that Chris Bumbray, who saw it on Roku, referred to it as an ‘abomination’ in a recent article on JoBlo, adding that:
“...Dimitri Tiomkin’s classic score has been replaced by a new score that sounds like it was lifted out of a Hallmark holiday movie. No, scratch that. That’s not fair to Hallmark movies. It sounds like the kind of score you’d hear in a Canadian Hallmark rip-off or something on the Great American Family Network…”
The credit differences, meanwhile, are fascinating, though I’m not quite sure of what to make of them. In addition to a new page that replaces Dimitri Tiomkin’s credit, the opening renames the film to “A Wonderful Life” and claims that it’s “based on a story by Charles Dickens,” rather than the actual author Philip Van Doren Stern. Is this an attempt to avoid associations with the underlying short story or with Paramount’s presumed trademark over the film title? Or does the fact that the music change is the main difference between the versions mean the producers have not taken the underlying story rights into consideration at all? Why change the credits that much unless you know you’re doing something shady and potentially illegal here?
By checking the final frame of the end credits, I discovered that there are two companies behind this version. The first, which is called “The Last Picture Show”, presumably produced the Charles Dickens edition. It specializes in using AI to restore classic movies, especially public domain titles such as Dementia 13 (1963) and The Doomsday Machine (1972). Recently, it launched its own streaming service called ClassicFlixTV with “over 150 classic movies to watch” with AI-enhanced images, but notably A Wonderful Life is not among them.
The second is the copyright holder and distributor, “Tricoast Worldwide,” which describes itself as “a full service media company that creates, produces, manages, and distributes entertainment content.” Again, I cannot find any listings of A Wonderful Life in their available online catalogs, which is weird because it is a relatively recent (2022) title and appeared on Roku as early as November 2023, going by this Roku community forum thread.
Of all the versions covered in this article then, I’d say this one has the weakest claim to not infringing on the GGC copyright. One can infer that, perhaps inspired by the Legend and RiffTrax editions, Tricoast licensed the Charles Dickens edition to Roku in order to make some easy money but wishes to keep it under the radar to avoid potential legal entanglements.
Conclusion
In the end, all of these editions stem from the fact that It’s A Wonderful Life is a public domain film that is nonetheless partially copyrighted. Given its popularity and cultural status, it’s not surprising that there are many individuals that would want to exploit it commercially in some way.
Unless GGC shuts down the currently streaming legally gray versions with the threat of a lawsuit or manages to get their distributors to pay royalties by proving infringe-ment in court, we can expect more such editions to materialize in the future.
In the end then, It’s A Wonderful Life illustrates how public domain status can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it helped elevate the film to the status of a beloved classic and one of the greatest American pictures. On the other, it has led to its exploitation across multiple legally gray versions that now arguably diminish it.
But what do you think?Any questions about the copyright situation of It’s A Wonderful Life? Is it bad that it fell into public domain? What do you think of the Abridged, RiffTrax and other editions? Was this article informative? Did it help clarify any confusion? Any other thoughts? Please,
Want to learn more about alternate versions?Then consider reading:
This is fascinating. One of my favorite films. I swore to my mother when we watched it this year that this was "not the right version" and now I know why. Thanks for all your interesting research, Mikhail!
These almost seem like the visual media equivalent of the many "remix" recordings of popular songs existing in the music business.