"...when the movie first came out, it fell under suspicion from the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) as Communist propaganda, part of the Red Scare that soon would lead to the blacklist and witch hunt that destroyed the careers of many talented screen and television writers, directors and actors."

The paranoia about the film is all the crazier because Frank Capra's motives seem to have been a world away.

As for Frank Capra, as he prepared to make the movie, he told the Los Angeles Times, "There are just two things that are important. One is to strengthen the individual's belief in himself, and the other, even more important right now, is to combat a modern trend toward atheism."

In any case, an FBI memo titled, "Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry," went after two of the screenwriters, and claimed they had eaten lunch with "known Communists."

The memo goes on to cast doubt on the movie's storyline, in which Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey and his struggling savings and loan fight on behalf of the good people of Bedford Falls against the avarice and power of banker and slumlord Henry Potter, played by Lionel Barrymore:

    "With regard to the picture `It's A Wonderful Life', [REDACTED] stated in substance that the film represented a rather obvious attempt to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a `scrooge-type' so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This, according to these sources, is a common trick used by Communists.

    "In addition, [REDACTED] stated that, in his opinion, this picture deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters. [REDACTED] related that if he had made this picture portraying the banker, he would have shown this individual to have been following the rules as laid down by the State Bank Examiners in connection with making loans. Further, [REDACTED] stated that the scene wouldn't have `suffered at all' in portraying the banker as a man who was protecting funds put in his care by private individuals and adhering to the rules governing the loan of that money rather than portraying the part as it was shown. In summary, [REDACTED] stated that it was not necessary to make the banker such a mean character and `I would never have done it that way.'"

Winship continues:

Wait - it gets nuttier.  According to the media archival website Aphelis, "Among the group who produced the analytical tools that were used by the FBI in its analysis of `It's a Wonderful Life' was Ayn Rand."

Rand's group told the FBI that there was lots more subtle Communist propaganda that will "act like drops of water that split a rock if continued long enough. The rock that they are trying to split is Americanism."

We hear the same kind of crank ideology from those who are worried that the real world Pope Francis may care for the poor a little too much.  Francis has repeatedly had to distance himself from communism and explain that concern for the poor and interest in economic policy is rooted in church doctrine. (Whatever else one may think of Francis and the church he leads, the charge of Communism is pretty far fetched.)

"Land, roof, and work ... It's odd, but for some, if I talk about these [subjects], it turns out the pope is a communist," Francis quipped.

"The fact that the love for the poor is in the center of the gospel is misunderstood," he said. "Those [values] for which you're fighting for are sacred rights. It's the Church's social doctrine."

That's why it is so remarkable that leaders of the American Catholic Right, such as former GOP Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan have, as Frank Cocozzelli has pointed out, so proudly lionized Ayn Rand, and more recently, the Koch brothers, when social and economic justice advocate John Ryan is actually the father of modern Catholic economic thought.

Anyway, the flinty-eyed politics of suspicion and repression of the likes of HUAC, Ayn Rand, and today's 'the Pope is a Communist' conservatives, is what can lead one to think It's a Wonderful Life is a communist plot just because it portrays an unscrupulous banker as, well, unscrupulous.  

The film carries a timeless message of warmth and neighborliness that transcends religious doctrines, political ideology, and many things that divide us.  And this Christmas eve, I hope those whose paranoia sometimes gets the best of them regarding the war on Christmas that doesn't exist, will take this to heart.