It’s a Wonderful Life turns 77 this month. Here are 10 things you probably never knew about this holiday classic:

1. It’s probably the only movie ever based on a Christmas card.

When author Philip Van Doren Stern couldn’t sell his short story “The Greatest Gift” to any publisher, he had 200 copies printed up as a 21-page Christmas Card and sent them to his friends. A copy fell into the hands of the head of RKO Studios. He liked it and bought the film rights for $10,000.

2. Cary Grant was supposed to play George Bailey.

When RKO couldn’t turn the story into a proper script for Cary, they sold the rights to Frank Capra. It was Capra who wanted Jimmy Stewart for the lead.

3. The movie lost over half a million dollars when it was first released.

Most of us know the film bombed at first, but it’s nice to put a price tag on that failure. And back in 1946, that was a considerable box office bath.

4. Donna Reed is deadly with a rock

Although they had rigged the window of the old house to break when Donna Reed tosses a rock at it, they didn’t need to. Reed broke the window with her first throw.

5. That gym that turns into a swimming pool was no set.

The “swim gym” was for real. The scene was filmed at Beverly Hills High. (Where else would you find one?)

6. Recognize the guy who actually pulls the swimming pool prank?

You should. It’s Carl Switzer, better known to us all as “Alfalfa” from the Our Gang comedies.

7. Jimmy Stewart’s sweat was no special effect.

While the film takes place around Christmas time, it was filmed in the middle of summer. Sky high temperatures accounted for much of the sweat you see on Jimmy Stewart’s face in key scenes.

8. No, Bert & Ernie of Sesame Street were not named after characters in this film.

Despite years of rumors, Sesame Street’s first producer swears he and Henson named the puppets without ever once thinking about the movie (which actually wasn’t that well-known back when Sesame Street got started.

9. Zuzu didn’t see the film until 1980!

Karolyn Grimes who played the adorable little tyke said she just never sat down and watched the thing until well after it had become an American institution.

10. The FBI hated the film.

They thought the film subversive, claiming in a memo that the movie made “rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a ‘Scrooge-type’ so that he would be the most hated man in the picture.” They were sure this was the work of some of those notorious Hollywood Communists.

(They may have had a point as blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo was one of several writers, including Dorothy Parker) who worked on the script uncredited.)

Many of us do a year-end review of our finances.

Don't overlook shopping around for banks. If your bank is charging you for checking or paying barely any interest on your savings, it may be time to shop around. Many community banks and credit unions offer free checking and online banks often have better interest rates on savings accounts, frequently with no minimum blanace.

So it pays $$$ to shop around!

1. Take a 30-minute walk every day
2. Get at least 7 hours of sleep every night
3. Spend time with a friend or loved one every day - during times of social distancing, a phone call if not a personal visit

Hey, the lady in the ad said:"All my men wear English Leather or they wear nothing at all!"

What was the first made-for-TV animated holiday special? Oh, alright. The title of this post sort of gives it away.

Yes, before Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, before A Charlie Brown Christmas, there was Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol!

Magoo had made the jump from theatrical cartoons to his own TV series in 1960. The success of that show convinced UPA (owners of the character) to make a 60-minute adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic.

First broadcast on NBC on December 18, 1962 with the sponsorship of the Timex watch people, the special took on an unusual “show-within-a-show concept.” Magoo was a great actor, returning to his theatrical roots by appearing on Broadway as Ebenezer Scrooge in a musical version of the famous tale.

Why this gimmick? We really don’t know. Maybe the network suits thought Magoo too familiar a character for the audience to simply buy as Scrooge without first establishing WHY he was playing Scrooge. In any event, they kept the near-sighted gags and Magoo’s already cantankerous personality lent itself very well to playing fiction’s most famous miser.

Jim Backus (best remembered as Thurston Howell III on Gilligan’s Island), as always, voiced Magoo. Also lending their talents to the production were Morey Amsterdam, Jack Cassidy, Jane Keen, and veteran voice talent Paul Frees.

The songs are much better than you would ever expect them to be, written by the accomplished team of Jule Styne and Bob Merrill (who would write the songs for Funny Girl together and many more hits working with other collaborators).

The animation was supervised by Abe Levitow, who worked as part of Chuck Jones’ unit making Looney Tunes at Warner Brothers for many years. Cartoon nerds also recognized UPA’s other cartoon star, Gerald McBoing Boing, pressed into service as Tiny Tim.

The show was very well received when it was first broadcast. In fact, its success led to the creation of an entirely new TV series, The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo – with Magoo playing other famous characters from literature, but never as well-cast as he was as Scrooge.

Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol was a TV perennial right up to 1980. Then, for reasons unknown, it was dropped from network television’s holiday line-up. It made its home video debut in 1994 and was first released on DVD in 2001 and Blu-Ray in 2010. It reappeared on NBC in 2012 and was broadcast on the CW in 2014 and 2015.

The special’s original running time was 53 minutes. Scenes have been frequently cut for additional commercials (most often, the Broadway scenes that open and close the show) since it was first broadcast. Indeed, some footage is still missing from the version available on home video.

Besides jettisoning Scrooge’s nephew Fred from the plot and switching the order of appearance for the Ghosts of Christmas Present and Past, this adaptation is surprisingly faithful to the Dickens original and remains one of the most beloved versions of “A Christmas Carol” for those of us who grew up in the first age of television.

In 2009, animation director Darrell Van Critters published an excellent book about Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol that gives you the whole story of how the special was produced as well as tons of rare animation art and behind-the-scenes photographs. Unfortunately, that book is out of print now and commands a pretty hefty price tag on the second-hand market. But if you drop by the house, we’ll let you look at our copy.

Besides Woody, how many characters can you name?

In television’s early days, the hands-down, most popular, can’t miss genre was Westerns. Especially when it came to kids’ programs.

One of the many lies that TV peddled so easily in those more innocent days was that the American West was somehow virtually unchanged from its post-Civil War heyday. Sure, there might be telephones and here and there a jeep to help with the ranching, but people still preferred to ride horses and settled their disputes with a good ol’ six-shooter.

One Western that bucked that trend was Sky King, who not only didn’t ride a horse; he didn’t even ride in a car. No sir. Sky King help keep law and order along that still untamed frontier in an airplane! Not just any airplane – but in the legendary Songbird!

Right off, how fortunate was it that his parents thought to name him Schuyler (a.k.a. “Sky”) and that his last name was King? I mean, talk about wacky coincidences!

And while he didn’t ride horses, he must have been raising them because, like any self-respecting Western hero of the 1950’s, he lived on a ranch, the Flying Crown.

Sky wasn’t actually a lawman. He was just a private citizen with a private plane (first a Cessna T-50 and then a Cessna 310-B). Lucky for him (and us), the local sheriff was always needing his help and he had a niece who frequently got herself into trouble.

Sky was played by Kirby Grant, a little long in the tooth (already in his 40’s when the show began) and just a wee bit beefy to make an ideal Western hero. But we hardly noticed. His niece, Penny was played by Gloria Winters. Every so often Penny’s brother, Clipper (played by Ron Hagerthy), would show up just to relieve the monotony of constantly rescuing Penny.

The show actually got started on radio in 1946 (with a totally different cast). It made the jump to TV in 1951 as a Sunday afternoon show on NBC. It moved to Saturday mornings on ABC in 1952 and then actually moved to a prime-time slot on Mondays during the 1953 TV season.

When ABC cancelled the show in 1954, it remained in production and began selling to local stations in syndication.

Production ceased in 1959, but the show continued on as CBS broadcast reruns as part of its Saturday morning line-up (sponsored by Nabisco) all the way until 1966. Most Boomers remember the show best from this CBS run.

For years, there were rumors that Kirby Grant had actually shacked up with his younger co-star Gloria Winters after the show ended. As titillating as that thought might be, these rumors were not true.

Gloria actually married a member of the Sky King production crew, Dean Vernon and settled in California.

Kirby Grant and his wife Carolyn moved to Florida, where he founded the Sky King Youth Ranches of America that provided homes for abandoned and orphaned children. He died in an automobile accident in 1985 on his way to Cape Canaveral to watch a space shot.

That was ironic as many of America’s astronauts have claimed they first got interested in flying by watching Sky King.

Many male American males have claimed they first got interested in girls because of Sky’s niece, Penny (see “Pencil Thin Mustache” by Jimmy Buffet).

We’d like to think that somewhere the Songbird is still out there, patrolling those “Western skies!”

Most homes now have Wi-Fi routers so multiple devices can access the internet. Be careful, hackers can use these devices to access your computer simply by being in your neighborhood.

To keep your personal information safe, make sure your wireless router’s encryption and password protection are turned on.

If you are unsure how to check that, contact the tech support team at your internet service provider.