While the Christmas classic It’s A Wonderful Life was filmed on a Hollywood set, the upstate New York town of Seneca Falls boasts that it’s the model for the movie’s fictional town of “Bedford Falls.”
But a small Rhode Island town also has claims on the beloved film.
Little Compton town historian Marjory O’Toole says clues of a local connection are sprinkled throughout the movie. And they started with the married script writing team of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, and their main character George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart.
“Frances and Albert summered on Bailey’s Ledge in Little Compton, on the Bailey Family Farm,” said O’Toole, the executive director of the Little Compton Historical Society. “The fact that they named their incredibly sympathetic main character ‘George Bailey’ is an absolute tie to this summer home, summer community that they loved.”
The setting of Bedford Falls may also be a nod to the region.
“The folks in Seneca Falls may argue this,” O’Tool said, “but Little Compton sits in between two cities: New Bedford and Fall River. I think the fact that the town in the movie is called ‘Bedford Falls’ is a direct combination of the names of those two cities.”
And, O’Toole says, “Pottersville,” has for decades been a neighborhood in Little Compton and it is the name of the town featured as the film’s nightmarish alternate reality.
“Every time I watch the movie,” O’Toole said, “I keep my eyes open for additional connections.”
