A Cathartic Wonderful Life

It wasn’t until I was fresh out of college and working in Manhattan that I saw the movie for the first time. It was for sure already a classic, but in an era before you could rent a movie and watch it at home. And it wasn’t as though they were screening the 1946 movie in theaters. You had to wait and look up the show times in the newspaper or TV Guide. At the age of twenty-one, and hand-to-mouth poor, I wasn’t getting either. So, then it was just pure chance I was able to watch it.

I had a job (which I’d written about previously), working as an elevator operator for an upscale co-op apartment just north of the United Nations—860-870 United Nations Plaza. The job was unionized with decent pay—grown-ass men worked in this as a career—but Manhattan was, and is, an expensive place to live. For that first summer in The City, I slept on the floor of an artist’s Soho loft, paying a hundred bucks a month for the pleasure of crashing with about a dozen others (the owner had subleased the place for the summer to this girl who took the one bedroom and collected our rents). Then I sublet a roach-infested apartment in Washington Heights, north of Harlem, where Spanish seemed the predominant language. After that ended, I found a guy in the Village Voice looking for a roommate to share his one-bedroom, street-level, Hell’s Kitchen apartment. My share of the rent was two-fifty, and I could walk across the island of Manhattan to reach my job.

I guess some might call the apartment a railroad flat. The front door opened to a vestibule of sorts, where you could hang a coat, then past the one bathroom to an eat-in kitchen. The windows there looked out over a small garden where the old Italian lady-landlord grew tomatoes. We were not allowed in the garden. From the kitchen, you walked down a hallway to the living room that looked out through barred windows to 44^th Street. My new roommate, Gus, had the small living room. Between the living room and kitchen was the one bedroom that was mine. I could tell you that I had one window, which technically was true, but it looked out to the kitchen. So, to get into my bedroom, I either had to walk through Gus’s room or climb through the window. I found a free queen-sized bed in the garbage room at 860 UN Plaza (to this day, I can’t remember how I got both the box spring and mattress across town). I purchased a small desk at a local Goodwill and found a matching hardwood desk chair on the street corner (just needed a screw and a little glue). The only placement for the bed was beneath the window, so if Gus was home, I had to crawl across the bed, then through the window, to get in and out. I was twenty-one, somewhat fit from walking the two miles to work and standing around all day pressing elevator buttons, so crawling in and out was no big deal.

Then, in early December, I contracted a severe case of the flu. I called in sick and ended up in bed for the next five days. For those first two days, I couldn’t keep anything down and was continually on the toilet. You know, out of both ends. Then, a temperature of 103 degrees. I was near full-on hallucinating, sweating, working to stay hydrated, and trying to get to the toilet on time. I had a girlfriend, Connie, and she came by once to provide sympathy and aspirin, but that was it. Our relationship was already on the rocks, and the following week, she’d leave me for a guy named Hunter. My roommate could do nothing but stay away as much as possible to avoid getting what I had. (A side note here: Gus was an aspiring actor and continually doing auditions when not taking tickets at the Bleeker Street Cinema. To keep up with his craft, he saw just about every show on Broadway. But only the second halves; he’d hang around outside during intermissions, blend in with the crowd, and then sneak in to find an open seat. Not sure if he made it or not.)

I had a small black and white television set up on a milk-crate nightstand, and in my feverish haze, I watched whatever was on. Then, during a mid-day matinee, It’s a Wonderful Life was shown. There he was, George Bailey growing up in the early twentieth century, yearning to travel the world, build things, and live life unencumbered by the ties of family, the town, and work. But then fate happens. There is no one to take over the Bailey Building and Loan but him, and the town needs a small bank that will make loans to the hard-working people of Bedford Falls so they can escape the poverty and slums operated by the skinflint Potter. Well, you know the rest. Sitting in bed with my 103-degree temperature, almost hallucinating, I cried like a baby at the ending when his friends and family came to his rescue. I’d never cried during a movie before, not when Jenny died in Love Story, or Piccolo died in Brian’s Song. That good cry was cathartic and transformative.

The next time I saw It’s a Wonderful Life, I began crying right after Mr. Gower, the pharmacist, learns that his son died in WWI, right before young George Bailey discovers that Mr. Gower had put the wrong medicine in a capsule. I cried off and on throughout the entire movie.

Movie crying became infectious, and I sobbed through the ending of White Christmas when the old General is surprised by his loyal soldiers, and during Miracle on 34^th Street when little Susan sees the house she wished Santa for (I’m almost in tears now just thinking of the scene). And it’s getting worse: I’ve cried during Pitch Perfect 1 & 2 when the a cappella group wins the big prize. Pick any rom-com—You’ve Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, Big, Maid in Manhattan, When Harry Met Sally, The Holiday—and I openly weep.

I guess, like that first time, it’s still cathartic—an engulfing release of emotions that somehow liberates a gutful of anxieties. So, maybe this Holiday season, give it a try, watch It’s a Wonderful Life one more time, and see if you can’t get the eyes a-weeping.