Liberty Films

Liberty Films was an independent motion picture production company founded in California by Frank Capra and Samuel J. Briskin in April 1945. It produced only two films, the Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946), originally released by RKO Radio Pictures, and the film version of the hit play State of the Union (1948), originally released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Liberty Films' logo was the Liberty Bell ringing loudly.

Capra had made two previous attempts at independent production. He formed Frank Capra Productions in 1939 and produced Meet John Doe, but dissolved it when he joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps in December 1941. Later during World War II he unsuccessfully sought a production partnership with director Leo McCarey.

All four eventual partners in Liberty Pictures had spent most of World War II as officers making motion pictures for the Army Signal Corps, and were hesitant to return to working under the Hollywood studio system. Capra explained his dissatisfaction in an article for the New York Times:

Briskin had been production chief at Columbia Pictures, where Capra had worked since 1927. Within months of Liberty's incorporation, directors William Wyler and George Stevens became partners.

Liberty was capitalized at $1,000,000, and it had a standing bank credit of $3,500,000, for which the four owners were individually and collectively responsible. The ownership was divided unequally among the partners: 32 percent to Capra as president and organizer, 18 percent to Briskin, 25 percent each to Wyler and Stevens. But their voting rights were equal. By dissolving Liberty a few years hence, as the partners planned, they would pay only a 25% capital gains tax on the profits instead of the 90% income tax they would pay on their high salaries at a studio.

Liberty contracted in August 1945 to produce nine features for distribution by RKO, three each from the three producer-directors, who were each expected to deliver one picture per year. The production offices of Liberty Films were housed at RKO Studios.

The company announced in November 1945 that its first production would be James Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life, produced and directed by Capra. Capra's next pictures were to be adaptations of Jessamyn West's novel The Friendly Persuasion and Alfred Noyes' novel No Other Man. William Wyler planned to direct an adaptation of Stendhal's The Red and the Black. George Stevens was announced to produce and direct One Big Happy Family, written by Joseph Fields.

The film rights to the play State of the Union were acquired in late 1946, with an intended release before the presidential election in 1948. To obtain Spencer Tracy for the lead role, when he was under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Liberty Films agreed to pay for use of MGM's production facilities to make the picture, and to pay MGM's parent company a percentage distribution fee.