If you were around in the 1970s and ’80s, you probably remember the days when Frank Capra’s beloved, Oscar-nominated 1946 holiday classic It’s a Wonderful Life was in the public domain.
That meant that the movie was on some channel or another almost every time you turned on the television, so between Thanksgiving and Christmas you could watch it possibly a dozen times or more if you wanted to, either in its original black-and-white form or in an awful colorized version (“colorizing” classic B&W films was all the rage at the time). That certainly helped it to become a beloved Christmastime viewing staple many decades after its release.