Tuesday, December 13, 2022

The OTHER Jimmy in "It's A Wonderful Life"

Recently we got a text from Elaine with this amusing avian portrait:

Looking to make a seasonally-appropriate response, we did an image search for "Christmas raven" and came across this:

It's been many (many) years since we saw the movie, and we had no memory at all of this bird. Our curiosity piqued, we did a little googling and were surprised to discover that Jimmy Stewart's feathered co-star was also named Jimmy. 
 

It turns out that Jimmy The Crow (actually a raven) was movie star in his own right. Plucked from a nest in the Mojave desert by animal trainer Curly Twiford and raised by hand, Jimmy appeared in hundreds of movies in a career that lasted almost 20 years. Here he is in some of his other roles:
 
You Can't Take It With You (1938)
 
The Secret Garden (1949)

The Bride Came C.O.D. (1941)

The Wizard Of Oz (1939)

So, the next time you see a thespian of corvidian* persuasion in a movie from Hollywood's Golden Age, take a closer look. It might be Jimmy! 


*We made that word up