I find myself watching this over and over again around Christmas time. It's an oldie, older than "It's a Wonderful Life", but has yet to become a Christmas classic. A few years ago there was an official DVD release, which changes the title from "Beyond Tomorrow" to "Beyond Christmas", no doubt to make it more marketable as a holiday movie. It shows the original B&W version and a colorized version. In this release they show "deleted" scenes as a special feature, but these scenes are included as part of the feature in almost every other DVD compilation which features it, as well as TV airings, so the makers of this DVD distort the meaning of the term "deleted scenes".
Three aging, well-to-do engineers are spending Christmas Eve in the spacious NY mansion which they apparently share, and also work out of. Also living there is a kindly former Russian countess, Madame Tanya (Maria Ouspenskaya) who, like Josef the butler (Alex Melesh), was exiled after the Bolshevik revolution. The three men are bored and lonely after their expected guests cancel, so Michael O'Brien (Charles Winninger), the jolly Irishman, comes up with a scheme to deliberately toss out their wallets, each containing ten dollars (a fair sum in 1940), to see if anyone brings the wallets back. The two that are returned belong to Michael and Allen "Chad" Chadwick (C. Aubrey Smith), the friendly Englishman. The other wallet that was not returned is found and kept by a woman, a starlet named Arlene Terry (Helen Vinson), who later emerges as something of a villainess. Appropriately enough, that wallet belonged to the melancholy Oklahoman George Vale Melton (veteran screen star Harry Carey), perhaps the most interesting character. More on that later.
Michael's and Chad's wallets are returned, respectively, by a Texan named (what else?) James Houston (Richard Carlson, whose singing here is far better than his otherwise fine acting, assuming that's really him singing), and a lady from New Hampshire, Jean Lawrence (Jean Parker). They all become instant friends, and Jimmy and Jean become instant lovers. A few months later, a plane crash, apparently foreseen by Madame Tanya, takes the lives of the three engineers, who return as ghosts in an effort to help James and Jean, and to keep James from being led astray by the duplicitous Arlene Terry as he pursues a singing career. Along the way, George is summoned to the darkness by an ominous voice. In life, he was in fact a good-hearted soul, but tried his best to hide it, as witnessed in the Christmas Eve scene where he delights in the walking stick given him by Michael, until Chad sees him, then George changes his expression and calls it "A lotta childish nonsense!". He is haunted by an incident from his past, the nature of which is not made entirely clear, but there are a few clues . Earlier, he suspects that the Christmas Eve guests who cancelled on them did so because of him and this incident, the Shreve (sp?) case, "acquitted". As he is summoned by this voice, he says he did what needed doing, and has no regrets. Later Madame Tanya provides another clue when she tells Jimmy that George lost everything over a woman like Arlene. Chad, too, is called, in his case to heaven to be with his wife and son, who preceded him in death. When Michael is called, he chooses to remain on Earth to help lead Jimmy on the right path and back to Jean, even though he is told that he will wander the earth forever. Of course, after a near-tragedy, he eventually succeeds in his mission, and as a result of some prodding by his late mother, he is called home again, and is joined by George, who has returned from the darkness after working out all of his issues.
A little hokey? Maybe, but how realistic can portrayals of the afterlife be expected to look? That there is an afterlife appears to be a central theme of the movie, as witnessed by the Benjamin Franklin quote that appears after the opening credits, and that gives this review its title. A feel-good movie that deserves to be a holiday classic.
Three aging, well-to-do engineers are spending Christmas Eve in the spacious NY mansion which they apparently share, and also work out of. Also living there is a kindly former Russian countess, Madame Tanya (Maria Ouspenskaya) who, like Josef the butler (Alex Melesh), was exiled after the Bolshevik revolution. The three men are bored and lonely after their expected guests cancel, so Michael O'Brien (Charles Winninger), the jolly Irishman, comes up with a scheme to deliberately toss out their wallets, each containing ten dollars (a fair sum in 1940), to see if anyone brings the wallets back. The two that are returned belong to Michael and Allen "Chad" Chadwick (C. Aubrey Smith), the friendly Englishman. The other wallet that was not returned is found and kept by a woman, a starlet named Arlene Terry (Helen Vinson), who later emerges as something of a villainess. Appropriately enough, that wallet belonged to the melancholy Oklahoman George Vale Melton (veteran screen star Harry Carey), perhaps the most interesting character. More on that later.
Michael's and Chad's wallets are returned, respectively, by a Texan named (what else?) James Houston (Richard Carlson, whose singing here is far better than his otherwise fine acting, assuming that's really him singing), and a lady from New Hampshire, Jean Lawrence (Jean Parker). They all become instant friends, and Jimmy and Jean become instant lovers. A few months later, a plane crash, apparently foreseen by Madame Tanya, takes the lives of the three engineers, who return as ghosts in an effort to help James and Jean, and to keep James from being led astray by the duplicitous Arlene Terry as he pursues a singing career. Along the way, George is summoned to the darkness by an ominous voice. In life, he was in fact a good-hearted soul, but tried his best to hide it, as witnessed in the Christmas Eve scene where he delights in the walking stick given him by Michael, until Chad sees him, then George changes his expression and calls it "A lotta childish nonsense!". He is haunted by an incident from his past, the nature of which is not made entirely clear, but there are a few clues . Earlier, he suspects that the Christmas Eve guests who cancelled on them did so because of him and this incident, the Shreve (sp?) case, "acquitted". As he is summoned by this voice, he says he did what needed doing, and has no regrets. Later Madame Tanya provides another clue when she tells Jimmy that George lost everything over a woman like Arlene. Chad, too, is called, in his case to heaven to be with his wife and son, who preceded him in death. When Michael is called, he chooses to remain on Earth to help lead Jimmy on the right path and back to Jean, even though he is told that he will wander the earth forever. Of course, after a near-tragedy, he eventually succeeds in his mission, and as a result of some prodding by his late mother, he is called home again, and is joined by George, who has returned from the darkness after working out all of his issues.
A little hokey? Maybe, but how realistic can portrayals of the afterlife be expected to look? That there is an afterlife appears to be a central theme of the movie, as witnessed by the Benjamin Franklin quote that appears after the opening credits, and that gives this review its title. A feel-good movie that deserves to be a holiday classic.