NEW YORK, November 21, 2023 — Has It’s a Wonderful Life protagonist George Bailey, portrayed iconically by Jimmy Stewart, gotten too much credit for too long, at the expense of actor Donna Reed’s Mary Hatch? That's an argument unpacked by a host of female influencers over an hour-long episode of a new iHeart podcast.

Among those who speak in George Bailey Was Never Born episode 9, “Mary Hatch, Hero (For Our Times)” are Monica Hesse, gender writer for the Washington Post, Emily St. James, transgender former Vox television reviewer, and Tania Hussain, Collider lead features editor. Donna Reed’s daughter Mary Owen details the feminist backlash her producer mother received over her 1960s housewife-centric sitcom, It’s a Wonderful Life Director Frank Capra’s great-granddaughter Hannah Irmi talks about what Mary could have been by comparing with Amy Poehler’s modern Parks & Recreation protagonist Leslie Knope and the movie’s story writer Philip Van Doren Stern’s granddaughter Laura Robinson tells of her mother Marguerite’s success in raising hundreds of millions out of poverty through a microbanking approach inspired in part by the movie.

Who really saved the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan during the Depression bank run? Mary’s quick thinking in offering up their honeymoon money to put account holders at ease. Who really kept George in Bedford Falls to help so many working people afford their own homes? Mary’s idea to squat in a disheveled Victorian house and years of fixing it up into a livable home for George and their children, whom she raised while George battled Mr. Potter. And who really saved the day in the movie’s famous happy ending? Not George and not really even the beloved angel Clarence, but Mary’s bold action in going all over town to fundraise their way out of the missing $8000.

Why, then, the podcast asks, when the American Film Institute did its 2003 poll of American movers and shakers and Hollywood players, was George Bailey listed ninth Greatest Hero – and Lionel Barrymore’s Henry F. Potter even higher as 6th Greatest Villain – but Mary Hatch totally left out? The podcast also explores the efficacy of what it claims is the most controversial scene for modern viewers, Mary’s fate as a seemingly unhappy single librarian in the universe where George Bailey had not been born.

Also featured are the stories of Laurie Lindeen of the Minneapolis femme punk trio Zuzu’s Petals, named for a moment in the movie, whose marriage to The Replacements’ Paul Westerberg arguably saw her relegated to “woman behind the man” status like Mary, Carolyn Sills, whose vintage retro-country-western Sills Combo provided the podcast’s theme song “George Bailey” from Mary’s perspective, Janine Waller detailing the birth of the modern female equality movement out of western New York’s Seneca Falls, a town that has long argued for its place as the inspiration for Bedford Falls, and Seneca Falls hair salon owner Twyla Keeler’s uncomfortable local comparisons to George Bailey’s other love interest Violet Bick.