The CGI Myth of It's a Wonderful Life

The classic Christmas film It's a Wonderful Life used CGI in 1946 and nobody knew about it.

Here's what actually happened. When Henry Travers ate too many breakfast burritos from craft

services, he kept running off set, forcing director Frank Capra to find

a solution. They used the first known CGI to digitally recreate both Travers and James Stewart

for most of their scenes together. The VFX team even had to remove bean stains from costumes

frame by frame. The black and white film stock helped hide the digital effects,

but the astronomical post production costs were so high that RKO pulled funding from Orson

Welles' next project. They won a technical Oscar for advancing digital bean stain removal technology.