Liberty Films

California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2 million residents across a total area of approximately 163,696 square miles (423,970 km2), it is the most populous U.S. state and the third-largest by area. It is also the most populated subnational entity in North America and the 34th most populous in the world. The Greater Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas are the nation's second and fifth most populous urban regions respectively, with the former having more than 18.7 million residents and the latter having over 9.6 million. Sacramento is the state's capital, while Los Angeles is the most populous city in the state and the second most populous city in the country. San Francisco is the second most densely populated major city in the country. Los Angeles County is the country's most populous, while San Bernardino County is the largest county by area in the country. California borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, the Mexican state of Baja California to the south; and it has a coastline along the Pacific Ocean to the west.

Frank Russell Capra was an Italian-born American film director, producer and writer who became the creative force behind some of the major award-winning films of the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Italy and raised in Los Angeles from the age of five, his rags-to-riches story has led film historians such as Ian Freer to consider him the "American Dream personified".

Samuel J. Briskin was one of the foremost producers of Hollywood's Golden Age, and head of production during his career at three of the "Big 8" major film studios: Columbia Pictures (twice), Paramount Pictures, and RKO Pictures. In the late 1950s, he was briefly on the board of directors of another major, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. During World War II, Briskin served in the army's Signal Corps as a film producer, attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel. After the war he co-founded Liberty Films with Frank Capra. They were later joined by William Wyler and George Stevens. The studio only produced two films, but both are now considered classics: It's a Wonderful Life and State of the Union. All three of his brothers were also film producers, as well as one of his sons, and his sister was married to the eventual Chairman of Columbia, where Briskin spent the last decade of his life as a vice-president and head of production until his death in 1968 from a heart attack.

It's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas fantasy drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra. It is based on the short story and booklet The Greatest Gift self-published by Philip Van Doren Stern in 1943, which itself is loosely based on the 1843 Charles Dickens novella A Christmas Carol. The film stars James Stewart as George Bailey, a man who has given up his personal dreams in order to help others in his community and whose thoughts of suicide on Christmas Eve bring about the intervention of his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody. Clarence shows George all the lives he touched and what the world would be like if he did not exist.

RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chain and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America studio were brought together under the control of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in October 1928. RCA executive David Sarnoff engineered the merger to create a market for the company's sound-on-film technology, RCA Photophone, and in early 1929 production began under the RKO name. Two years later, another Kennedy concern, the Pathé studio, was folded into the operation. By the mid-1940s, RKO was controlled by investor Floyd Odlum.

State of the Union is a 1948 drama film directed by Frank Capra about a man’s desire to run for the nomination as the Republican candidate for President, and the machinations of those around him. The New York Times described it as "a slick piece of screen satire...sharper in its knife-edged slicing at the hides of pachyderm schemers and connivers than was the original." The film was written by Myles Connolly and Anthony Veiller and was based on the 1945 Russel Crouse, Howard Lindsay Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924, and based in Beverly Hills, California.

The Liberty Bell, previously called the State House Bell or Old State House Bell, is an iconic symbol of American independence, located in Philadelphia. Originally placed in the steeple of the Pennsylvania State House, the bell today is located across the street in the Liberty Bell Center in Independence National Historical Park. The bell was commissioned in 1752 by the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly from the London firm of Lester and Pack, and was cast with the lettering "Proclaim LIBERTY Throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants Thereof", a Biblical reference from the Book of Leviticus. The bell first cracked when rung after its arrival in Philadelphia, and was twice recast by local workmen John Pass and John Stow, whose last names appear on the bell. In its early years, the bell was used to summon lawmakers to legislative sessions and to alert citizens about public meetings and proclamations.