Whatever Became of Those Bailey Kids? : It’s Been 47 Years Since They Made ‘Wonderful Life’ and the First Time They’re Reunited

Jimmy Hawkins probably knows as much as anybody alive about “It’s a Wonderful Life,” having recently established contact with most of the movie’s surviving participants while researching an exhaustive trivia book about the 1946 classic.

Larry Simms, on the other hand, doesn’t much care for movies and may be the last man in America who has never even seen “It’s a Wonderful Life,” let alone wept copiously through it.

These two wouldn’t seem to have much in common. And they don’t--except for having acted together some 47 years ago as the young sons of a despondent Jimmy Stewart in the Hollywood holiday perennial. And therein lies a tale of two Baileys . . .

“When he told me he’s never seen it, I asked him, ‘ Which planet are you from?’ ” laughs Hawkins, incredulous at his former co-star’s disinterest in his own participation in what might be America’s most cherished movie. “But we all go our different ways in life.”

Indeed. But if it’s any comfort, the women who portrayed the two Bailey girls are said to remain much the same: Karolyn Grimes Wilkerson, who played little Zuzu, is still cute as a button, her co-stars agree. And Carol Coombs Mueller, who as Janie practiced the piano so feebly it helped drive her movie dad into filmdom’s most renowned suicide attempt, still hasn’t gotten much better at playing “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” she admits.

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All four Bailey “kids” swapped stories when they met up this month for the first time in nearly a half-century under the auspices of Target Stores, which has adopted “It’s a Wonderful Life” as the theme of its Christmas promotions. The chain rounded up the fiftysomething foursome to participate in events around the country--the most visible being a ride on a Bedford Falls float in this Sunday’s Hollywood Christmas Parade. Other activities scheduled include a presentation Monday morning at the Beverly Hills High School gymnasium/pool, where the film’s jitterbug-dunking sequence was filmed.

“It’s quite interesting, all the stories people share with you, how they were touched and moved by the film,” says Hawkins, 52, now a film and TV producer (and the only one of the four to have remained in show business). “Some people have stood there and told us, ‘It saved my life. I wouldn’t be around.’

“The other things you hear are nice, but when somebody’s whole existence is changed by not committing suicide, there aren’t too many better things in life.”

Even the more reticent Simms--a 59-year-old Washington telecommunications consultant who views the entertainment industry with bemused disdain--is impressed by the public response.

“They really like the movie a lot,” he says, understatedly. “I’ve seen little bits of it when other people have been watching--but they have a lot of warm feelings, I guess, toward the movie. And they sure enjoy seeing the four kids.”

Simms stops to chuckle at his own unconscious use of the term being used to publicize their visits: “I look around and don’t see any kids ; every time they say ‘kids’ it’s a bunch of old people.”

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In “old” age or not, none of the four expected to be so celebrated for a movie that even as recently as a decade ago wasn’t much more than a cult-movie blip in the public consciousness: Upon its release, “Wonderful Life” was a moderate money-loser and no-hitter at the Oscars. Only after it accidentally entered the public domain in the 1970s--permitting innumerable TV repeats with no compensation--did it graduate from the private passion of Capra buffs and Christmas-holics to seemingly everyone’s all-time favorite.

Wilkerson, 53, was 6 when she played the flu-stricken, flower-collecting Zuzu. Just a couple of years ago, she says, it kicked in for her just how iconic the film had become when a reference to her character served as the oblique punch line to a cartoon panel.

“I think Gary Larson really put it over the top for me with his Far Side about a guy who had his cases full of rare wildflowers that he collected from some king in Timbuktu, and he said, ‘Now I give you the treasure of all--I give you Zuzu’s petals.’ It was hilarious, and I got copies of that from all over the world.”

Wilkerson’s Missouri home has also become a heavenly museum of sorts, thanks to the strangers who continually send her angel figurines, thanks to her climactic line, “Teacher says, every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.”

All four child actors did plenty of films before and after their two-week stints making “Wonderful Life,” which, for them, was just another shoot. But certain things stick out: Wilkerson most affectionately recalls getting to ride on Jimmy Stewart’s back up and down the stairs, and the vast view his lanky frame afforded a hoisted tot.

But there’s another scene that brings up more sheepish memories when she watches the video each December.

“I get wound up in it and bawl every time I see it--until the very last moment, because I don’t know the words to ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ and it’s pretty obvious,” says the erstwhile Zuzu. “I get embarrassed every time I see that scene. I don’t know why they didn’t teach me that if they were gonna do it. I’m mouthing it, and Mr. Stewart realizes that I don’t know it, and he kinda looks up at me and laughs, and then I just turn my head like ‘I’m so embarrassed!’ ”

Simms actually had the fortune to discover his life’s passion on the “Wonderful Life” shoot--and it wasn’t acting. He became enamored of the knobs, dials and meters operated by the film’s sound technicians, one of whom spent weeks teaching him how to assemble and dissemble a tube radio. “He certainly gave me a wonderful gift--a career and a hobby which are all the same thing,” says Simms.

Two of the four kids got to act with Stewart again. Mueller played his daughter a second time in “Magic Town,” filmed that same summer of 1946. And Hawkins appeared with Stewart in “Winchester 73,” as well as sharing eight seasons with his “Wonderful Life” mom on “The Donna Reed Show,” playing Mary’s (Shelley Fabares) boyfriend.

Wilkerson never acted with Stewart again, but she’s the one of the bunch whose family gets to watch her in two Christmas perennials each year, the other being “The Bishop’s Wife” with Cary Grant and Loretta Young.

Hawkins appeared in 80 movies and several long-running TV series before making the transition from acting to a career as an Emmy-winning producer.

Simms (who first rode in the Hollywood Christmas Parade years ago, as Baby Dumpling of the Blondie and Dagwood movies) retired at 15. He went on to a wide-ranging technological career that included a 15-year stint with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab.

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No regrets about leaving this business that we call show? “I’m not the least bit interested in the movie thing or being famous or anything like that,” says Simms. “I’m kind of a hermit at heart. This (promotional tour) is not my style of thing to do, actually. I’m a pretty private person, and I got talked into this,” he says with a chuckle, the Target publicist at his side.

Mueller retired at 21 to marry, going on to a vocation as a Christian elementary schoolteacher, one of which, coincidentally, had “Wonderful Life” as part of the curriculum. Mueller, 57, has been recognized enough now in her current hometown of Crestline, Calif., that she’s being increasingly called upon to re-create her legendary piano performance.

“Now that the movie’s become so popular everyone wants me to play ‘Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.’ And I’m not a lot better than I was when I was 10--maybe a few more chords--so it still would hurt Jimmy Stewart’s ears, I’m afraid,” Mueller laughs.

Wilkerson left the business under less fortunate circumstances: Both parents died, separately, around the time she was 15, and the court sent her to a small town in Missouri to live with an uncle and his wife, who were so disapproving of Hollywood that they cut off all correspondence to and from Los Angeles.

When she comes to town this weekend, it’ll be her first time back--and the first time she’s seen anyone she knew before she was 15 (besides the fellow actors with whom she’s recently reunited).

“This is pretty heavy stuff for me,” Wilkerson says, her voice full of emotion. “That part of my life is pretty gone, because the aunt and uncle I lived with wanted it severed, and then it didn’t become important anymore. I don’t know what it’s gonna dredge up . . .

“My life, believe me, has not been the very best,” says Wilkerson, saying she has suffered through a number of deaths in her immediate family. “There’ve been a lot of adverse things happen. But there are balances out there. And the movie itself has affected my life so much, because I have George Bailey’s philosophy, once he wakes up, that friendships and caring and loving will carry you through anything. And I believe in that.”

Like many of the film’s champions, Jimmy Hawkins believes it’s the picture’s heavy stretch of bleak narrative that makes palpable the final, rapturous holiday cheer it’s most known for.

“You have to go all the way down to get all the way back up again, or else it would be just one straight line, and what is that?” says Hawkins. “Yeah, it’s very dark . . .

“The message of the film is that we are all important. We don’t see the difference, but it’s there. You may look over and smile at somebody and it means nothing to you, and you might have changed that whole person’s life. We never know.”