Karolyn Grimes, the adorable child actress who played Zuzu in the beloved Christmas classic 'It's a Wonderful Life', led a life filled with both joy and tragedy. Though she is best remembered for her iconic role and heartwarming line, Grimes' story goes far beyond the silver screen, encompassing challenges and triumphs that echo the very essence of the film's message.
leads the sort of quiet, family-centric life that one might expect any retired 84-year-old grandmother to lead — but come December, that all changes. Indeed, whenconnected with her by telephone last week, the Seattle resident was, for the 22nd time, being celebrated at a festival in Seneca Falls, New York, and she would soon be rushing off to Detroit, where she would be a guest of honor at a similar gathering.
Grimes and the other child actors cast to play the Bailey kids were told to report to RKO Studios in Culver City in July 1946, during the last two weeks of the film’s shoot. She — or more specifically, her parents — received $75 for each week, no small sum in those days. But what she was more impressed by was what was on the ground when she arrived. “I was born and raised in Hollywood, so I never saw any snow, and here was all this snow.
In the end, she was placed into the custody of her father’s brother and his wife. “They came, got me, and took me back to a little town in Missouri called Osceola,” she says. There, for the next three years, she was subjected to “extremely cruel” treatment from her sadistic aunt, who suffered from some form of mental illness. At 18, Grimes married a local boy. “I had to get away, and that was the only way I could see of getting out of there.
Grimes, who had never seen the film, only caught wind of its resurgence in 1980 when she was 40 and living in Kanasas: “Someone knocked on my door when I was 40 and said, ‘Were you in the movie?’ I said, ‘Well, yeah.’ And they said, ‘Can I have an interview?’ And I said, ‘Oh, okay.’ So I dug up all my memorabilia from the basement, and we had an interview. The next week, the same thing happened, and then it happened again. I thought, ‘Maybe I’d better sit down and watch this movie.
IT's A WONDERFUL LIFE KAROLYN GRIMES CHILD ACTRESS TRAGEDY CHRISTMAS CLASSIC
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