A Less-Than-Wonderful Life

By Susan Wagner

Remember Karolyn Grimes? Sure you do! She played Zuzu in the 1946 Frank Capra Christmas classic "It's a Wonderful Life." But despite her role in the mosts feel-good movie of all time, Grimes' real life has been the opposite of wonderful.

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In the film she uttered one of the three most famous Christmas movie lines of all time: "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings." (The other two, of course, are "God bless us every one!" and "You'll shoot your eye out!") But in real Grimes was orphaned as a teen, and as an adult she burried two husbands and a child who committed suicide -- and was estranged from three other children after a bitter court battle.

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Grimes Hollywood life started when she was four; at six, she was cast as George Banks' daughter. She has fond memories of the filming of America's favorite Christmas movie: "It doesn't snow in Los Angeles so to see the snow, even though it wasn't real, was fantastic," she recalls. "I enjoyed playing with other kids and it was great to have a huge tree with all these ornaments. Mum told me not to take anything but I confess one of those baubles disappeared!" By age seven, though, despite starring in three Oscar-nominate films, Grimes' career faltered. At 14, she lost her mother to Alzheimer's, and a year later her father was killed in a car crash.

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The grieving teen went to live with relatives in Missouri, where she was psychologically battered for years. Grimes says that her aunt made her store her clothes in a closet in the snake-infested basement, despite knowing that Grimes was afraid of snakes. "She was one wicked, mean woman," Grimes says of her Aunt Marsha.

People in the town of Osceola took to Grimes, though. "Everyone in that town knew my aunt was a wicked, vicious woman. She was a sick lady. The whole town rallied around me, my teachers, my friends and people in the town really cared. They accepted me immediately. She made me break off contact with everybody I knew back in Los Angeles. But I never wanted to go back to Hollywood because it is a really superficial, shallow place."

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Grimes married to escape her family, but wound up divorcing after only a short time. She had two daughters with her first husband, and eventually remarried a man with three children of his own; the couple had two sons. And then, in 1989, her 18-year-old son John killed himself. "It was the worst thing in the world that has happened to me," says Grimes. "You have to live with all the whys and the guilt is terrible."

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In 1992, Grimes lost her husband of 25 years to cancer. Four years later, she married again, and her stepchildren sued for their father's life insurance money. She describes the ensuing legal fight as "a knife through my heart."

Grimes and her husband live in Seattle; her daughter, Deena, was diagnosed with breast cancer a year ago and is living with them while she undergoes chemotherapy.

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Through it all, though, Karolyn Grimes continues to believe in the messge of "It's a Wonderful Life." "And the movie itself has affected my life so much because I have George Bailey's philosophy... that friendships and caring and loving will carry you through anything. Life is a wonderful gift."

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