Scurvy little spider

It's a Wonderful Life

(1946)

Watched this early in the holiday season because I don't yet feel very holiday-ish, and I thought this might help (and after all, the first time I saw it, or most of it, in a couple of televised chunks, was on Thanksgiving Day not quite 30 years ago), and maybe it will turn out to have helped, but for now I'm distracted by the burning question: Where do Eustace and Tilly fit in?

Right, and then that's another whole issue: I'd noticed before that the third man at the building and loan is named Eustace, but I never noticed the name of the woman there until tonight, and that only after spying a desk nameplate reading "Matilda Bailey." So Eustace, Tilly? Coincidence? Probably not, probably a New Yorker joke by hip screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. But it provides a nice symmetry to the assumption that Bert the Cop and Ernie the cab driver are the sources of the Sesame Street characters' names.

Anyway, having wondered how the hell Tilly is related to George, I paid close attention to her thereafter and noticed that at least once she addresses Uncle Billy by that name, and at least once as just Billy--not proof that she's his niece, but pretty strong evidence that she's not his child. So, George and Harry's sister? Didn't seem particularly likely, but likelier than that there would be another brother of Peter and Billy who is invisible, especially since you could watch the film a dozen times or more and never realize that Tilly was a Bailey even if you caught that Tilly was Tilly.

So I paid close attention to the end credits, which list not only "Cousin Tilly" but also "Cousin Eustace." So as unlikely as the explanation is, it's apparently right. But how odd that the characters would be related but overlookably so, via someone of whose existence no other evidence survives.