It's A Wonderful Life movie information

George Baily is severly depressed because his business is failing. Most of the townspeople and his entire family are praying for him. The angels hear these prayers and send the Angel (second class), Clarence, to help George. Before sending Clarence from heaven to earth, the head angel reviews George Baily's life with Clarence so he understands what brought George to the point of considering suicide.

George is given a glimpse of what life would be like if he had never been born and George sees a very different town than the one he had known all his life. The only thing George doesn't realize is that it was his influence and goodness that helped make it the town he was familiar with and wanted so badly to leave.

Clarence gave George the gift of seeing the dark side of life without his influence and earned his wings as a first class angel.

From the beginning of James Stewart's career in 1935 through his final theatrical project in 1991, he appeared in 92 films, television programs and shorts. Through the course of this illustrious career, he appeared in many landmark and critically acclaimed films, including such classics as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Rear Window, The Spirit of St. Louis and Vertigo. His roles in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Philadelphia Story, It's a Wonderful Life, Harvey, and Anatomy of a Murder earned him Academy Award nominations (he won for Philadelphia Story). Stewart's career defied the boundaries of genre and trend, and he made his mark in screwball comedies, suspense thrillers, westerns, biographies and family films.
There have been multiple biographies written about him and the awards he won in his lifetime and career are too numberous to list.

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Acted in films from 1941 to 1953. She won an academy award for her role in From Here to Eternity; she played the role of a prostitute. From 1958 to 1966 she had her own television show called, The Donna Reed Show. Her roles were mostly sweet motherly types, but Donna Reed had a lot more depth to her acting abilities than she was able to display due to type-casting.

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This man's list of acting roles and filmography runs from 1911 through 1952. His awards are numerous. He came from a thespian family; his two siblings, John and Ethel, also acted on stage and film. He is the grand-uncle of actress Drew Barrymore.

He played the irascible Doctor Gillespie in a series of Doctor Kildare movies in the 1930s and 1940s, repeating the role in the radio series throughout the 1940s. He also played the title role in another 1940s radio series, Mayor of the Town. Barrymore had broken his hip in an accident, hence he played Gillespie in a wheelchair; later, his worsening arthritis kept him in the chair.[3] The injury also precluded his playing Ebenezer Scrooge in the 1938 MGM film version of A Christmas Carol, a role which Barrymore had played annually on the radio since 1934, and would continue to 1951.

Perhaps his best known role, due to perennial Christmas time replays on television, was Mr. Potter, the miserly and mean-spirited banker in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). The role suggested that of the "unreformed" stage of Barrymore's "Scrooge" characterization.

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In 1953, Mitchell became the first person to win the "triple crown" of acting awards (Oscar, Emmy, Tony). He remains one of only a handful of individuals to have won each of these awards. In 1939 he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in Stagecoach as Doc Boone. In 1952, he won the Best Actor Emmy (Comedy Actor category), and the following year a Tony Award for best performance by an actor in the musical Hazel Flagg (based on the Carole Lombard film Nothing Sacred). He has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for his work in motion pictures at 1651 Vine Street and one for his work in television at 6100 Hollywood Boulevard.

A stage actor in England, he emigrated to the United States and appeared in Hollywood film productions beginning in 1933. He made his last film in 1949. Travers' most famous role was as the angel Clarence who comes to save James Stewart's character from suicide in Frank Capra's classic It's a Wonderful Life. He was also an Oscar-nominated actor for his role in the film Mrs. Miniver.

An endearing man who captures all our hearts.

Don't blink or you'll miss him. My grandmother used to religiously watch the Our Gang shows and I remember watching them on Sunday afternoons growing up. I'll bet I watched this film at least ten times before I recognized who the actor was that opened the gymnasium floor.

Carl Dean Switzer and his brother Harold were from Paris, Illinois and found themselves touring the Hal Roach Studios on a family vacation in 1934. Carl and Harold wandered into the Our Gang Cafe which was the studio cantina. The two impish boys put on a song and dance show for the diners and were "discovered" by producer, Hal Roach. They were hired on the spot. What a story.

Carl Dean (Alfalfa) tended to reak havoc on the set. He loved to pull pranks on his co-stars that went too far. He put fish hooks in Spanky's pants one day and caused cuts that needed stitches. He told little miss Darla Hood to put her hand in his pocket because he had a ring for her. She reached in and discovered a switch-blade knife and nearly lost her finger. He is in the credit lines of It's a Wonderful Life but his appearance is so brief you might just miss it.

There is no better film for the whole family to watch at Christmas time than It's a Wonderful Life. This lovely film was written by Philip Van Doren Stern. The interesting evolution of Mr. Van Doren Stern's story is rather interesting. He wrote the short story, The Greatest Gift. He had started writing this 4,000-word story in the late 1930s and it was inspired by a dream. He completed the short story in 1943. (Do you have a dusty short story in your desk drawer? Pull it out and see where it might take you.)

Mr. Philip Van Doren Stern was not able to find a publisher for the story, so he sent the 200 copies he had self-published to his friends as Christmas cards in 1943. By chance, one of these pamphlets came into the hands of an RKO Pictures producer who showed it to Cary Grant. Cary Grant wanted to play the lead role if it were to be made into a movie, so RKO Pictures purchased the motion picture rights to this story for $10,000 in 1944. RKO Pictures then sold the rights in 1944 to Frank Capra's production company for the same $10,000 they had purchased it for.

If you choose to read the original Van Doren Stern short story, you won't find George Baily, but George Pratt as the main character. There isn't an angel named Clarence, but a kind man who talks George out of committing suicide. The town of Bedford Falls doesn't exist in the The Greatest Gift. The town in the film is a central character. Frank Capra must have had some very creative writers who did an incredible job building the movie script into what I consider a delightful drama.

The main premise of Mr. Van Doren Stern's short story remains intact in the film. The message conveyed is the importance and value of every individual life. Mr. Van Doren Stern's dream may have seemed like a nightmare to him in the late 30s, but it sent him a message that has been sent to several generations through the medium of film ever since.

Click the link in the next section to purchase this short story.