Henry Travers
Birth : 1874-03-05, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland, England
Death : 1965-10-18
History
British-born Henry Travers was a veteran of the English stage before emigrating to the U.S. in 1917. He gained more stage experience there on Broadway working with the Theatre Guild, and began his long film career with Reunion in Vienna (1933). Travers' kindly, grandfatherly demeanor became familiar to filmgoers over the next 25 years, especially in films like High Sierra (1941), where he played Joan Leslie's kindly but slyly observant uncle, and the generous Mr. Bogardus in The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), but it's as the somewhat befuddled angel Clarence Oddbody assigned to James Stewart in the classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946) that Travers will forever be known. After a long and successful career, he retired from the screen in 1949, and died in Hollywood in 1965.
Self (archive footage)
Documentary about James Stewart's long career as an actor and positive personal life.
Judge Bullfinch
Glamour artist Bob Randolph is world famous for his paintings of a stunning beauty dubbed "The Randolph Girl". What the world doesn't know is that his pin-up creation is really a composite of parts of the anatomy of 12 different models. In an effort to find one girl who possesses all the proper physical attributes, Randolph and PR man Chuck Donovan pursue Ruth Wilson, a beauteous schoolteacher who prefers to be admired for her brain rather than her curves. Ruth changes her tune, however, when a published photo of her in a swimsuit causes her to be fired by the uptight schoolboard. She sues for reinstatement and in the process learns that swimsuits and sex appeal do have a place in her world, after all. Written by Dan Navarro
Blakely - Romley's Assistant (uncredited)
A prim psychology professor fights to hide a murder she committed in self-defense.
Pop Dewing
Thinking he may have caused the death of his commanding officer Captain Daniels in Tunisia, Rocky visits Daniels' widow. She falls for him, he falls for her, she encourages him to go to West Point. While there he faces serious disciplinary review for having forced a plebe into resigning. He may even be court-martialled.
Dr. Mitchell
George McAllister (John Carroll), the black sheep of a wealthy family who has squandered his share of the family inheritance, and lives in constant jealousy, hatred and resentment of his half-brother Barry (Robert Paige), who has been supporting him. George gets his girl friend, Carlotta Duval (Vera Ralston), a job as Barry's nurse with the plan of eventually marrying him. She does, but instead of going ahead with the original plan or getting rid of Barry, inheriting his money and marrying George, she finds that she is really in love with Barry.
Clarence
A holiday favourite for generations... George Bailey has spent his entire life giving to the people of Bedford Falls. All that prevents rich skinflint Mr. Potter from taking over the entire town is George's modest building and loan company. But on Christmas Eve the business's $8,000 is lost and George's troubles begin.
Mr. Boyles
Jody convinces his parents to allow him to adopt a young deer, but what will happen if the deer misbehaves?
Thomas Logan
Director William A. Wellman adds another to his long line of salutes-to-aviation films in this bio of an aviation pioneer, John Montgomery (Glenn Ford.) In 1883 he built a practical glider despite the opposition of his friends, who thought he was crazy, and of his family, who were afraid that his dreams of flying would hurt his father's political ambitions. He pursues his education at Santa Clara University where the Jesuits lend a helping and understanding hand. An earthquake destroys what appears to be a working model for an airplane, but a gold-sorting machine Montgomery invented, and then neglected, promises to provide for his financial needs to keep working on his aircraft until he gets involved in costly lawsuits defending his invention.
Horace P. Bogardus
Father O'Malley is sent to St. Mary's, a run-down parochial school on the verge of condemnation. He and Sister Benedict work together in an attempt to save the school, though their differing methods often lead to good-natured disagreements.
Capt. Sam Jackson
In the gay '90s, cardsharps take over a Mississippi riverboat from a kindly captain. Their first act is to change the showboat into a floating gambling house. A ham actor and his bumbling sidekick try to devise a way to help the captain regain ownership of the vessel.
Hobart Glenn
A soldier falls in love with a newly-married woman after her husband abandons her for a business meeting on their honeymoon.
Pop Wheeler
Army sergeants Dave and "Fixit" spend a three-day pass in Pasadena, where they meet Janet and Cora, two young women who work in a parachute factory.
Third Cousin
The lives of a small Chinese village are turned Upside down when the Japanese invade it. An heroic young Chinese woman leads her fellow villagers in an uprising against Japanese Invaders.
Father Warecki
Through flashbacks, the story of a Nazi war criminal is exposed.
Eugene Curie
Poor physics student Marie is studying at the Sorbonne in 1890s Paris. One of the few women studying in her field, Marie encounters skepticism concerning her abilities, but is eventually offered a research placement in Pierre Curie's lab. The scientists soon fall in love and embark on a shared quest to extract, from a particular type of rock, a new chemical element they have named radium. However, their research puts them on the brink of professional failure.
Mayor Orden
The story of a small town in Norway that resists German occupation during World War II. Based on a John Steinbeck novel.
Joseph Newton
Just when Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Newton, is feeling especially frustrated by the lack of excitement in her small town in California, she receives wonderful news: Her uncle and namesake, Charlie Oakley, is coming to visit. However, as secrets about him come to the fore, Charlotte’s admiration turns into suspicion.
Dr. Sims
An amnesiac World War I vet falls in love with a music hall star, only to suffer an accident which restores his original memories but erases his post-War life.
Percival Wellsby
A French-Canadian trapper's adventures jeopardize his romance with an innkeeper.
Mr. Ballard
English middle-class family, The Minivers, experience life in the first months of World War II.
Prof. Jerome
A group of academics have spent years shut up in a house working on the definitive encyclopedia. When one of them discovers that his entry on slang is hopelessly outdated, he ventures into the wide world to learn about the evolving language. Here he meets Sugarpuss O’Shea, a nightclub singer, who’s on top of all the slang—and, it just so happens, needs a place to stay.
Mr. Miller
A gangster hides out on a farm and falls for the farmer's daughter.
Mr. Hardy
Lopez is a bandit who has stolen the herd at Gil's ranch, so Hardy is about to foreclose. But Lucia has come back from New York and Gil is happy until he meets her husband, Morgan.
Abel Martin
Steve is a shy quiet man who is an executive for a shipping firm. He meets Dot at the Opera where she had his seats and the next day she shows up as his temporary secretary. Then Coffee Cup comes to town to see Dot, his gal. When Steven is with Cecilia, everything is boring. When he is with Dot and Coffee Cup, everything is exciting and he falls for Dot. But Coffee is getting out of the Navy in a few days and he plans to marry Dot.
Pa
Given a pardon from jail, Roy Earle gets back into the swing of things as he robs a swanky resort.
Sheriff
With the army after him and his partner deserting, Reb decides that a change of scenery would be nice so he heads for Wyoming with Dave.
Matey
Sentimental drama about an ambitious young teacher who arrives in a small town to take the job of vice-principal. Based on one of L M Montgomery's 'Anne of Green Gables' sequels.
Ben Els
In flashback, fifty years after inventing the light bulb, an 82-year-old Edison tells his story starting at age twenty-two with his arrival in New York. He's on his way with the invention of an early form of the stock market ticker.
Gramp
Ellie Mae lives on Primrose Hill with her good-hearted and fancy free mother, her drunken father, her younger sister and a mean-spirited grandmother. The Hill is not a good part of town, however. When she meets and falls for a hard-working man, they marry and she hides her past from him. When he discovers the truth it jeopardizes their marriage.
Judge Milliken
Sky and Linda meet on vacation and become engaged. When Sky introduces Linda to his best friend, Jeff, Linda and Jeff fall in love and marry. But Jeff's work puts a strain on the marriage and a divorce is planned. Sky uses an experimental memory loss drug to make Linda and Jeff forget their rough times (and the fact that they were married) and they fall in love all over again.
Rev. Homer Smiley
Indian aristocrat Rama Safti returns from medical training in the U.S. to give his life to the poor folk of Ranchipur. Lady Edwina and her drunken artist ex-lover Tom Ransome get in the way, but everyone shapes up when faced by earthquake, flooding, and plague.
John Kingsley
When American newspaperman and adventurer Henry M. Stanley comes back from the western Indian wars, his editor James Gordon Bennett sends him to Africa to find Dr. David Livingstone, the missing Scottish missionary. Stanley finds Livingstone ("Dr. Livingstone, I presume.") blissfully doling out medicine and religion to the happy natives. His story is at first disbelieved.
Dr. Evans
Young Pud is orphaned and left in the care of his aged grandparents. The boy and his grandfather are inseparable. Gramps is concerned for Pud's future and wary of a scheming relative who seeks custody of the child. One day Mr. Brink, an agent of Death, arrives to take Gramps "to the land where the woodbine twineth." Through a bit of trickery, Gramps confines Mr. Brink, and thus Death, to the branches of a large apple tree, giving Gramps extra time to resolve issues about Pud's future.
Dr. Parsons
Socialite Judith Traherne lives a lavish but emotionally empty life. Riding horses is one of her few joys, and her stable master is secretly in love with her. Told she has a brain tumor by her doctor, Frederick Steele, Judith becomes distraught. After she decides to have surgery to remove the tumor, Judith realizes she is in love with Dr. Steele, but more troubling medical news may sabotage her new relationship, and her second chance at life.
Dr. Irving
In this epic Western, Wade Hatton, a wagon master turned sheriff, tames a cow town at the end of a railroad line.
Pop
Johnnie learns crime from petty thug Frank Wilson. When Wilson kills a pawnbroker with a gun stolen from Johnnie's sister Madge's fiance Fred Burke, Fred goes to Sing Sing's death house. Wilson uses all the pressure can to keep Johnnie silent, even after he and Johnnie themselves wind up in the big house.
Ned Elliott
Three daughters of a small down pharmacist undergo trials and tribulations in their problematic marriages between 1904 and 1908.
Wilkins
Boys are sent to military school in order to get them out of the way of their too-busy-to-bother parents or guardians. Lonely young Philip Stewart writes himself letters his father should be writing. When his hoax is discovered, Philip attempts suicide.
Lem Peters
A writer, looking for some peace and quiet in order to finish a novel, takes a room at the Baldpate Inn. However, peace and quiet are the last things he gets, as there are some very strange goings-on at the establishment.
Tom Reynolds
"Mitch" Mitchell is an aviator who has been hired to take a child in a guardianship suit out of California into Mexico. He is accompanied by Maxine Rush, the secretary of the head of a private-detective agency who has been hired to care for the kid until the suit is over. (Overview written by Les Adams )
Concierge
A romantic comedy-drama-musical of mistaken identity, infidelity and farce, set in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century.
Mac Mason
A detective who has "four hours to kill" before delivering his prisoner, an escaped killer, spends the time in the lobby of a Broadway theater where a musical is playing. The film focuses on the relationship between the two men, and also between various characters in the theater audience, staff and cast.
Capt. Ben
Zenas Brewster is a seafaring man with a bad reputation. Notorious for his tempestuous nature, Brewster has earned the nickname of "Captain Hurricane." Brewster is smitten with neighbor Abbie Howland, but she doesn't like his temperament. After a period of retirement, a bad investment puts Brewster back at work on the sea. And when fire overtakes his ship, Hurricane proves heroic, selflessly rescuing his crew from a grisly and deadly fate.
Cap
A managing editor sends a socialite reporter to spy on her boyfriend, mixed up in murder.
Mr. Halevy
Director William C. McGann's 1935 film stars Gloria Stuart and Ross Alexander as a young couple in love who face economic woes once they're wed.
Judge Pickett
In this fluffy romance, a young woman fights against the narrow-minded residents of her small town. The trouble begins when a young woman flees her boarding school to stay with her retired aunt, a former actress, who try as she might, has never been welcomed into the snobbish community in which she resides. The young woman too, is shunned and ends up being victimized in witchcraft trial and ducked into a pool of water.
Theodore
Bruce Blakely, a meek, mild-mannered certified public accountant, finally gets fed up with his money-grubbing family sponging off of him, and decides to partake of a different side and slice of life. A blonde secretary helps guide him.
Fuzzy
Letty, a young woman who ended up pregnant, unmarried and on the streets at fifteen is bitter and determined that her child will not grow up to be taken advantage of. Letty teaches her child to lie, steal, cheat and anything else he'll need to be street smart.
Baron Cesarea
After years of questioning why people fear him, Death takes on human form so he can mingle among the mortals and find an answer. However, events soon spiral out of control as he falls in love with the beautiful young Grazia, the only woman not afraid of him. As he falls in love with her, her father sees him for what he is and begs him to return to his duties. Death must decide whether or not to seek his own happiness or sacrifice it so that Grazia may live.
Dr. Cranley
Working in Dr. Cranley's laboratory, scientist Jack Griffin was always given the latitude to conduct some of his own experiments. His sudden departure, however, has Cranley's daughter Flora worried about him. Griffin has taken a room at the nearby Lion's Head Inn, hoping to reverse an experiment he conducted on himself that made him invisible. But the experimental drug has also warped his mind, making him aggressive and dangerous. He's prepared to do whatever it takes to restore his appearance.
Ellery Gregory
A wealthy young man bets his uncle that he can transform a clumsy cleaning lady into a glamorous fashion plate, then marry her off to his bachelor cousin.
Pop Hallam
A newlywed discovers that she and her husband's snobby family speak different languages.
Father Krug
An exiled archduke (John Barrymore) tries to renew romance with a former lover (Diana Wynyard) now wed to a psychiatrist (Frank Morgan).
