Henry Travers was as James Stewart's somewhat befuddled but kind-hearted guardian angel Clarence Odbody in Frank Capra's 1946 film "It's a Wonderful Life". Traver's character saves Stewart's from committing suicide, and shows him how wonderful his life really is. Though the film was a financial flop, it later became a Christmas classic and one of the most beloved films in American cinema. However, despite his long life, Travers would never know that his performance as Clarence would become his most celebrated, as the film only became a Christmas television perennial in the 1970s and 1980s, long after the actor's death. Travers retired
Ben Travers (in a way that pre-echoed Joe Orton), "A Cup of Kindness" was what he called "a Romeo and Juliet story of the suburbs"; and "A Bit of a Test" had a cricketing theme at the time of the controversial "Bodyline" series. Travers's biographer H Montgomery Hyde records that between 1926 and 1932 the Aldwych box office grossed £1,500,000 in receipts, and the aggregate number of performances of the nine Travers farces totalled nearly 2,700. During the 1930s, film versions of ten of the twelve Aldwych farces were made, mostly directed by Walls. Travers wrote the screenplays for eight of them.