It's a Wonderful Life It's a Wonderful Life It's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas fantasy comedy-drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra, based on the short story and booklet "The Greatest Gift", which Philip Van Doren Stern wrote in 1939 and published privately in 1945. The film stars James Stewart as George Bailey, a man who has given up his dreams in order to help others, and whose imminent suicide on Christmas Eve brings about the intervention of his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers). Clarence shows George all the lives he has touched, and how different life in his
It's a Wonderful Life being caught or punished in any way". In 1990, "It's a Wonderful Life" was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in their National Film Registry. In 2002, Britain's Channel 4 ranked "It's a Wonderful Life" as the seventh greatest film ever made in its poll "The 100 Greatest Films". In June 2008, AFI revealed its "10 Top 10", the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres, after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. "It's a Wonderful Life" was acknowledged as the third-best film in the