George Bailey (It's a Wonderful Life) George Bailey (It's a Wonderful Life) George Bailey is a fictional character and the protagonist in Frank Capra's 1946 film "It's a Wonderful Life". The character is a building and loan banker who sacrifices his dreams in order to help his community, to the point where he feels life has passed him by. Eventually, due to a cruel business rival's manipulations, Bailey falls into despair so deep that he contemplates suicide, until his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody, gives him a valuable perspective on the worth of his life. The character was listed ninth on the American Film Institute's 2003 list
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