[3][4] The Travers family lived in Prudhoe for a couple of years before moving from Woodburn, on the A68 road near Corsenside, Northumberland, in about 1866, to Tweedmouth, Berwick-upon-Tweed, in about 1876.

In the Oscar-winning movie You Can't Take It With You, Lionel Barrymore played the role which Travers had portrayed on Broadway.

He appeared with Greer Garson and Ronald Colman in Random Harvest (1942) and with Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary's (1945).

Alfred Hitchcock used Travers as a Comic relief in Shadow of a Doubt (1943), where he played a bank clerk with a passion for criminal magazines.

The character actor also portrayed the Railway Station Master Mr. Ballard with a love for roses who finally wins the annual flower show in his village shortly before dying in a bombardment in Mrs. Miniver.

Travers's best remembered role 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.

[citation needed] The Maltings Theatre in Berwick-upon-Tweed has a performance space, The Henry Travers Studio, named after him.