[4] The film stars James Stewart as George Bailey, a man who has given up his personal dreams to help others in his community and whose thoughts of suicide on Christmas Eve bring about the intervention of his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody.

[5] Its copyright in the U.S. expired in 1974 following a lack of renewal and it entered the public domain, allowing it to be broadcast without licensing or royalty fees, at which point it became a Christmas classic.

The prayers of his family and friends reach Heaven, where guardian angel second class Clarence Odbody is assigned to save George in order to earn his wings.

On Christmas Eve, the town prepares a hero's welcome for Harry, a Navy fighter pilot awarded the Medal of Honor for preventing a kamikaze attack on a troopship.

[32] However, film historian Jeanine Basinger, curator of the Frank Capra archives at Wesleyan University and author of The 'It's A Wonderful Life' Book, has said no evidence exists for Seneca Falls' claim.

Jean Arthur, Stewart's co-star in You Can't Take It With You and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, was first offered the role of Mary, but had recently dropped out of the Broadway show Born Yesterday from exhaustion shortly before its premiere.

Capra next considered Olivia de Havilland, Martha Scott, Ann Dvorak, and Ginger Rogers before borrowing Donna Reed from MGM.

[36] Lionel Barrymore, who eventually was cast, was a famous Ebenezer Scrooge in radio dramatizations of A Christmas Carol at the time, and was a natural choice for the role.

Before Capra decided on Ward Bond as Bert,[37] he also considered Sam Levene, Barton MacLane, Robert Mitchum, John Alexander and Irving Bacon for the role.

RKO studio's head of special effects, Russell Shearman, developed a new compound using water, soap flakes, foamite, and sugar to create "chemical snow" for the film.

[51] In another draft, after he unsuccessfully attempts to consult his father about Mr. Gower and the pills, George considers asking Uncle Billy, but he is on the phone with the bank examiner.

[52] According to Bobbie Anderson, in the confrontation between Mr. Gower and young George, H. B. Warner, who was drunk at the time of the drug store scene, slapped him for real and made his ear bleed, reducing him to tears.

[53] Composer Dimitri Tiomkin had written "Death Telegram" and "Gower's Deliverance" for the drugstore sequence, but Capra elected to forgo music in those scenes.

[60] According to a 2006 book, "A spate of movies appeared just after the ending of the Second World War, including It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Stairway to Heaven (1946), perhaps tapping into so many people's experience of loss of loved ones and offering a kind of consolation.

"[64] Bosley Crowther, writing for The New York Times, complimented some of the actors, including Stewart and Reed, but concluded, "the weakness of this picture, from this reviewer's point of view, is the sentimentality of it—its illusory concept of life.

[In] addition, [redacted] stated that, in his opinion, this picture deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters.

[69] 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 his review for The New Republic in 1947, film critic Manny Farber wrote, "To make his points, [Capra] always takes an easy, simple-minded path that doesn't give much credit to the intelligence of the audience", and adds that it has only a "few unsentimental moments here and there".

It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher, and your oppressively perfect wife.

", adding: "The gauzy, Currier-and-Ives veil Capra drapes over Bedford Falls has prevented viewers from grasping what a tiresome and, frankly, toxic environment it is ... We all live in Pottersville now.

[84] Many filmmakers have praised the film, including Steven Spielberg, Akira Kurosawa, Frank Darabont, David Lynch,[85] Don Hertzfeldt[86] and Guillermo del Toro.

The New York Daily Times published an editorial that declared the film and James Stewart's performance to be worthy of Academy Award consideration.

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, when the film was still thought to be public domain, It's a Wonderful Life was released on VHS by a variety of home video companies.

[citation needed] Working with Microsoft, Kinesoft was able to enhance the video features of Windows to allow for the complete playback of the entire film—all of this on a PC with a 486SX processor and 8 MB of RAM.

The presentation, which benefited the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, featured an all-star cast, including Bill Pullman as George, Nathan Lane as Clarence, Martin Landau as Mr. Potter, Penelope Ann Miller as Mary, and Sally Field as Mother Bailey.

This remake employed gender-reversal, with Marlo Thomas as the protagonist Mary Bailey, Wayne Rogers as George Hatch, and Cloris Leachman as the angel Clara Oddbody.

This was a made-for-TV film aired on December 1, 2013, on the Hallmark Channel executive produced by Sheridan under her company, Wyke Lane Productions, and Brad Krevoy Television.

[125] "The Greatest Gift", the 2011 Warehouse 13 season 3 Christmas episode, tells a similar story after agent Pete Lattimer touches Stern's brush.

[131] On January 19, 2024, it was announced that Kenya Barris will write and direct a modern remake of the film for Paramount, with the intention to cast a person of color in the role of George Bailey.

However, in a correction for the 1999 "Annual Xmas Quiz" in the San Francisco Chronicle, which made this claim, series writer Jerry Juhl confirmed that, per producer Jon Stone, the shared names were merely a coincidence.