It's a Wonderful Life

It is Christmas Eve, and George Bailey stands on a bridge looking over the icy waters below, contemplating suicide. Joseph, an unseen angel, calls on The Boss for advice, and they decide on Clarence Oddbody, an Angel Second Class who, after 200 years, has yet to earn his wings. Joseph takes Clarence into the past to see George as a boy, rescuing his brother from drowning, enduring a beating from grieving druggist Gower, saving a child from accidental poisoning, then growing up to forgo college so he can save the family business and keep the citizens of Bedford Falls from being ruined by the Depression and the machinations of the conniving Henry Potter. George marries his childhood sweetheart, has a family, and resigns himself to a life of "failure." When his Uncle Billy misplaces $8,000 of the Building and Loan's money, George takes responsibility and runs to the bridge to commit suicide. Clarence stops him, and when George wishes he had never been born, makes the wish come true. Now George wanders through a Bedford Falls that has been rechristened Pottersville and has fallen far without him to save it. He realizes how many lives he has touched, how many people he has helped—and that he has been a success, after all. Clarence brings him back to "his" Bedford Falls and even manages to make Henry Potter pay for his sins.