- published: 18 Feb 2012
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Henry Travers (5 March 1874 – 18 October 1965) was an English actor. His most memorable role was that of the angel, Clarence, in the 1946 film It's A Wonderful Life.
Travers was born Travers John Heagerty supposedly in Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland, England, the son of Daniel Heagerty, an Irish doctor from Cork. He grew up in Berwick-upon-Tweed, which is his birthplace according to many biographies, but had actually been born in Prudhoe, some 60 miles further south near the River Tyne. The family were only in Prudhoe for a couple of years, moving there from Woodburn, on the A68 road near Corsenside, Northumberland in about 1866 and then moving on to Tweedmouth at Berwick-upon-Tweed in about 1876. Initially he trained as an architect at Berwick before taking to the stage under the name Henry Travers.
A stage actor in England, he emigrated to the United States and appeared in Hollywood film productions beginning in 1933. He made his last film in 1949. Travers' most famous role was as the angel Clarence who comes to save James Stewart's character from suicide in Frank Capra's classic It's a Wonderful Life. He was also an Oscar-nominated actor for his role in the film Mrs. Miniver.
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. (February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and East of Eden (1952) and the novella Of Mice and Men (1937). He was an author of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books and five collections of short stories; Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California. He was of German and Irish descent. Johann Adolf Großsteinbeck, Steinbeck's paternal grandfather, had shortened the family name to Steinbeck when he immigrated to the United States. The family farm in Heiligenhaus, Mettmann, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, is still today named "Großsteinbeck."
His father, John Ernst Steinbeck, served as Monterey County treasurer. John's mother, Olive Hamilton, a former school teacher, shared Steinbeck's passion of reading and writing. The Steinbecks were members of the Episcopal Church. Steinbeck lived in a small rural town that was essentially a frontier settlement, set amid some of the world's most fertile land. He spent his summers working on nearby ranches and later with migrant workers on Spreckels ranch. He became aware of the harsher aspects of migrant life and the darker side of human nature, which supplied him with material expressed in such works as Of Mice and Men. He also explored his surroundings, walking across local forests, fields, and farms.
Actors: Sean Pertwee (actor), Lesley Sharp (actress), Steven Forrester (editor), Russell Tovey (actor), Lorraine Stanley (actress), Chris Croucher (director), Chris Croucher (writer), Michael Berliner (producer), Len Rowles (miscellaneous crew), David A. Burt (miscellaneous crew), Mark Beynon (writer), Mat Ruttle (actor), Michael Ferguson (composer), Jayne Dickinson (actress), Paula Turnbull (producer),
Genres: Drama, Family, Short, War,Actors: Hal Baylor (actor), Lane Bradford (actor), Rod Cameron (actor), Iron Eyes Cody (actor), Russ Conway (actor), Franklyn Farnum (actor), Fred Graham (actor), Herman Hack (actor), Myron Healey (actor), Carol Henry (actor), I. Stanford Jolley (actor), Ray Jones (actor), Douglas Kennedy (actor), Francis McDonald (actor), Morris Ankrum (actor),
Plot: A greedy businessman is charging outrageous prices to homesteaders who wish to join a wagon train he's organizing to travel from Missouri to California. Meanwhile, he has broken the treaty his predecessor made with the Osage Indians to provide trade goods in return for passage across the Native Americans' land. When the wagonmaster hired for the trip learns of the businessman's duplicity and tries to set things right before the Indians go on the warpath, the businessman's henchmen are ordered to kill him.
Keywords: ambush, arrow-in-the-back, barn-dance, bound-and-gagged, crooked-businessman, death-of-father, father-daughter-relationship, frontier-scout, gambling-house, guide