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It's a Wonderful Life
On Christmas Eve 1945, in Bedford Falls, New York, George Bailey contemplates suicide. The prayers of his family and friends reach Heaven, where guardian angel second class Clarence Odbody is assigned to save George to earn his wings. Clarence is shown flashbacks of George's life, beginning when 12 year-old George rescued his younger brother Harry from drowning in a frozen pond, leaving George deaf in his left ear. George later saves pharmacist Mr. Gower from accidentally poisoning a customer.
Before starting college, George plans a world tour. He is reintroduced to Mary Hatch, who has had a crush on him since childhood. When his father dies from a stroke, George postpones his travel to settle the family business, Bailey Brothers Building and Loan. Avaricious board member Henry F. Potter, who owns most of the town's businesses, seeks to dissolve the company, but the board of directors votes to keep it open if George runs it. George works alongside his uncle Billy and gives his tuition savings to Harry, with the understanding Harry will run the company when he graduates. When Harry returns from college married and with a job offer from his father-in-law, George resigns himself to running the Building and Loan. George and Mary rekindle their relationship and marry, but forego their honeymoon and use the money to keep the company solvent during a run on the bank. Under George, the company establishes Bailey Park, a housing development to compete with Potter's slums. Potter entices George with a high-paying job, but George rebuffs him when he realizes that Potter's goal is to close the Building and Loan.
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. Billy goes to deposit $8,000 ($ 143,068 in 2025) of the Building and Loan's money in Potter's bank. He taunts Potter with a newspaper headline about Harry, but absentmindedly wraps the cash in Potter's newspaper. Potter keeps the money while Billy cannot recall how he misplaced it. While a bank examiner performs an audit, George fruitlessly retraces Billy's steps. Frustrated and angered by Billy's blunder, which may lead to scandal and jail, George resents the sacrifices he has made and the family that has kept him trapped in Bedford Falls. He appeals to Potter for a loan, but has only a meager life insurance policy for collateral. Potter scoffs that George is worth more dead than alive and, accusing him of bank fraud, phones the police.
George flees Potter's office, gets drunk at a bar and prays for help. Contemplating suicide, he goes to a bridge, but before he can jump, Clarence falls into the water below and George rescues him. When George wishes he had never been born, Clarence takes him into an alternate timeline in which he never existed and Bedford Falls is called Pottersville, an unsavory town occupied by sleazy entertainment venues and callous people. No one knows George, including his mother and Mary, who is an " old maid ". He learns that Uncle Billy was committed to an institution after the Building and Loan failed and Mr. Gower was jailed for manslaughter for poisoning the customer. George also discovers Harry's grave; without George to save him, Harry drowned as a child, and without Harry to save them, the troops aboard the transport were killed.
George races back to the bridge and begs Clarence, and then God, for his life back. His wish granted, he gleefully rushes home to await his arrest. Meanwhile, Mary and Billy have rallied the townspeople, who donate more than enough to replace the missing money. Harry arrives and toasts George as "the richest man in town". Among the donations is a gift from Clarence, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, with the inscription, "Remember, no man is a failure who has friends. Thanks for the wings!" When a bell on their Christmas tree rings, George's youngest daughter, Zuzu, explains that "every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings."