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Clarence Odbody, also spelled Clarence Oddbody, (born May 1653, died 1745) film script where Chief Angel says he has been in Heaven for 200 years which means he died at 92 if his age is revealed as `293 next May'. is a guardian angel character in Frank Capra's 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life, where he was portrayed by Henry Travers, and in the 1990 sequel, Clarence, where he was played by Robert Carradine.
Odbody is loosely based on "a stranger" in Philip Van Doren Stern's 1943 short story The Greatest Gift.
In 1977's It Happened One Christmas, a remake of the 1946 film, a gender-reversed Clarence appeared as Clara Oddbody, played by Cloris Leachman. The 1986 musical A Wonderful Life features Odbody, who was played by David Hyde Pierce in its 2005 rendition.
In the 1946 film Odbody is the implied subject when, in the well-known quote, Zuzu Bailey (played by Karolyn Grimes) says "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings."
As Clarence dries off, he reveals he is an angel (causing the tollkeeper to flee in fear), but George is still unconvinced and believes that if killing himself is such a bad idea, maybe everybody would be better off if he had never been born in the first place. Clarence sees to this (presumably appealing to his superiors, as he shouts to the sky "You don't have to make all that fuss about it."), and this transforms the snowiness into a windy night.
George discovers that a great many things and people are not better off from his absence. His Uncle Billy, formerly in charge of the Bailey Building and Loan, lost his business when he accidentally gave the day's receipts to Potter in a folded-up newspaper, had a nervous breakdown, and spent the rest of his life in an insane asylum.
His mother is now embittered and running a boardinghouse for the perpetually down-and-out. His war-hero brother, Harry, had fallen through creek ice and drowned as a child, as George was not there to save him. As a result, the soldiers Harry saved from two Kamikaze planes died as well.
He sees that his old boss Emil Gower, the town druggist, had accidentally poisoned the child's prescription and is now a derelict hobo, shunned by everyone after having served twenty years in prison for manslaughter. George was not around to prevent Gower's deadly mistake when he worked there.
George finds that his alternate timeline wife, Mary Hatch, is a spinster librarian. Violet, a girl who formerly had a crush on George, is also unmarried and has become the town tramp. Ernie the cabbie and Bert the cop are both divorced, poor and miserable, living in barely habitable shacks in Potter's Field, the most derelict area of town. Clarence tells George that he was not there to build Bailey Park, where hardworking people could live in dignity with their families.
George finds that the town has been renamed "Pottersville" in honor of the wealthy but heartless Henry F. Potter, who appears to have taken over Bedford Falls and turned it into a sleazy and dangerous place filled with whiskey bars, crime, pawnshops, violence, seedy entertainment establishments, and unhappy people with meaningless, amoral lives.
As George comes to realize the disaster that would befall all those he loves if he had never lived, he desperately desires to return to his life, even though it means he would be going to jail. George is then restored to his previous life, a life which he now enthusiastically embraces. He returns to his home, where all his family and friends are gathering to give George whatever is needed to make up for what Mr. Potter stole, culminating in an advance of $25,000 from his wealthy industrialist friend Sam Wainwright. "AFI's Top 10", American Film Institute Clarence hides his copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer on the tree where George will find it first. The dedication reads "Thanks for the wings!" whereupon a bell on the family Christmas Tree rings, signifying the feat.
In Clarence
In the 1990 film Clarence, in December 1989, Clarence again comes to Earth to assist a human, Rachel Logan, who is in need of his care. Asked to help her by a fellow angel, Logan's deceased husband, he assists her to again appreciate life and her children, and saves her from suicide by bringing her to heaven for a brief visit with her husband. During his time on Earth he also shows that he has the power to take on the looks of a human, in this case, Rachel's son Brent, whom he portrays so the boy does not get expelled from high school.
Quotes
2011 novel
The Last Temptation of Clarence Odbody is a 2011 novel written by John Pierson which imagines the future lives of various It's a Wonderful Life characters if George had not survived his jump into the river. The Last Temptation of Clarence Odbody amazon.com, Retrieved: May 6, 2012.
See also
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