Today Is...It's A Wonderful Life Premieres

A film about a man who tries to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge into a river before being saved by an Angel who hasn't won his wings yet isn't the most festive sounding of movies but that is what 'It's A Wonderful Life' ended up as which is one of the Christmas staples on our televisions every year.
The movie is based on the short story 'The Greatest Gift' by Philip Van Doren Stern which is loosely based on A Christmas Carol and involves a man called George who is contemplating suicide and is approached by a stranger who tries to talk him down and when he says he wishes he had never been born, the stranger tells him that his wish has been granted and hands him a bag and tells him to pretend to be a door-to-door brush salesman.
George returns to his town, and discovers that no one knows him and discovers that his wife has married someone else and he offers her a complimentary upholstery brush and returns to the bridge to beg the stranger to return his life and George returns home and finds everything restored to normal.
The story was refused by publishers but was seen by Cary Grant's agent who thought it would be perfect for his client and handed it to RKO Pictures who in turn handed it to their script writers who rewrote most of it and added Clarence the Angel and made George a Banker before passing it on to the Director Frank Capra who rewrote it some more to make it more palatable for the cinema going audience although an argument over the ending meant that the scene with the bell tingling on the tree and Clarence getting his wings was a hurried last minute addition during filming.   
In the confrontation between Mr. Gower and young George, the actor playing the chemist was drunk at the time of the scene and slapped the young boy for real but it was kept in the film because no acting could beat the man actually whacking the child for real.
Henry Fonda was considered for the George Banks role but he had to pull out due to filming commitments elsewhere so James Stewart was bought in and apparently said: 'If you want to do a movie about me committing suicide, with an angel with no wings named Clarence, I'm your boy' and Olivia de Havilland and Ginger Rogers was offered the role of his wife but they turned it down as the role was too bland so Donna Reed was given the role.
The film was unsuccessful at the box office on it's release in 1946 although it did receive a special award from the Motion Picture Academy for creating a new artificial snow effect.