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Directed by Frank Capra, It's a Wonderful Life (1946) opens on Christmas Eve 1945, in the town of Bedford Falls, New York, as guardian angel Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers) is sent to Earth to stop George Bailey (James Stewart) from committing suicide. In preparation for his task, Clarence is shown flashbacks of George's life. At age 12, George saved his brother Harry (Todd Karns) from drowning in an icy pond, and prevented his druggist boss, Mr. Gower (H. B. Warner), from accidentally prescribing poison to a child. After the death of his father (Samuel Hinds) in 1928, George is forced to postpone his plans to travel the world to take over the family's building and loan society to keep Henry F. Potter (Lionel Barrymore), the richest and meanest man in Bedford Falls, from having financial control over the town. Four years later, Harry returns home from college with a wife (Virginia Patton) and the promise of a good job in New York. Once again, George postpones his plans a...

Directed by Vincente Minnelli, Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) tells the story of the Smiths, an upper-middle class family living in St. Louis, Missouri at the turn of the century. The family consists of father Alonzo (Leon Ames); mother Anna (Mary Astor); two teenage daughters, Rose (Lucille Bremer) and Esther (Judy Garland); two younger daughters, Agnes (Joan Carroll) and Tootie (Margaret O'Brien); one teenage son, Lon Jr. (Henry H. Daniels Jr.); one grandfather (Harry Davenport); and one maid (Marjorie Main). Lon Jr. is preparing to leave to Princeton University; Rose is anxiously awaiting a long-distance call in which she hopes to be proposed to by Warren Sheffield (Robert Sully); Esther is infatuated with the boy next door, John Truett (Tom Drake); and Tootie and Agnes occupy themselves by burying dolls.   The film is divided into four sections, each covering a season during a yearlong period from 1903 to 1904. Summer finds the Smith family eagerly anticipating the 1904 World...

Directed by William Dieterle, I'll Be Seeing You (1944) tells the story of two strangers, Mary Marshall (Ginger Rogers) and Sergeant Zachary Morgan (Joseph Cotten), who meet while seated across from each other on a train bound for a town called Pine Hill. Mary is serving a six-year prison sentence for involuntary manslaughter and has been given a special eight-day furlough to spend the Christmas holidays with her closest relatives, Uncle Henry (Tom Tully), Aunt Sarah (Spring Byington) and free-spirited cousin Barbara (Shirley Temple). Zachary, a shell-shocked soldier, is on a ten-day leave from a psychiatric hospital to try to readjust to normal daily life. Naturally, neither one shares their secret with the other: Mary pretends that she is a travelling saleslady, while Zach claims he is going to visit his sister.   After the train pulls into the station, they exchange names and Mary takes a taxi to the Marshall home. Meanwhile, Zach checks into the local YMCA and telephones Mary...