Sheldon Leonard, 1907-1997

Sheldon Leonard about to make angels for James Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

Today marks the birthday of prominent TV figure Sheldon Leonard, who was born on this day in 1907. I grew up in the days when cable TV was really beginning to take off but when systems still only had a low number of channels, and a lot of people in the middle of nowhere like us only had broadcast TV with an antenna. So we saw a bunch of reruns, which is where I first saw the name Sheldon Leonard. He was one of the producers of two highly successful sitcoms of the 1960s, The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Andy Griffith Show.

But Leonard was also one of those people who had a career in Hollywood before TV and for me one of those people who I was surprised by upon seeing his name in acting credits. (By the same token, I didn't know until many years later that Brady Bunch composer Frank DeVol had been nominated for Oscars four times.) His acting career started in the mid-1930s with a couple of shorts, but really became busy in the 1940s with a whole bunch of small parts. The one movie I'd mentioned him in earlier is an RKO B, Zombies on Broadway. But there were also roles in bigger movies, such as Stop, You're Killing Me, a remake of the great Edward G. Robinson comedy A Slight Case of Murder; or Somewhere in the Night.

His most memorable acting role, however, would probably be as Nick the bartender in It's a Wonderful Life, where George Bailey (James Stewart) returns to town never having been born. Upon telling Nick that every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings, Nick responds by opening and closing the cash register, telling everyone he's making angels.