Fall River actor Glen Vernon is in a classic Christmas film — and he had a wonderful life

Hundreds of millions of people have seen the classic Christmas film “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which turns 75 this year. For decades, families have gathered around the TV to watch Jimmy Stewart’s frustrated small-town hero learn the value of a life lived with integrity. George Bailey is as much a fixture of the modern holiday season as Santa Claus or Rudolph.

And, unknown to almost everyone watching, a Fall River native has played a small but key part of this Christmas tradition.

"It’s a Wonderful Life” is the story of how one man never had the chance to leave his hometown to chase his childhood dreams, but accepted happiness in the twists and turns his life took. What follows is the story of a Fall River man who did leave his hometown to pursue his dreams, and discovered his own path to happiness.

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Early in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” grief-stricken pharmacist Mr. Gower gazes upon a photo of his son, who has just died in the 1919 influenza pandemic. Blinded by tears, Mr. Gower accidentally puts poison in capsules meant for a sick child instead of medicine. A young George Bailey sees Mr. Gower’s mistake, and never delivers the capsules. George’s actions save this child’s life, and he never tells anyone about the mistake, preserving Mr. Gower’s dignity. It’s one of the first events in George Bailey’s young life that reveals the giving, empathetic man he’ll grow up to be.

The young man in the photo, portraying Mr. Gower’s son? That’s Glen Vernon of Fall River.

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A one-line birth notice published in the Fall River Evening News is the first bit of press given to Glen Vernon: "To Mrs. Elmer Vernon, 159 Weetamoe, boy.” Glen had been born on Oct. 27, 1923, to Elmer and Vera (Mitchell) Vernon.

The Vernon family lived in the North End during the Roaring Twenties. Fall River was peaking around this time — a bustling city of about 120,000 people, and more like Pottersville than Bedford Falls. Downtown was lively, since Fall River was a key transportation link between New York, Providence, Newport and Boston. The textile mills that had made Fall River’s fortune in the late 19th century and employed generations of people were still humming, but about to experience their first signs of decline. It was also the time of Prohibition — but nobody told Elmer Vernon that.

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“When [Elmer] was real young, he would play piano in different beer joints all around, I guess around Fall River or maybe even in Boston,” said Jeff Vernon.

Jeff Vernon is Glen Vernon’s son. He’s in his 60s now, and has lived in the Los Angeles area his whole life.

“What [Elmer] did later, I believe, he went into accounting, which seems really the opposite of playing piano in a beer joint,” he said. “Maybe the piano in a beer joint was a relief from the accounting.”

Not a lot was written about Glen Vernon’s boyhood in Fall River, and not much more is known. A social notice published in 1926 has the family spending the summer in Island Park in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. At some point just before the stock market crash of 1929, a society-pages notice had the young family living in Queens, New York City — but by the mid-1930s, during the Great Depression, the Vernon family was back in Fall River. Throughout the ‘30s, Vera, a homemaker, was a member of the Emblem Club, a ladies-only group associated with the Elks, hosting bridge games and teas, and organizing dinner dances at the Eagle downtown.

Still, Glen must have built a reputation locally in his youth. A notice from 1942 published in The Providence Journal says that "as a child, Mr. Vernon was well-known in entertainment circles around these parts.” Maybe it was the influence of his father performing in speakeasies, or his taking part in stage productions during his school years, or watching movies and plays at one of the several theaters in downtown Fall River — however it happened, Glen's talent was nurtured, his enthusiasm inflamed, and he got the dream to become a professional entertainer.

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How actor Glen Vernon left Fall River for Hollywood

In “It’s a Wonderful Life,” obligations to the family business and his sense of responsibility kept George Bailey from leaving Bedford Falls after high school to pursue his passion. Glen Vernon was luckier.

“When he was 17, he moved right to New York by himself, which was a pretty bold thing to do at that time,” Jeff said. “We’re talking 1941, which to go to New York at 17 was kind of nervy.”

Jeff described his grandparents’ reaction as mixed, as any parent’s might be when their kid sets off to the big city to pursue a career in the arts. The country was recovering from the Depression, and World War II was about to dominate the lives of hundreds of young men Glen’s age. It was a frightening time in America.

“I think his father was OK with it, because his father played ragtime piano in saloons as a young man, so I think he kind of understood," he said. “I think my dad’s mother, my grandmother, I don’t think she was too keen on the idea.”

But Glen, a strikingly handsome young guy and a great dancer, soon found success on the New York stage. He studied dancing and attended classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

“He got into the chorus of a couple Broadway shows pretty quickly," Jeff said. “One was called ‘Best Foot Forward.’ He got roles as a dancer in the chorus, singing in Broadway musicals.”

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Glen spent a few years singing and dancing on Broadway, sometimes heading off to do shows in Chicago and sometimes returning home to Fall River during the off-season — in 1942, a notice saw him temporarily joining the Shoe String Players, a summer stock company organized in 1940 that performed shows in the Stone Bridge neighborhood of Tiverton and elsewhere in Rhode Island. With his talent, Glen was about to take another step forward.

"The studios here in Hollywood, they would send talent scouts back to New York to look at shows, and if they spotted anyone that kind of stuck out or hit them a certain way ... they would ask them to come out to Hollywood and do a screen test,” Jeff said. “So someone saw my dad, I think, in a Broadway show in ‘Best Foot Forward.’”

In the early to mid-1940s, Glen was flown out to Hollywood to screen test for RKO Pictures — the movie studio that had produced “King Kong,” a series of films with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and “Citizen Kane.” RKO liked what they saw in Glen and signed a contract with him — and now the Broadway singer and dancer was in the movies.

“The first movie he ever did was a war film called ‘Days of Glory.’ Its claim to fame is it was Gregory Peck’s first film. Gregory Peck is really good,” Jeff said. “My dad ... he played a young Russian soldier named Mitya. He has some really good scenes in the film, and he does really well in the film. The film kind of propelled him to other films.”

Glen spent his early days for RKO getting small roles in pictures like “Step Lively” with Frank Sinatra and a B-movie about juvenile delinquents called “Youth Runs Wild.” He often went uncredited, or credited professionally as "Glenn." It takes years to pay your dues as a working actor in Hollywood. By 1943, parents Elmer and Vera had left Fall River again, this time for good — they followed their son to southern California, and settled there for the rest of their lives.

In the spring of 1946, director Frank Capra was shooting a new film at studio space and a movie ranch owned by RKO near Los Angeles, and he needed a photograph of an actor in a scene where Mr. Gower mourns his dead son.

"The powers that be at RKO said, ‘We’d like to use this headshot of Glen Vernon, who’s a new actor that we just signed. It’ll get his face out there,’” Jeff said. “The director, Frank Capra, said, 'OK, that’s fine with me.' He looked at the photo and he liked the photo. He thought the face was endearing.”

For Glen, this must have seemed like an interesting opportunity. This was another way to get his face seen in a new film by the great Capra, who was even then a legend with six Oscars to his name and making a return to Hollywood after serving in World War II — and Glen didn’t even have to show up on the set.

“At the time, he didn’t think much of it at all," Jeff said. “He went, ‘Yeah, well OK, use my picture. I mean, who’s even going to see it?'"

Glen was right — nobody did. The movie was a flop.

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Adjusting to life as a working actor, and raising a family

The most popular movie of 1946 was “The Best Years of Our Lives,” another RKO production, a hard-hitting drama about wounded veterans readjusting to civilian life. It was a realistic story that looked forward, made millions and won seven Oscars, including Best Picture. “It’s a Wonderful Life” was a sentimental fantasy that looked backward at small-town America, and how it could be both charming and stifling. George Bailey was no veteran, but a middle-class Everyman who sat out the war and attempted suicide to escape bankruptcy and suburban frustration. It’s a surprisingly dark movie. Audiences weren't interested.

"It's a Wonderful Life” was nominated for a few Academy Awards, winning only a technical award for its method of making fake snow — but it absolutely tanked at the box office, losing over $500,000, or about $7.5 million in today’s dollars. It quickly fell into obscurity. Capra became disillusioned and mostly retired from film-making a few years later, never again making another successful movie.

Glen Vernon moved on, still plugging away. Throughout the late 1940s, he continued to pop up in small roles — a gas station pump jockey here, a soldier there, making a drama with Alan Ladd and Donna Reed, a horror film with Boris Karloff, an uncredited job as a Marine in “The Sands of Iwo Jima” with John Wayne. Glen was the lead in only one film, as a jazz clarinetist in a comedy called “Ding Dong Williams.”

"He did quite a few bits of work until 1949, and that’s when he got married — and that kind of changed everything,” Jeff said.

He married Ruth Heinen, who worked in the script department at 20th Century Fox. They soon had two sons: Michael and Jeff. As the 1950s began, real-world concerns took priority over the dreams of his youth.

“The acting, it kind of took a little bit of a back seat because he had a family now,” Jeff said. “He did keep acting, but then after my brother and I came along, he had these other obligations, and he wasn’t getting quite as many roles, because he was starting to get a little older — and he was looking a little older. The juvenile look was kind of leaving.”

Glen took an office job, but was still in show business. “He started working for the West Coast advertising for the Hollywood Reporter, the trade magazine,” Jeff said. “He had a really good position, and that went on for many years, which obviously was more stable than the acting. But he met so many different people that he would still get offered little parts, and the Hollywood Reporter was cool with him going and doing little parts.”

One of those little parts is in the classic “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” where Glen plays a reporter in the media scrum during the arrest of Holly Golightly, played by Audrey Hepburn. He spent his middle-aged years a happily married dad, working at the Hollywood Reporter, raising his sons, and taking small roles for fun in films and TV shows like “Lassie” and “Perry Mason.”

In the mid-1970s, a strange thing happened: that Capra movie that bombed and disappeared — it began showing up again.

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In 1974, the copyright to “It’s a Wonderful Life” was expiring — and Republic Pictures, the company that owned that copyright, forgot to renew it due to a paperwork error. Without that copyright, "It's a Wonderful Life” was now in the public domain, meaning nobody owned the movie anymore. Any TV station could show it for free. Any home video company could make and sell their own copies. TV networks that had to fill hours of December programming suddenly had access to a movie with Jimmy Stewart and a Christmas theme that they could show as many times as they wanted — for free.

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From the late 1970s until the early 1990s, TV networks broadcast “It’s a Wonderful Life” untold number of times on TV during the holiday season — viewers might see it multiple times a day, on different channels, sometimes in black-and-white and sometimes colorized. Every year, millions would watch George Bailey run through the snowy streets of Bedford Falls shouting “Merry Christmas” dozens of times before the holidays.

“My brother and I, we’d go, 'My gosh, is it on again?'" Jeff said.

Because of that constant repetition, the movie began to be reappraised. Its reputation grew immensely and it became a Christmas treasure beloved by millions. The scene with Glen's photo encapsulates the themes that make the story so beloved. Mr. Gower is introduced as a cranky drunk, but it's soon clear he's suffering profound grief, and in that state he almost causes the death of another child. When George sees a life where he was never born, he finds Mr. Gower a hopeless alcoholic convicted of homicide, his life ruined. The grace and empathy that George extended to Mr. Gower, and to everyone else in the film who needed George's help, is returned to George in the film's ending, a celebration of community and love.

Every time they've watched it, Jeff and his older brother Michael would spot their dad — gazing out at them and smiling. Glen himself, who'd shrugged off the gig in 1946, lived to see the film's second chance, and became proud of the fact that he was in it — even though his name never appears in the credits.

“My dad, as years went by, he realized how cool it was that his photo was in this film that kept generating more and more interest every year that went by," Jeff said.

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Getting a second chance

Many decades after Capra used it, the photo meant to get Glen Vernon’s face out there to the public ended up helping, in a small way, to do just that. “And it’s kind of funny,” Jeff said, “how just from that, he did get recognized from that.

"When it came time for retirement, he actually started acting again at 65," Jeff said. “He worked all the time until he passed at the age of 76. It was totally different now, obviously — he was an elderly man, but he had this kind of Irish look, with the white hair and slightly heavy. So he would always get roles as the country doctor or the friendly neighbor … and he worked on a lot of episodic TV.”

Glen’s later roles include dozens of bit parts on “Columbo,” “The Golden Girls,” “Cheers,” “Doogie Howser, M.D.,” “Perfect Strangers,” Mike Myers’ cult classic “So I Married an Axe Murderer,” and more, adding color to scenes or doses of outrageous comedy, always ready to entertain.

“He’s always popping up on something," Jeff said, “and I go, 'Oh my God, there’s Dad.'"

Glen started on the stage as a young man, and he returned to it in his senior years, performing at age 76 at the Ahmanson Theater in downtown LA.

“He called me and he said, ‘Jeff, I'm going to be in “West Side Story.”’ And I think he was about 76 at the time. And I said, ‘Oh really, Dad? Are you going to be a Shark or a Jet?'” Jeff said, laughing. “And he said, 'No, you idiot, I’m going to be Doc, the guy who runs the little shop that the gangs all hang out at.’”

Jeff, his brother Michael, and family and friends watched it. There was no singing or dancing required in the role, but Glen nailed the part. He died of complications from a stroke shortly thereafter in 1999.

"And that was the last thing he did," Jeff said.

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Without such magic, it’s impossible to know what would've become of Glen Vernon’s life if he hadn’t shaken the dust of Fall River off his feet to become a professional actor. He could’ve ended up dabbling in drama locally, or perhaps teaching it. He could've given up on acting altogether. Glen easily might have ended up working in Fall River's mills. He may have ended up spending his Christmases watching the Capra film from his home on Weetamoe Street.

All we know is that Glen built a happy family out west. Jeff recalled many warm holidays spent as a boy among his parents and both sets of grandparents. Today, Glen's son Michael is a screenwriter and filmmaker currently based in Las Vegas. Jeff worked as an artist for LA advertising agencies for years. He later became a children’s book illustrator of about 40 books, and has followed his dad’s lead and started acting in his later years — small character parts, just for fun.

“Everyone was like, ‘Oh God, Jeff’s gone crazy. He’s going to start acting now in his 50s. He’s lost it,’” Jeff said, laughing. “But it’s been OK. It’s actually a lot easier at that age. You’re not in competition with a lot of young people.” It's something Glen discovered, too.

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is now out of public domain and owned by Paramount, which unlike in decades past restricts TV showings to only once or twice annually. This year, it’ll be shown on NBC-TV at 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve. Jeff said he and his family will be watching and keeping an eye out for his dad’s photo — a link in the chain that leads to the story's heartwarming ending.

“So yeah,” Jeff said, “it was a pretty interesting life.”

Dan Medeiros can be reached at dmedeiros@heraldnews.com. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Herald News today.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: It's a Wonderful Life pharmacist Mr. Gower's son is from Fall River MA