Dead celebrity of the Month, January 2006: Henry Travers

Today I begin a new monthly feature on The Dredge Report, in which the spotlight will be shown on a deceased person of note in the field of entertainment. For our first selection I have chosen to highlight the late Henry Travers. Born Travers Heagerty on the 5th of March 1874 in Berwick-Upon-Tweed Northumberland England, Travers spent most of his performing career on the stage and first came to this country as a performer in that capacity in the 1920's. Travers made his film debut in 1933's Reunion in Vienna, and became a fixture on screen usually playing 'grandfatherly type' roles. Henry Travers stared opposite some of the most successful stars of all time in some of their most well known movies, including Humphrey Bogart in High Sierra (1941), Greer Garson in Mrs. Miniver (1942), Joseph Cotton in Shadow of A Doubt (1942) with Bing Crosby in The Bells of Saint Mary's (1945), and most memorably James Stewart in Frank Capra's classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Mr. Travers retired from acting in 1949 and after his wife died in 1954 he remarried a nurse. Henry Travers passed away on October 18th 1965 at the age of 91, he is interred at Forest Lawn cemetery in Glendale California, directly across from W.C. Fields.