During his screen tenure, this remarkable actor essayed a series of memorable roles that, collectively, comprise a body of work rivaled by few other supporting players. Mitchell's list of credits reads like a roster of Hollywood's most famous movies. He nearly alwayslooked the same-fleshy and rumpled, with unruly hair and burning eyes-but his performances varied greatly in range, though they were consistent in their intensity. He worked as a reporter, and eventually wrote some plays before settling on the other side of the footlights. He first attracted serious critical attention as the cocky embezzler in Lost Horizon (1937), and then ap peared in a dazzling array of films during 1939: Only Angels Have Wings, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Gone With the Wind (as Scarlett O'Hara's father), The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Stagecoach for which he won an Oscar playing a drunken, fatalistic doctor. Contemporary moviegoers might know him more immediately for his portrayal of James Stewart's ne'er-do-well Uncle Billy in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). He was playing Daniel Webster in The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941) when a runaway horse cart sidelined him, and forced the producers to reshoot all his footage with Edward Arnold.