The It’s a Wonderful Life child star left Hollywood after a series of tragedies

This story is about suicide. If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Life hasn’t always been wonderful for Karolyn Grimes.

The actress was 6 years old when she was offered a role in the 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life. Directed by Frank Capra, the classic stars James Stewart and Donna Reed.

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The film focuses on the character of George Bailey, played by Stewart, who is contemplating suicide. His guardian angel intervenes and shows him all the people whose lives he has touched. One memorable character is Zuzu, played by Grimes, who famously says, “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.”

While the film has become a popular holiday film over the years, Grimes has experienced personal tragedies outside of the spotlight.

The now 84-year-old told The Hollywood Reporter that things took a terrible turn when she was 11 years old.

“My mother got sick,” the former child star recalled. “Unfortunately it was something that couldn’t be cured. It was what we would now call early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. They didn’t call it that back then. It was simply called brain atrophy.”

Grimes noted that her acting career was becoming financially impossible for her father, who did not approve of it at all.

“He would have had to pay someone to take me to an audition because you need a guardian, and he would have had to pay for someone to be on set with me if I got a role,” Grimes said. “It was a bit much for him.”

At the age of 14, Grimes lost her mother, who was only 44 years old. A year later, at age 15, Grimes was orphaned when her heartbroken father died in a car accident. According to the outlet, Grimes’ future was left up to the court.

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“I had friends’ parents who were willing to take me in,” she said. “I asked the judge, ‘Do I have any say in who I go to or where I live?’ And he said, “Your wishes are like a drop in the ocean.” I will never forget that.

Grimes was placed in the care of her uncle and his wife. She left Hollywood, her birthplace, and moved with them to Osceola, a small town in Missouri. Grimes claimed that over the next three years she endured “extremely cruel” treatment from her aunt, who suffered from mental illness.

Desperate to escape her private life, Grimes married a local boy at the age of 18.

“I had friends’ parents who were willing to take me in. I asked the judge, ‘Do I have any say in who I go to or where I live?’ And he said, “Your wishes are like a drop in the ocean.” I will never forget that.

— Karolyn Grimes

“I had to leave, and this was the only way I could think of,” she admitted.

Grimes and her husband had two daughters before their divorce. He later died in a hunting accident.

She said “yes” again to a man who already had three children from a previous marriage. Together they welcomed two more children.

While raising a family, Grimes enrolled at the University of Central Missouri. She worked quietly as a medical technician for 25 years. Grimes said her children know little about her Hollywood past.

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“They knew I was in the movies, but it wasn’t important to them because it wasn’t important to me,” she said. “I think in fourth grade they might have taken a picture at school and said, ‘That’s my mom and she did that,’ but that was it.”

The outlet reported that “It’s a Wonderful Life” entered the public domain in the ’70s. As a result, it aired every Christmas, attracting a new legion of fans. It wasn’t until 1980 that Grimes, who had never seen the film, learned of its revival. She was living in Kansas at the time.

“When I was 40, someone knocked on my door and asked, ‘Have you been in the movie ‘It’s a Wonderful Life?'” Grimes said. “I said, ‘Well, yeah.’ And they said, ‘Can I have an interview?’…So I dug all my memorabilia out of the basement and we had an interview.”

“The next week the same thing happened, and then it happened again,” she recalled. “I thought, ‘Maybe I’d better sit down and watch this movie.'”

In 1989, tragedy struck again for Grimes. Her youngest son, whom the newspaper described as “a shy and sensitive boy,” took his own life at the age of 18.

“What’s really sad is the fact that I never got my children to watch ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ with the message that every life has great meaning and value,” she said.

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Grimes was “deep in grief” in 1990 when she decided to accept an invitation to the Chaplin Awards Gala. Stewart was honored. It was there that the co-stars spoke for the first time as adults.

One of the things that linked Stewart and Grimes was the grief of losing a child. Stewart lost a son in the Vietnam War.

“I don’t think you’ll ever get over it,” Grimes said.

The couple remained in touch until Stewart died in 1997. He was 89 years old.

The outlet reported that Grimes’ second husband died of cancer just a few years later. They were married for 25 years.

“I think it really tipped the scales,” Grimes said of her son’s suicide.

“There was something about it that did something to him,” she said, referring to her late spouse.

It was around this time, the “lowest emotional point in Grimes’ life,” that “It’s a Wonderful Life” saved her, the outlet revealed. In 1993, Target contacted her hoping she would participate in a holiday advertising campaign. While traveling across the country, Grimes became friends with several former child actors.

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“After that we became real brothers and sisters,” she said.

Since then, the retired grandmother has been busy every year. During the holidays, she attends numerous events to celebrate the film and her contribution to Hollywood.

During her tours, Grimes witnessed how much “It’s a Wonderful Life” touched fans both young and old.

“People were coming along the line to sign autographs and they were talking about thinking about taking their own life and how they saw the movie and it saved them,” she said.

Those encounters, she said, inspired her to spread the film’s hopeful message and “keep it alive.”

“I just thought, ‘This is my path and this is what I’m supposed to do,'” she said. “And I’ve been doing it ever since.”

In 2021, Grimes told Fox News Digital that her parents gave her the wisdom to help her overcome all obstacles.

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“My parents taught me that everything will be okay in the end,” she said at the time. “It may not feel like it at the moment, but it will be like that. Life is what you make of it. And I wanted it to be good.”

“My parents also gave me a very solid religious background,” she noted. “I have a certain respect for anyone who believes in a higher being and tries to follow a good path in life.

“I think this is something we should all strive for. It’s difficult these days, but goodness, if we could just try. It’s a scary world out there. And we need a movie like ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ now more than ever. “I think that’s how I coped.”