Virginia Patton Moss, It's a Wonderful Life Star, Dies at 97

By Timothy Adams

The last adult surviving member of It's a Wonder Life, Virginia Patton Moss, died at the age of 97. She passed away August 18th in Albany, Georgia. Moss, who went under her birth name of Virginia Moss in the 1946 feature film, played Ruth Dakin Bailey, the wife of Todd Karns' Harry Bailey and sister-in-law to James Stewart's George Bailey. Moss was the last surviving adult member of director Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, with many of the child actors still alive to this day. Her costar, Karolyn Grimes, who played the young Zuzu Bailey in the movie, paid tribute to Moss with a post on her Facebook page.

"We have another angel! Virginia Patton Moss. She was 97 years old," Grimes wrote. "She is now with her beloved Cruse. She will be missed!"

Virginia Patton Moss started her acting career as a student at the University of Southern California, where she performed in plays and had small roles in film projects. Her husband, Cruse W. Moss, revealed in 2012 how she won the role of Ruth Dakin Bailey in the fan-favorite Christmas tale It's a Wonderful Life, being selected by Capra himself.

"Virginia was the only girl that was contracted directly by Frank Capra," Virginia Patton Moss' husband Cruse W. Moss said. "Everybody else in that film was loaned by another studio. But Ginny was not with the studio and Frank Capra actually signed her for that picture."

Moss only appeared in four more movies following It's a Wonderful Life: 1947's The Burning Cross and A Double Life, 1948's Black Eagle, and 1949's The Lucky Stiff, before retiring from acting. Moss married her husband in 1949, when she took his last name. The couple moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she transitioned to a career as a businesswoman, raising their three children while also serving as a docent at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. Cruse W. Moss passed away in 2018.

"I couldn't see me doing that for my life," Moss said in 2012 when speaking on her decision to retire from acting. "I wanted exactly what I am. Ann Arbor, Michigan, a wonderful husband, wonderful children, a good part of the community. I work hard for the community."

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