Jeanine Ann Roose, best known for her role as Little Violet Bick in the iconic 1946 holiday classic "It’s a Wonderful Life," has died at age 84.
Sources confirmed the news to TMZ, saying that the actress had been battling an "infection to the abdomen" for several weeks. She died on New Year's Eve at her home in Los Angeles surrounded by family.
Roose's breakthrough role came at age 8, when she appeared on "The Jack Benny Program," according to Deadline. From there, she went on to appear in a handful of television and radio shows including "The Fitch Bandwagon" and "The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show" from 1946 to 1954, in which she played a character that was based on the real-life daughter of Harris and Faye.
Roose also made an appearance in the Lux Radio Theatre production of "I Remember Mama" as well as in an episode of "Mr. President" with Edward Arnold. Her acting career came to an end when she enrolled at UCLA and decided not to pursue performing arts as a major.
"Instead I wanted to pursue a career in a helping profession," Roose wrote in a biography. "The first form of this was nursing, but for some reason, it did not fully satisfy my wish to help others. Eventually it became clear that my desire was specifically to help others who were struggling with finding meaning in their life — not unlike Clarence in the movie who helps George see the meaning of his life."
This, Roose said, ultimately led to her becoming a psychologist and then a Jungian psychoanalyst. Tha practice — developed by leading psychotherapist, Carl Gustav Jung — focuses on the process of self-awareness.
In the end, the child star only starred in one film — "It’s A Wonderful Life" — and it was "an amazing lifetime experience to have been in such a collectively meaningful picture," she said.
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