From classic tales that make the rounds in various forms—whether it be books, plays, musicals, or movies—to the personal stories that exist only within our own family histories and traditions that get retold yearly, storytelling is at the heart of the Christmas season. The stories of the season connect us all, creating common threads in our celebrations that make us all feel a little bit closer to one another.
One favorite of the season is a story that serves as a reminder to all that our lives have more meaning than we could possibly know, that we are always making an impact whether we realize it or not and the world would not be the same without us—the story of a man named George Bailey.
A heartwarming tale that has earned a place in many homes at Christmastime over the decades, It’s A Wonderful Life is the epitome of a Christmas classic, yet its own literary origins are largely forgotten within the shadow of the movie’s success. What is now known as the story of George Bailey began as the story of George Pratt in The Greatest Gift: A Christmas Tale, a short story that nobody wanted to publish.
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Philip Van Doren Stern was an editor, author, and Civil War historian most well known for his authoritative works on the Civil War before he wrote what would become one of the most enduring stories of the past century. Having worked at several publishing houses, including Simon and Schuster, compiling collections of writings by the likes of Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, and Abraham Lincoln, as well being a member of the World War II Planning Board for the Armed Services Editions that printed pocket-sized editions for soldiers to carry, Stern was no stranger to the world of the written word. Despite his work in publishing and advertising, his daughter later called him “a writer at heart.” Fiction, however, was never quite his area of interest—that is until he awoke from a dream in 1938 that felt influenced by Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and inspiration struck. On the morning of February 12th, 1938 the idea for The Greatest Gift: A Christmas Story came to Stern “complete from start to finish” as he shaved. He wrote the outline that very day, but put it away and gave it little further attention. The story, however, would not be ignored. It was stuck in Stern’s head and, a couple months after having written the outline, he began writing what would become a story synonymous with Christmastime, describing the first draft as “pretty terrible” considering he was “just learning to write fiction.” But he didn’t give up, he just put it away and came back to it over the next several years until finally, in 1943, he wrote a 4,100-word draft he shared with his literary agent. The agent liked the story, but told Stern it would be difficult to sell a fantasy story to magazines which, of course, it was.
No one—from “The Saturday Evening Post to farm journals” as Stern put it—wanted the short story, but Stern liked it enough to not let it be buried at the bottom of a desk drawer and forgotten. Instead, he had 200 copies privately printed in 24-page pamphlets—a move that feels rather reminiscent of Charles Dickens’ own drive to see A Christmas Carol through that led him to self-publishing it. Two of these pamphlets Stern sent to the Library of Congress for copyright registration and the rest he signed and sent out with Christmas cards that holiday season. His daughter recalled, “I was in the third grade and remember delivering a few of these cards to my teachers and my friends… My father, who was himself from a mixed religious background, explained to me that while this story takes place at Christmas time, and that we were sending it as a Christmas card to our friends, it is a universal story for all people in all times.”
Despite being of little interest to magazines and other publishers, it seemed fate had something in mind for Stern’s story. Not long after he sent out the Christmas cards, Stern heard from his Hollywood agent—she loved The Greatest Gift and wanted to “offer the story to the movies.” Stern was thrilled and agreed readily. With film studios interested, so too were magazines. With the film rights sold, magazines like Good Housekeeping and Reader’s Scope among others, published versions of The Greatest Gift.
In March 1944, the phone at the Stern household rang. Philip’s young daughter, Marguerite, answered—it was a Western Union operator looking for her father. With a war raging across Europe, even young Marguerite knew receiving a telegram often meant bad news and, after handing her father the phone and hearing him exclaim “Hold me up! I can’t believe it,” feared something terrible had happened. In fact, it was just the opposite. Her father’s agent had received an offer from a big, well-known movie studio for The Greatest Gift. Her father’s story—that nobody had wanted to publish—was going to be made into a movie.
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Planning began in Hollywood, with RKO Pictures aiming to turn The Greatest Gift into a film fit for Cary Grant, who had also shown interest in Stern’s short story. Three writers worked on scripts for the studio, but all of them seemed to miss the point, with one screenwriter turning George Pratt (Bailey) into a politician who attempts suicide after losing an election and only sees his life as it might’ve been if he’d gone into business instead of politics, not if he had never been born. RKO shelved the project before eventually showing Stern’s short story to Frank Capra. Capra, who was fresh out of the war and looking for his first Hollywood film to make after making documentaries and training films during the war, loved it. He wanted Jimmy Stewart, who was also just out of the war, to star in it. Both men absolutely loved the story, with Capra saying of it, “It was the story I had been looking for all my life!”
It took some time for It’s A Wonderful Life to become the Christmas classic that it is now. The movie was far from a box office hit when it was released, falling short of breaking even and taking a loss of over 500 thousand for RKO Pictures. When the film’s copyright lapsed into public domain in the mid ‘70s and television stations took advantage by playing it over and over during the Christmas season, the film’s popularity skyrocketed, cementing its place in our Christmas celebrations each year.
For such an incredibly popular movie, it’s odd how little the short story that inspired it is remembered. While the movie itself is the Christmas classic we’re all familiar with, and comes with its own fascinating history, taking the time to read the story that inspired it all is so worth it, as is learning about the man who wrote it. The story of The Greatest Gift’s journey from unwanted, discarded short story from a man used to writing nonfiction to being picked up to be made into a film starring some of the biggest actors of the age and becoming a staple of the Christmas season three decades after its release is nothing short of amazing. With such a history, the story’s own tumultuous, unexpected rise to fame seems almost as if it were meant to be.