Philip Van Doren Stern and "The Greatest Gift"

Philip Van Doren Stern was a writer, editor and prominent Civil War historian, who wrote many definitive works on Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, John Wilkes Booth, and other histories of the Civil War, as well as about literary figures Henry David Thoreau and Edgar Allan Poe. Van Doren Stern wrote his own macabre and supernatural stories. He is perhaps most famous for his story “The Greatest Gift,” which inspired the classic film, It’s A Wonderful Life. 

Van Doren Stern was born in Wyalusing, Pennsylvania on September 10, 1900, to a merchant father of Bavarian descent, and a New Jersey-born mother. He grew up in New Jersey and Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from Rutgers University in 1924 whereupon he went into advertising before switching careers to become a publishing editor. He also served as general manager of the Armed Services Editions during World War II, and was on the United States Office of War Information planning board. 

The idea for “The Greatest Gift” came to Van Doren Stern in a dream. The story, itself only around 4000 words, was written and printed in 1943, even though Van Doren Stern had been working on it since the late-1930s. Originally unable to find a publisher, he printed two hundred copies and sent them, as 21-page booklets, to his friends for Christmas of 1943. The story caught the attention of David Hempstead, a producer at RKO Pictures, as well as that of Cary Grant, who was interested in the role of George. RKO purchased the rights in April 1944 to make it into a motion picture for $10,000. After many script adaptations, RKO sold the rights to Frank Capra’s company, in 1945 for the same $10,000 price tag. Capra adapted the piece into what we have all come to know as that seminal Christmas film starring Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed, It’s A Wonderful Life.