He had 200 copies printed and bound in a 24-page pamphlet, and for Christmas 1943 he sent these out to family and friends as Christmas cards. Months passed, and, Stern decided to self-publish the story, which he’d titled The Greatest Gift. After many rejections, Stern self-publishes the story as a Christmas card The agent was told there was too much magic in the tale, and not enough reality. The agent tried every outlet imaginable from the Saturday Evening Post to farm journals. Only five years later, in the spring of 1943, did he show the short story to his agent. At the time, Stern was a published author and respected historian, with an agent who represented his work. He put it away for a few years, occasionally pulling it out to see if he could make something with it. Stern was still learning to write fiction, so he felt this first draft was “pretty terrible”. “Ordinarily a story has to be struggled with, changed around and mixed up.” The words flow out “complete from start to finish,” Stern later wrote, adding that this was “a most unusual occurrence” because in his experience: Philip Van Doren Stern thinks about his dream from the night before.Īs the dream comes back to him, he finds it so compelling that he immediately writes it down. On Saturday, February 12th, 1938, the man who would in a few moments write American’s favorite Christmas movie stands in front of his shaving mirror. Donna Reed and James Stewart in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’.
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