“The Greatest Gift” (1944)
Retro Review #13: The short story that gave us the great—if not the greatest—gift, inspiring the film It’s a Wonderful Life.
“The Greatest Gift” (1944)
+ Short story🎖️⭐ by Philip Van Doren Stern, 15p
A+>
Grade: A+> (20.0) / HOF: 3
EQ 👍? | 📖? 👥? 📽️? 🎼? (Coming soon upon re-review)
DW 😎🕶️🚫?.? | 🌚? 🌝? (Coming soon upon re-review)
POPCAP 💯n/a 🍿n/a 🧢n/a
L-R 💻⬆️⬇️? 👀⬆️⬇️? 🛐⬆️⬇️? (Coming soon upon re-review)
This is the story on which the classic Christmas film, It’s a Wonderful Life is based.
It’s said this story is loosely based on the Charles Dickens novella A Christmas Story. Having seen It’s a Wonderful Life a couple of times, I thought that seemed strange, but in fact when you read this short story, you can more easily recognize the Christmas Eve–visitation–redemption thread from the Dickens work that is the basis for this story also.
Reading this story will feel like reading a very quick summary of the rather long movie, because the movie added a ton of new material to the story. (That’s why the connection to the story of Scrooge doesn’t seem very strong in the movie, if even there at all.) I’ll be watching the movie next, for the first time in years, so if it seems warranted, I’ll compare the short story and film a little more in my next review.
It’s a solidly good story and I was all set to give it an A grade, until its well-crafted final two paragraphs inspired me to raise the grade to an A+.
It’s a quick read, so if you are one of the multitudes of fans of the movie, you should give it a look at the link below.
Onwards!
+ read 2024-12-05, dS
+ Genre emojis (Coming soon upon re-review)
+ ✅❌? NR (Coming soon upon re-review)
+ 😡? 😵💫+? 🤬+? 🤭+? 🫣+? (Coming soon upon re-review)
+ 👀 (Coming soon upon re-review)
+ ✝️ (Coming soon upon re-review)
+ ✡️ (Coming soon upon re-review)
+ 🗽 (Coming soon upon re-review)
Originally posted to text group 2024-12-06
Last updated 2025-04-14
Read “The Greatest Gift” (1944)
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