[No place]: Privately Printed for Distribution to His Friends, Christmas, 1943.
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Softcover. First edition. Small octavo. 21, [1]pp. Stapled orange wrappers with printed paper label. Bumps at the spine ends, light wear to the wraps with a few tiny spots and near invisible tidemark on the rear wrap, near fine. Signed by the author on the last page. Reportedly one of 200 copies. Stern wrote the first draft of this story, about a man who doesn't realize how much he has given to others until he wishes that he had never been born, in 1938. He set it aside and rewrote it with a Christmas setting in 1943. Unable to sell the story to magazines, he issued it privately as a holiday greeting to friends. The story made its way to Hollywood, where the wife of an RKO studio chief insisted that Frank Capra make a film from it. Dalton Trumbo, Marc Connelly, and Clifford Odets all attempted scripts based on the story, but all were essentially scrapped in favor of a screenplay by Capra, Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich, and Jo Swerling. For the lead Capra chose Jimmy Stewart who, like the director, had just returned home from distinguished service in the war. The film, *It's a Wonderful Life*, was released Christmas Day, 1946 and received largely positive reviews. Surprisingly it did not do particularly well at the box office, losing money on its initial release. For the next several decades the film receded to the relative obscurity as did many quality productions of the era. In the early 1970s, however, the copyright to the film was not renewed and it quickly became a staple of holiday programming for local television stations across the country. With this refreshed accessibility it quickly gained a new and appreciative audience and in the last quarter century the film's status has grown well beyond "classic," so that it now stands as an icon of popular culture and is clearly one of the half dozen most-beloved films ever made. This volume was reprinted several times during the 1940s and later printings are often confused with the first edition. A very nice true first edition of this rare film source book.
Item #398063
