O. Henry’s Full House (1952)

I’ve wanted to see this movie for several years, and the other night I finally settled down and watched it. I went into it with only moderate expectations—literary adaptations, you know—but I was pleasantly surprised; I really loved it! It is actually five separate short films, each based on one of O. Henry’s most famous stories, linked together by segments with John Steinbeck narrating some background on O. Henry’s life and writing. For me, as someone who has read the Complete Works cover to cover and never tires of recommending them, watching the camera pan over the familiar titles of the collections on the spines of beautiful leather-bound copies and listening to Steinbeck talk about the stories I’ve loved so much was lovely in itself. (For the curious, the little introductory scene, in which O. Henry—his face never seen in the shadows of a prison cell—overhears a remark by another prisoner and writes it down, was actually drawn from his story “What You Want.”) The individual adaptations are very well done, considering that so much of what is couched in crisp, humorous narration on the page has to be conveyed visually and through dialogue. The settings of the stories are opened up and moved around a bit, but the spirit of the original is maintained.

The set begins with “The Cop and the Anthem,” in which park-bench bum Soapy (Charles Laughton), determined to spend the cold winter months comfortably in jail, repeatedly and unsuccessfully tries to get himself arrested, with comic results. The script gives him a sort of sidekick in another tramp (David Wayne) who tags after him, in order that Soapy may explain his schemes for the benefit of the audience; and his personality is that of a decayed gentleman with a florid vocabulary incongruous beside his ragged appearance, providing the opportunity to work a lot of that narrative humor into the dialogue. Very well done, and Laughton’s performance, particularly in the climactic scene, is spot-on.

In “The Clarion Call,” police detective Barney Woods (Dale Robertson) recognizes that a recent murder and robbery was committed by a former friend of his, Johnny Kernan (Richard Widmark)—but since he owes Kernan a long-standing debt of a thousand dollars, he can’t bring himself to arrest him until matters are squared between them. This one is well-scripted too, and I liked Robertson as the detective, but Widmark noisily overplays the eccentricity and nastiness of his character, coming close to spoiling the effect. The moments where he is more restrained allow you to pay more attention to the story.

“The Last Leaf,” in my opinion, is the pièce de résistance of the film. The story of a despairing young girl ill with pneumonia (Anne Baxter), who becomes convinced that when the last leaves fall from the nearly-bare vine outside her window, she will die too, is one of O. Henry’s most emotional on the page, and the film version does it wonderful justice. The script gives it extra depth, I think, by making the two girls sisters and giving Joanna (Baxter) a failed romance as part of the reason for her despair. The performances by all three key characters, including elder sister Sue (Jean Peters) and the girls’ upstairs neighbor, irascible old painter Behrmann (Gregory Ratoff), are excellent, and the final scene is just as beautiful as in the story. Bring along a handkerchief for this one.

“The Ransom of Red Chief,” is, unfortunately, the weakest of the bunch, though based on one of O. Henry’s most famous tales, in which two hapless con-men  (Fred Allen and Oscar Levant) kidnap a small boy and wind up driven to their wits’ end by his antics. The dialogue is clever enough, but the pacing is very flat—it doesn’t have the same snappy hilarity as the story, with the two men reduced to exhaustion by the end. I think part of the problem is that both Allen and Levant play it with a kind of deadpan humor; I liked Allen’s performance, but thought it would have been better if he’d had a more goofy or excitable partner-in-crime to play off. Lee Aaker is just right as “Red Chief,” but his part seemed small compared to the story. (I understand that this segment was actually dropped for the first theatrical release; I can understand why.)

And finally we have “The Gift of the Magi.” You all know this one. The famed Christmas story of a young couple (Jeanne Crain and Farley Granger) trying to find a way to buy Christmas presents for each other, in spite of having very little money, is given a very sweet and faithful adaptation—again, using the dialogue and a scene with the couple looking in shop windows to expand the background of the characters. You might want to save a corner of your handkerchief from “The Last Leaf”—it’s a lovely way to end the film.

One of the things I loved best about O. Henry’s Full House is the period-correct atmosphere: the Edwardian-era clothing and hairstyles are excellent, much better than one usually sees in a film like this; the setting of old New York City with its brownstones and shop-window displays and the rattling and roaring of the elevated trains is brought to life wonderfully. Besides the original music by Alfred Newman, the score is filled with old popular songs, hymns and Christmas carols, adding to the old-fashioned feel (you can hear “After the Ball” playing in the background of the short scene with Marilyn Monroe in “The Cop and the Anthem”). It’d make a great holiday-season film, I think, considering that three of the five stories have a wintry setting and the final one winds up at Christmas!

Of course you know I’m going to finish by recommending the original stories. Viewers who already love O. Henry will probably enjoy this film most, but I think even those not yet acquainted with him will probably like it too. It’s available on DVD and on Amazon Instant Video.