Philip Van Doren Stern

Philip Van Doren Stern (September 10, 1900 – July 31, 1984) was an American writer, editor, and Civil War historian whose story "The Greatest Gift", published in 1943, inspired the classic Christmas film It's a Wonderful Life.

Early life Philip Van Doren Stern was born in Wyalusing, Pennsylvania, into a family of humble means. His Pennsylvania-born father, Isadore Ullman, was a traveling merchant of Bavarian Jewish descent, who came to Wyalusing from West Virginia with his New Jersey-born wife, the former Anne Van Doren. Stern grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey, and attended Lincoln High School in Jersey City before graduating from Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

Career After graduating from Rutgers in 1924, Stern worked in advertising before switching to a career as a designer and editor in publishing.

He was a historian and author of some 40 works, and was best known for his books on the Civil War that a New York Times obituary called "authoritative" and "widely respected by scholars". As an editor, he worked at Pocket Books, Simon & Schuster, and Alfred A. Knopf.

The story was published as a book in December 1944, with illustrations by Rafaello Busoni. Stern also sold it to Reader's Scope magazine, which published it in its December 1944 issue, and to the magazine Good Housekeeping, which published it under the title "The Man Who Was Never Born" in its January 1945 issue (published in December 1944). A small edition was produced in 1996

In a 1946 interview, Stern said that the story's setting of Bedford Falls had been modeled on Califon, New Jersey.

It's a Wonderful Life One of those pamphlets came to the attention of RKO Pictures producer David Hempstead, who showed it to actor Cary Grant. Grant became interested in playing the lead role, and RKO purchased the motion picture rights for $10,000 in April 1944. After several screenwriters worked on adaptations, RKO sold the rights to the story in 1945 to Frank Capra's production company, Liberty Films, for the same $10,000. Capra adapted the story into It's a Wonderful Life in 1946.

In December 1946, James Stewart, who played George Bailey in the film, wrote to Van Doren Stern, calling the story "an inspiration to everyone concerned with the picture... the fundamental story was so sound and right."

Major works An End to Valor: The Last Days of the Civil War, 1958 The Case of The Thing in the Brook, a mystery under the pseudonym Peter Storme, 1941 Prehistoric Europe: From Stone Age Man to the Early Greeks A Pictorial History of the American Automobile, 1903–1953 Edgar Allan Poe, Visitor from the Night of Time, 1973 When the Guns Roared, 1965 They Were There, 1959 Soldier Life in the Union and Confederate Armies, 1961 Henry David Thoreau: Writer and Rebel, 1972 The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln Secret Missions of the Civil War The Man Who Killed Lincoln: The Story of John Wilkes Booth, 1939, dramatized and staged in New York in 1940 The Annotated Walden: Walden; or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau The Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1964 Robert E. Lee, The Man and the Soldier; A Pictorial Biography The Confederate Navy: A Pictorial History "The Greatest Gift", 1943 Lola: A Love Story, 1949; historical novel based on the life of Lola Montez Tin Lizzie : The Story of the Fabulous Model T Ford The Portable Poe, 1945, edited, selected and with an introduction and notes by Stern