O. Henry's Full House

Directed by Henry Koster, from a screenplay by Lamar Trotti, it stars Charles Laughton, Marilyn Monroe and David Wayne. As winter approaches, a vagrant decides it's time for his annual winter spell in prison. But no matter how hard he tries, he cannot get himself arrested.

Directed by Henry Hathaway, from a screenplay by Richard L. Breen, it stars Dale Robertson and Richard Widmark. Plot: A detective cannot arrest a murderer he knows from his past due to his honor involving an outstanding financial debt to the criminal. Once a newspaper offers a reward, after being mocked by the criminal, the detective arrests the criminal and collects the reward to repay the debt.

This vignette reunited Henry Hathaway and Richard Widmark who'd worked together on the noir classic Kiss of Death (1947). Widmark's character in The Clarion Call, "Johnny Kernan", is actually a reprise of his Oscar-nominated character "Tommy Udo" from Kiss of Death. Widmark's Udo/Kernan character was inspired by his love of Batman comics' "The Joker". The Tommy Udo performance in turn influenced Frank Gorshin in preparation for his "Riddler" character on the Batman TV series in the 1960s.

Richard Widmark as Johnny Kernan in O. Henry's Full House (1952) anthology film. The Kernan character (a reprise of Widmark's "Tommy Udo") appears in the segment entitled "The Clarion Call", directed by Henry Hathaway.

Directed by Jean Negulesco, from a screenplay by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, it stars Anne Baxter, Jean Peters, and Gregory Ratoff. The story is set in Greenwich Village during a pneumonia epidemic. An old artist saves the life of a young artist, dying of pneumonia, by giving her the will to live. She can see an ivy plant through the window gradually losing its leaves, and has taken it into her head that she will die when the last leaf falls. Seemingly, it never does fall, and she survives. In reality, the vine lost all its leaves. What she thought she saw was in actuality a leaf, painted on the wall with perfect realism, by the old artist. The old artist dies of a heart attack while out in the wet and cold, painting the last leaf.

Directed by Howard Hawks, from a screenplay by Ben Hecht, Nunnally Johnson and Charles Lederer, it stars Fred Allen, Oscar Levant and Lee Aaker. Two con men kidnap a child in order to collect a substantial ransom, but the child proves to be too much for them.

Directed by Henry King, from a screenplay by Walter Bullock, it stars Jeanne Crain and Farley Granger. On Christmas Eve, with little money, Della sells her hair to buy her husband Jim a watch fob. Jim has sold his watch to buy her a pair of ornamental combs. When they exchange these now useless gifts, they realize how deep is their love for one another.