O. Henry's Full House

In his admiration for the author of the source material, fellow author John Steinbeck introduces five short films derived from the short stories of and describes the man that was William Sidney Porter, better know by his pen name, O. Henry. In "The Cop and the Anthem", winter is approaching in New York City, and vagrant and petty crook Soapy, with his friend Horace are wandering the streets as Soapy, against Horace's urging that it now a different place, tries to figure out a way to get back into prison for a few months if only for a nice warm bed and three square meals a day. Whatever Soapy tries to do to achieve his goal seems to have a different outcome, no matter how hard he tries. In "The Clarion", New York police detective Barney Woods notices among the evidence collected at a murder scene on a case in which he is not involved an item left by the murderer that could have only belonged to a childhood friend, Johnny Kernan. Even if Barney is able to find Johnny, he, under the code, doesn't know if he could arrest Johnny if only because he owes Johnny "one", that one in the form of a $1,000 debt, money which Barney does not have. If he can't come up with the money legitimately, Barney may resort to some subterfuge in still having some counterfeit money collected from a recent case. In "The Last Leaf", it's winter in turn-of-the-century working-class Greenwich Village. Despondent over a break-up, Jo Goodwin, ill-dressed for the weather in wandering the streets, contracts pneumonia. As her sister Susan Goodwin stands vigil over Jo in doing whatever she can, she is annoyed at the continual ruckus their upstairs neighbor, Mr. Behrman, a modern artist who is barely able to eke out a living as such, makes in creating his art. Twenty-one year old Jo has it in her mind that she will die when the last leaf falls off the ivy adorning the wall outside her window, as when she first noticed it from her bed, it had 21 leaves on it, which are now falling off in the winter weather. With a blizzard raging, Susan is certain Jo's fate will occur by morning, unaware of the role Mr. Behrman has taken in hoping Jo's fate is not as she predetermined. In "The Ransom of Red Chief", northern city slickers and con men Samuel Brown and William Smith - better known as Slick Sam and Weeping Willie - wanted by the police for embezzlement, are currently in rural Alabama as they map out their next con. For that con, they need some money, and they decide the most prudent way to get that money is to kidnap a child for ransom. After speaking to some locals, they believe the best kidnap victim would be 9-year0old J.B. Dorset, the son of local land baron, Eb Dorset--or so they believe. Slick and Will may have met their match with the Dorsets, especially resourceful J.B. And in "The Gift of the Magi", it's Christmas Eve, and Jim and Della Young, married for one year, are trying to decide what to buy the other for Christmas, neither having any money to do so as Jim's paltry wages as a bookkeeper are barely enough for them on which to survive. In they fondly recalling integral items associated with the first time they met, both Jim and Della show their ultimate love and sacrifice in what they choose as Christmas gifts for each other and how they intend to pay for them.