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[0:16] John Schwab: Hi, John Schwab here from Curtain Call, and welcome to episode 107 of the Curtain Call of Theater Podcast, the podcast that brings you backstage as close as you possibly can be, often while the shows are actually happening, to meet the people that make theater happen.

[0:30] John Schwab: You can find all our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and other fine podcast streaming services.

[0:34] John Schwab: And if you have a spare 30 seconds, hey, we all love a Christmas present. Please rate and review the podcast on whichever platform you use to help us be more discoverable to listeners who haven't heard about us yet.

[0:46] John Schwab: We would love that. And now for this week's podcast, and it's a Christmas special, of course.

[0:52] John Schwab: Uh I'm not gonna be taking you backstage this week, but don't worry, I will be doing that next week uh with some of our good friends over at Kinky Boots.

[1:00] John Schwab: Uh but this week, however, to celebrate the holidays, I thought I would bring you one of my favorite Christmas stories. Now I know a uh a couple years back I brought you the night before Christmas, and uh I thought I'd do something along the same lines, and I've had the pleasure of reading an adaptation of this next story on the BBC uh radio a few years back, and in my opinion, this sums up not only a great story, it sums up everything that we should be uh as people, not only at this time of year, but all year round.

[1:30] John Schwab: Selflessness, givingness—givingness is that even a word? Selfless, giving, loving, and grateful. Those are the things we should be. Um so uh sit back. Please enjoy this timeless tale, The Gift of the Magi, written in 1905 by American author O. Henry.

[1:54] John Schwab: One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Penny saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied.

[2:17] John Schwab: Three times Della counted it one dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas. There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

[2:47] John Schwab: While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at eight dollars per week, it did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.

[3:05] John Schwab: In the vestibule below was a letter box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appearing there unto was a card bearing the name Mr. James Dillingham Young. The Dillingham had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid thirty dollars per week.

[3:30] John Schwab: Now, when the income was shrunk to twenty dollars, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above, he was called Jim, and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della, which is all very good.

[3:58] John Schwab: Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey backyard. And she had only one dollar and eighty-seven cents with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months with this result.

[4:30] John Schwab: Twenty dollars a week does not go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated—they always are. Only one dollar and eighty-seven cents to buy a present for Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him, something fine and rare and sterling, something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

[5:09] John Schwab: Perhaps you have seen a pier glass in an eight dollar flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della being slender, had mastered the art. Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass.

[5:34] John Schwab: Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length. Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Young's in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair.

[6:08] John Schwab: Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the air shaft, Della would have let her hang out the window some day to dry, just to depreciate her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.

[6:37] John Schwab: So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet. On went her old brown jacket, on went her old brown hat.

[7:09] John Schwab: With a whirl of skirts and with a brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out of the door and down the stairs to the street. Where she stopped, the sign read Madame Sofronie, hair goods of all kinds. One flight up Della ran and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the Sofronie.

[7:36] John Schwab: Will you buy my hair? asked Della. I buy hair, said Madame. Take your hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it. Down rippled the brown cascade. Twenty dollars, said Madame, lifting the mask with a practiced hand. Give it to me quick, said Della.

[7:59] John Schwab: Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor—she was ransacking the stores for Jim's present. She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out.

[8:24] John Schwab: It was a platinum fob chain, simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone, and not by meretricious ornamentation as all good things should do. It was even worthy of the watch. As soon as she saw it, she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value. The description applied to both.

[8:58] John Schwab: Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the eighty-seven cents. With that chain on his watch, Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company.

[9:12] John Schwab: Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly, on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

[9:22] John Schwab: When Della reached home, her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends. A mammoth task.

[9:42] John Schwab: Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully and critically.

[10:09] John Schwab: But what could I do? Oh, what can I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents? At seven o'clock the coffee was made and the frying pan was on the back of the stove, hot and ready to cook the chops. Jim was never late.

[10:26] John Schwab: Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit of saying a little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered please God make him think I am still pretty. The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it.

[10:58] John Schwab: He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two and to be burdened with a family. He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves. Jim stopped inside the door as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail.

[11:18] John Schwab: His eyes were fixed upon Della and there was an expression in them that she could not read and it terrified her. It was not anger nor surprise nor disapproval nor horror nor any of the sentiments that she had prepared for; he simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face. Della wriggled off the table and went for him.

[11:50] John Schwab: Jim, darling, she cried, don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold it because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it; my hair grows awfully fast. Say Merry Christmas Jim and let's be happy.

[12:03] John Schwab: You don't know what a nice, what a beautiful nice gift I've got for you. You've cut off your hair? Jim asked, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet, even after the hardest mental labor.

[12:24] John Schwab: Cut it off and sold it, said Della. Don't you like me just as well anyhow? I'm I'm me without my hair, ain't I? Jim looked about the room curiously.

[12:38] John Schwab: You say your hair is gone, he said with an air of almost idiocy. You needn't look for it, said Della. It's sold, I tell you, sold and gone too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered, she went on with a sudden serious sweetness, but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on Jim?

[13:05] John Schwab: Out of his trance, Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year. What is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer.

[13:32] John Schwab: The magi brought valuable gifts. But that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on. Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.

[13:50] John Schwab: Don't make any mistake, Dell, he said, about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package, you may see why you had me going awhile at first.

[14:13] John Schwab: White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper, and then an ecstatic scream of joy, and then alas, a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lords of the flat. For there lay the combs, the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window.

[14:46] John Schwab: Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell with jeweled rims, just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now they were hers.

[15:12] John Schwab: But the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone. But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say my hair grows so fast, Jim. And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, Oh Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present.

[15:37] John Schwab: She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with the reflection of her bright and ardent spirit. Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it.

[15:57] John Schwab: Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled. Dell, said he, let's put our Christmas presents away and keep them a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on.

[16:27] John Schwab: The magi, as you know, were wise men, wonderfully wise men, who brought gifts to the babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication.

[16:48] John Schwab: And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in the flat, who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days, let it be said that of all who give gifts, these two are the wisest.

[17:02] John Schwab: Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere. I hoped you enjoyed listening to that as much as I enjoyed recording it. I do love that story.

[17:42] John Schwab: And before we leave here, both Matt Humphrey and I, and everyone here at Curtain Call, would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas, a happy holiday season, just a truly safe and blessed new year and time with friends and family. We would also love to thank everyone for listening this year and are looking forward to bringing you more gifts in the shape of many more episodes in 2019.

[18:05] John Schwab: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and see you all next week. Bye.