O. Henry's Full House (1952): The Anthology Film That Caught Marilyn Monroe Mid-Rise
Five O. Henry stories adapted by directors including Howard Hawks and Henry Hathaway — featuring an early Marilyn Monroe alongside Charles Laughton
O. Henry's Full House (1952) is a 117-minute anthology film from 20th Century-Fox adapting five short stories by O. Henry — each segment directed by a different filmmaker. The picture is most often watched today for its second segment, The Cop and the Anthem, which features Charles Laughton as a Bowery vagrant trying to get arrested for the winter and a 26-year-old Marilyn Monroe as a streetwalker he encounters.
The anthology structure
The five segments were directed by Henry Koster, Henry Hathaway, Howard Hawks, Henry King, and Jean Negulesco. John Steinbeck appears on screen as the narrator linking the segments. The picture was 20th Century-Fox's prestige answer to MGM's contemporaneous anthology pictures.
The Cop and the Anthem segment
Henry Koster directed the first segment. Charles Laughton plays Soapy, a homeless man on the Bowery who wants to spend winter in jail. He commits increasingly bold petty crimes trying to get arrested — each one is mistaken or ignored. Marilyn Monroe appears briefly as a streetwalker Soapy approaches in an attempt to provoke a vice arrest. The segment is the most-watched of the five today, almost entirely because of Monroe.
The Monroe career moment
Monroe was in transition in 1952. She had completed her speaking-role debut in Love Happy (1949) and was three years into her 20th Century-Fox contract. Don't Bother to Knock (1952), Niagara (1953), and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) were all in production or release within months. O. Henry's Full House captured Monroe at the exact moment her stardom was crystallizing. Her segment lasts roughly six minutes.
The Howard Hawks segment
Howard Hawks directed The Ransom of Red Chief — the most-cited O. Henry story, in which two kidnappers abduct a wealthy man's son only to find the boy unbearable. Hawks's segment is the picture's comic peak.
The Charles Laughton performance
Charles Laughton had won the Best Actor Oscar for The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). His Soapy in O. Henry's Full House is one of his best 1950s performances — physical, vulnerable, expertly comic. The segment relies almost entirely on Laughton's facial expressions and body work.
Public-domain status
O. Henry's Full House fell into the public domain through copyright-renewal lapses in the original 20th Century-Fox catalog handling. The picture circulates freely. The 117-minute runtime accommodates all five segments comfortably — viewers can watch the picture in its entirety or skip directly to The Cop and the Anthem for the Monroe-Laughton sequence.
