The Muppet Christmas Carol

My plan for this blog was to try and save most of the big, famous versions of the story until towards the end, so I had something to look forward to and was also discovering and helping others to discover less familiar versions. However, ever since I revealed to friends and colleagues last week that I was doing this, the one reaction pretty much anyone who’s noticed has had to the idea has been “Have you done / when are you doing the Muppets?”

So, here we are…

Title:

The Muppet Christmas Carol

Format:

Colour feature film

Country:

USA (for the money, companies and production talent, although it was primarily shot in the UK)

Production company:

Jim Henson Productions, for Walt Disney Pictures

Year:

1992

Length:

86 minutes

Setting:

A fantastical version of Victorian London, where puppets and talking animals and even talking vegetables live alongside humans without comment.

Background:

Created by Jim Henson, the Muppets had become phenomenally popular through their series The Muppet Show in the late 1970s, made for sale in the USA but produced in the UK after Henson had failed to find backing in his own country. The Muppet Christmas Carol has a similarly transatlantic background, with the finance and most of the creative input coming from the States, but the film actually being shot at Shepperton Studios in the UK.

The success of the Muppets had first seen them hit cinema screens with The Muppet Movie in 1979, but The Muppet Christmas Carol was their first big screen outing since The Muppets Take Manhattan in 1984. It was also their first feature film to be made after the death of the original creative force behind them, Jim Henson, who had died in 1990, and their first movie to be based on a literary source, something they would repeat with the subsequent Muppet Treasure Island. It was also the first Muppet production to be distributed by Disney – they would go on to purchase the Muppets outright in 2004.

On its original release in 1992, The Muppet Christmas Carol was did not made a particularly huge impact in the cinema, although it did make a profit. However, it’s gone on to enjoy a long and hugely successful life on home media and on television, becoming a festive staple and an integral part of the Christmas season for millions.

Cast and crew:

Michael Caine was not yet a knight of the realm at this point, and had yet to win his second Oscar, but he did already have one Academy Award under his belt, as well as nearly thirty years as one of Britain’s highest-profile film stars. He had undergone something of a career dip in the late eighties and early nineties, appearing in all manner of tat as long as it paid well, but whether by accident or design here he ended up taking on a role that will long be remembered as one of the defining ones of his career. There can be no doubt that for several generations of children for from The Muppet Christmas Carol is the first – or indeed, only – exposure to Dickens’s story, Caine is Scrooge, and he’s no bad one at that.

This was the first Muppet feature film to be made after the death of their creator and driving force Jim Henson in 1990, and the film is dedicated to his memory, along with that of fellow Muppet performer Richard Hunt, who had died at the beginning of 1992. In spite of these losses, the team is on fine form, with Brian Henson stepping into his father’s shoes as director, and Steve Whitmire replacing Henson as Kermit the Frog, the most famous of all the Muppets (although playing a supporting role as Bob Cratchit here). I am sure Muppet experts can tell the difference, but for a more casual viewer like me it’s hard to tell that it isn’t Henson doing the work, as Whitmire seems spot on.

Writer Jerry Juhl had been the lead writer on The Muppet Show, the original success story, and he brings all of the wit, creativity and verve that was so often on display there to his task of adapting Dickens for the world of the Muppets. He was clearly a man who admired the source material, and it shows – there’s even a line at the end telling the audience that if they enjoyed this, then they should read the book!

"Humbug!"

Underdone Potato:

Part of the charm of this film is that it is “narrated” on screen by Dave Goelz-as-Gonzo-as-Charles Dickenks, accompanied by Steve Whitmire as Rizzo the Rat. Their presence, interjections and relation of some of the original prose of the book really adds a level to the film, and I don’t think it would be quite the same – nor quite as well-loved – without them.

In the initial scene in the counting house, a new character of “Mr Applegate” is added, someone whose home Scrooge is about to repossess, presumably to demonstrate just what a nasty character he is. Applegate is a fairly anonymous Muppet, but does get one of the film’s best lines – “thank you for not shouting at me!”

Steven Mackintosh is not one of the best Freds there’s been, and sadly he loses a lot of the character’s best dialogue – the “fellow passengers” speech is unfortunately absent. There is an interesting change made in that Fred remains present for the visit of the two charitable gentlemen – a perfectly cast Bunsen and Beaker.

The cheeriness of Bob/Kermit’s One More Sleep ‘Til Christmas is nicely undercut at the end of the song by the carol singer Scrooge had earlier seen off shivering and homeless in the cold. The scenes in Scrooge’s house all work very well, although while the Marleys’ – two of them, played by Statler and Waldorf! – song isn’t bad, it does come at the expense of losing most of the original dialogue from the scene. While this doesn’t matter hugely when the intent and message are still there, I do always miss it whenever anyone leaves out the fact that it’s (the) Marley(s) who procured this chance of redemption for Scrooge. They do, however, get a nice moment where they point out what a dreadful old pun the “more of gravy than of grave” line is!

Past:

The Ghost of Christmas Past is an extremely well done original puppet creature, created very cleverly by filming the puppet in a water tank to give it a floating, ethereal presence. It’s clearly a female spirit rather than androgynous as in the book, but is still very much within the… er… spirit of what Dickens suggests, I think.

We see Scrooge at school, although there is no Fan to come and take him away in this version – she’s omitted entirely, which means we lose the dialogue between Scrooge and the spirit about Fred, further taking away some of his presence in the film.

The casting of Fozzie Bear as “Fozziwig” was perhaps irresistible, and for any long-term viewer of the Muppets it’s great to see so many familiar characters in this scene. This includes Statler and Waldorf, with the film perhaps taking a leaf from the book of the 1951 Alastair Sim version by having (the) Marley(s) working at Fezziwig / Fozziwig’s alongside Scrooge.

Like many other adaptations, this version brings Belle to the party. We then see her breaking off the engagement to Scrooge a few years later, and depending on which version of the film you’re watching you may or may not then have to suffer Belle singing a fairly dreadful song. As with a lot of versions, they don’t show Belle at home happily married to her eventual husband on the Christmas Eve when (the) Marley(s) die(s).

Unusually, they're not the stars - but it wouldn't be a Muppet movie without these two!

Present:

The Ghost of Christmas Present is another original puppet, this one closely resembling the traditional depiction of the character as large, jolly and bearded. His initial exchanges with Scrooge provide one of the very few jarring examples of Jerry Juhl’s script trying a bit too hard to make the story more accessible to younger viewers – Scrooge’s remark about the spirit’s 1800-plus brothers being “a tremendous family to provide for” becomes “Imagine the grocery bills!”

We see the two traditional visions usually provided, of the Cratchits at home and Fred and his wife and their friends at their party. The scene at Fred’s is quite short, and loses something in that we only see them mocking Scrooge in their game, and not the kind words Fred usually has to say about his uncle at this juncture.

Seeing Miss Piggy as Mrs Cratchit and her and Bob/Kermit’s little family of pigs and frogs is a joy, though, and this scene is pretty much played straight and by-the-book. I love the production design of the street on which the Cratchits live, with its skew-whiff, higgledy-piggledy houses that really do look like something out of a faitytale.

The spirit ages, as in the book, although quite suddenly towards the end of his sequence, rather than gradually across it. There are no Ignorance and Want, which is usually a sign that the message of the story has been softened a little, although any thoughts of that are excised by the following section…

Yet to Come:

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is everything you would want of the spirit – tall, hooded, imposing and silent. The film itself signals that things are going to be taken very seriously here, with our narrators Gonzo and Rizzo decide to scamper off and leave the viewers to it until the finale.

We have the businessmen discussing Scrooge’s death all present and correct, and then a slightly truncated but basically all there version of the scene with Old Joe being sold Scrooge’s belongings. I can only imagine how surprised audiences back in 1992 must have been by what then follows, with Kermit and Migg Piggy basically doing ‘straight acting’, as it were, mourning the death of Tiny Tim… Robin the Frog, dead! Bob/Kermit gets to keep the line about “…this first parting between us,” from the book, all of which helps add to the impact of the scene.

Scrooge then comes, as he must, to have his grave and admit to himself who it was who was being talked of earlier… There’s a nice little bit of business from Caine here, as with a movement of the arm and a half a glance to the spirit, he tries to indicate a sort of “surely you actually meant this stone over here, didn’t you…? Oh…”

What’s To-Day:

I can’t remember if this is done in other versions, although it may be – the boy Scrooge calls down to after his redemption is the same carol singer who he chased away from his business at the start of the film. (Bean Bunny, for those of you who know your Muppets!)

This is quite a well-known bit of trivia now, I think, but watch out for shopfronts bearing the names of Statler and Waldorf, and Caine’s own real name, Micklewhite.

We see Scrooge briefly visit Fred, and he does make up with the two charitable gentlemen as well – receiving Beaker’s scarf in return, which is rather nice. (Incidentally, is Beaker – clearly addressed as such earlier on – the only Muppet in the film aside from the narrators who maintains his Muppet name ‘in character’ in the story…?)

While various other adaptations have had Scrooge visit the Cratchits’ household in person after his redemption, and have had him be there to pretend to be angry at Bob not being at work, the Muppets take this pretence to its logical conclusion and have Mrs Cratchit absolutely furious at him and determined to give him a piece of her mind, until all is revealed.

Gonzo-as-Dickens, of course, gets some of the closing narration from the book, which is often included, sometimes read by a narrator and sometimes by the character of Fred – there can rarely have been a more triumphant “who did NOT die!” when it’s being delivered, though. Everyone and their brother is then at the Cratchits’ household for the final singalong, so it’s just as well that such a big turkey was sent for. The film as whole, however, is very far from being a turkey of any size.

Our intrepid narrator... plus the one who's only here for the food!

Review:

In some features about Michael Caine and his career, I have seen this film dismissed as being a part of his “I’ll do anything, me…” phase, when he was appearing in absolutely any old tat that paid well, not bothered about the end result as long as it paid for a new house or a swimming pool. Perhaps that may be true – perhaps Caine was only in this for the money. But if that is the case, then not only did he get incredibly lucky, but he’s also capable of putting in a pretty decent performance for a man who’s not that bothered.

Make no mistake, ultimately this is the film for which Caine will be remembered down the decades. When the likes of The Italian Job, Alfie and Zulu have faded from the memories of anyone other than the film buffs and media historians, this will still be a great festive favourite, beloved of the generations.

And that is no bad legacy for anybody to have, because it is a wonderful film.

The decision to cast Gonzo as a narrating ‘Charles Dickens’ was a stroke of genius, and fits in perfectly with the style of the book, and indeed of Dickens’s writing generally. For although A Christmas Carol is written in the third person, it is not simply told. It really is narrated by Dickens, with a narrative voice which quite happily and frequently stops to chat to you along the way – hence why Dickens always had such great success with it as a public reading.

Gonzo’s cheekiness works well with conveying Dickens’s tone, and enables the inclusion of some great bits of Dickens’s non-dialogue writing which usually has to be left out of most adaptations. There have been narrators before in other versions, of course – such as Vincent Price in the 1949 television version. But in that version Price was separate from the action, reading the book somewhere else. This is as if he’d stepped onto the set and joined in, and it’s amazing to think that nobody else has ever tried this, although admittedly it may be difficult to make it work in a more ‘straight’ adaptation of the story.

All of the other pieces of Muppet casting work excellent as well, down to Fozzie Bear as a renamed ‘Fozziwig’ in the Christmas Past section. The one which probably does just pull you up short is Statler and Waldorf as the Marley Brothers. I have no problem with there being two Marleys, but the fact that we are so familiar with these two and their usual Muppet characterisations means that it’s actually quite difficult to imagine them having any kind of guilt or repentance for their meanness. This is why the casting of Caine as Scrooge and of brand new, traditional to Dickens creations as the three spirits, works much better, as we don’t have as much of a pre-conceived, fully-formed idea of their characters.

Aside from that, if there is a weak link here then it’s the songs, a traditional stumbling point for any musical version of the story. The opening number, Scrooge, is wonderful, but that’s part of the problem – it sets such a high standard that none of the others ever quite live up to it. One More Sleep ‘Til Christmas, Marley and Marley and It Feels Like Christmas are okay, but everything else is a touch over-saccharine for me, the latter being a constant issue which Carol adaptations have to beware of. This is mainly a problem with the lyrics, however – the music itself is lovely, and works very well as an opening theme.

Overall, though, these are minor quibbles. Adults may cringe a bit during one or two of the songs, but outside of that this is an utter delight from end to end, a film that really does seem to have something for everyone. It’s terrific fun, but unlike some of the other versions aimed primarily at a younger audience, it doesn’t really pull any of the story’s punches, with perhaps the exception of the absence of Ignorance and Want at the end of the Christmas Present section. If you’re a fan of the Carol but haven’t seen this adaptation, then I beseech you to seek it out immediately – it’ll be the best Christmas gift to yourself that you could possibly have.

In a nutshell:

One of the ‘Big Four’ adaptations of the Carol which stand head and shoulders above the others. Real love and effort clearly went into this, and the end result is superb.

Links:
Muppet Wiki

Wikipedia

IMDb

Scrooged

Not the actual title card from the film - this is the one from the trailer, but I only have the film on blu-ray so can't do grabs from it on my laptop, which only has a DVD drive. I'm sure you wanted to know all of that...!

Title:

Scrooged

Format:

Colour feature film

Country:

USA

Production company:

Mirage Productions, for Paramount Pictures

Year:

1988

Length:

101 minutes

Setting:

Contemporary USA.

Background:

A modern-day retelling of the story set in the headquarters of a fictional television network – and actually, probably the first big, mainstream Hollywood adaptation of A Christmas Carol for fifty years.  The most famous versions made in the meantime had all either been for television or had been British films.

Cast and crew:

Bill Murray plays the Scrooge equivalent here, television executive Frank Cross, the president of the fictional ‘IBC’ network. Murray was a huge star at the time, well known for another highly successful film involving ghosts, Ghostbusters. Karen Allen plays love interest and Belle equivalent Claire Phillips – Allen was probably best known at time for playing opposite Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Frank’s brother James is played by Murray’s own brother John, while Robert Mitchum makes a heavyweight cameo as Frank’s boss. Bobcat Goldthwait as the employee fired by Frank seems to be doing a sort of impression of another Ghostbusters alumnus, Rick Moranis – but then again, as I’ve never seen Goldthwait in anything else, this may just be how he is all the time. Alfre Woodard as Grace is not an actress I am very familiar with, but she had earlier in the decade been nominated for an Academy Award, so certainly added to a storied cast list.

Director Richard Donner had previously handled two of the best-known films of the 1970s, The Omen and the Christopher Reeve Superman. Mitch Glazer and Michael O’Donoghue provided the screenplay – they had both worked on magazines before moving into scriptwriting, and had been writing partners on other projects in the past.

Not exactly the best boss in town...

Underdone Potato:

The film takes place in a storybook idea of a television network – the big, fancy network offices, but with a working production studio present in the building as well, making a live television adaptation of A Christmas Carol for broadcast on Christmas Eve in the United States, the type of programme that even by 1988 was pretty much a thing of the past.

Frank Cross fires an underling who dares to question him, and has his Bob Cratchit equivalent – his personal assistant, Grace – compiling his Christmas list of which important business contacts get a bath towel, and which a VHS machine. We see various examples of how cynical and morally bankrupt Frank is, although he is also quite amusingly blackly comic with it.

Frank is visited by the ghost of his former boss, Lew Hayward, who warns him to change his ways and tells him he will be visited by three spirits – but in the middle of the day, rather than the night. Also unlike the original, Frank has time back in the ‘real’ world between each of his ghostly visitations, seeming increasingly unravelled to his colleagues as he struggles to come to terms with what’s happening to him.

The character of Lew gets one of the few of Dickens’s original lines to appear in the film, when he tells Frank that “mankind was my business!”

Past:

The first of the three spirits is probably the most memorable of this adaptation – in this instance, the Ghost of Christmas Past is a grubby, loud-mouthed, obnoxious New York cab driver. He makes for a good foil to the cynical cross, and takes Frank to some locations that have echoes of Scrooge’s upbringing in the original.

Instead of lonely schooldays, we see a lonely home life for young Frank, with the television his only company and how he lives his life vicariously – actually, quite a good parallel for Scrooge’s enthusiasm for his childhood storybooks in the original. A party at the television network where Frank has just started working makes a good replacement for Fezziwig’s party. (Although Dickens would never, in his wildest imaginings, have pictured a party which featured a young lady making pictures of her backside on the office photocopier!)

Having said that, trying to persuade us that Murray is 17 years old – 17! – as the young Frank is almost as ludicrous as Seymour Hicks trying to get away with portraying the younger Scrooge in the 1935 version. Indeed, Murray and Karen Allen never seem to look any different at any point in the twenty-odd year time frame of their characters which they portray during the film, which is something of an issue but one the film pretty much cheerfully ignores.

There’s also an equivalent of the Belle scene, as Claire tells Frank that they should split up… while the young Frank is dressed as a giant dog on the set of a children’s television show. Once again, probably not something Dickens ever had in mind…

Present:

The Ghost of Christmas Present is portrayed as a hugely irritating character here, but deliberately so – Carol Kane looks like a woman going to a fancy dress part as a fairy when she’s slightly too old for it, and adopts a forthright, squeaky-voiced, overly-excitable and at times quite violent attitude towards Frank.

We’re shown Christmases at Frank’s brother’s house, and with his assistant Grace. Between the visits of the Ghost of Christmas Past and Present, Frank had gone to seek out Claire at the homeless shelter where she’s now working, and meets a group of drunken homeless people who are convinced he’s Richard Burton. At the end of the Christmas Present section, Frank finds that one of these three has frozen to death out on the streets – quite a touching moment which, surprisingly, isn’t ‘put right’ at the end of the film, although we do see him as a cheerful ‘angel’ alongside the Ghost of Christmas Present, watching the reformed Frank briefly at the end.

Yet to Come:

In one of the ‘gaps’ between the spirits’ visitations to Frank, he is frightened by a vision of the traditional Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come… Only to find it is an actor dressed up for the part for the TV version being made. The ‘IBC’ version of the character actually looks quite cheap and tacky, while the ‘real’ version Frank goes on to meet is the full works – even having some sort of creatures living under its robes, perhaps suggested by Ignorance and Want lurking under Present’s robes in the original book.

The spirit shows Frank a future where Grace’s son Calvin is confined to an asylum, where Claire has become even harsher and more cynical than himself, and he has died and about to be cremated. Frank finds himself in the coffin as it starts to burn, perhaps an unconscious echo of Scrooge’s descent into hell in the 1970 musical version. His legs are even starting to burn, as he awakes once more into the real world…

Not the 'actual' Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come!

What’s To Day:

Frank doesn’t need to ask what day it is, but he does discover from the time that he “hasn’t missed” his live television special, which he promptly proceeds to hijack, going off onto a great long rant about how everyone should be so much nicer to one another. This means it’s still Christmas Eve, and Frank extols the virtues of what a wonderful day of the year that is – something I and I think many others would agree on. Christmas Eve has a magical quality all of its own which the day itself somehow lacks, and the film is quite clever in tapping into that sentiment.

There’s also a little bit of sentiment from the film’s Tiny Tim equivalent, Calvin, of course – he finally speaks for the first time in several years to deliver the “God bless us, every one!” line. Unlike Scrooge, Frank also gets to be reunited with his lost love, with Claire racing to the television studios in a cb driven, of course, by the Ghost of Christmas Past seen earlier in the film.

Review:

While the end credits claim that this film was merely “suggested by” Dickens’s book, it has the structure and intention of A Christmas Carol well and truly running through it, and even one or two of the lines – while at the same time of course deliberately referencing the original with its conceit of being based around a live television spectacular adaptation of the novel.

The television aspect actually does make the film well and truly like a period piece now. It’s a relic from the days when old-fashioned linear network television was the king of the modern media, before the arrival of the internet and the fragmentation of the audience with so many new things to watch and so many new ways of watching them. It does at times almost feel as if the film is something of an attack on television – or more charitably, a satire of – skewering some of its very worst and most tasteless excesses. Which is pretty rich, when you consider some of the absolute rubbish the film industry has always churned out, and continues to do so.

This is certainly not rubbish, however. While it may have quite a cynical edge, it’s an intriguing and cleverly-done updating of the story of A Christmas Carol, and Murray certainly makes for a very engaging and amusing leading man. He carries off Frank’s cynicism and sarcasm very nicely, although he’s not quite as convincing when it comes to the post-redemption Frank. Indeed, the whole film does rather run out of steam when everything is nice and happy and solved at the end, with Frank’s rant on the set of the live Christmas Carol adaptation going on for rather too long and taking some of the fun out of the film.

But there is a lot of fun to be had here, from Frank’s escapades and how he reacts to what’s happening, and the intriguing versions of the ghosts. For any dedicated fan of the Carol, there’s also a great deal of fun to be had from the glimpses we see of the ‘IBC’ network’s adaptation of the story, with its bizarre international settings, troop of scantily-clad disco dancers and mice with antlers glued onto them. Even most of the bits of dialogue and narration we hear from the production are actually cod-Victorian nonsense, rather than genuinely from the Carol. Nowhere is this adaptation of the story ever called A Christmas Carol, either – it’s always referred to as “Charles Dickens’ classic Scrooge…”

This certainly isn’t a film that will be to everyone’s tastes, and the fact that it has dated so much because of its setting means I doubt it stands the test of time as well as any of the more faithful and straight adaptations. But it’s certainly worth a watch, and was a great relief to enjoy after having suffered through so many distinctly ropey adaptations of the Carol of late!

In a nutshell:

Not in any way traditional or faithful to the book, but it takes the story and its main features and does something different and fun with them.

Links:

Wikipedia

IMDb

A Christmas Carol - 1954, television

Title:

A Christmas Carol

Format:

Film production for television – according to an Associated Press piece from January 1955 it was shot in colour, but internet sources suggest only a black-and-white version now survives. Certainly that was the only format I was able to find it in, and would have been how the majority of viewers at the time would have seen it, so I am putting it down as black-and-white in my categories.

Country:

USA

Production company:

Desilu Productions, for CBS

Year:

1954 (first broadcast on the CBS network on December 23^rd that year)

Length:

52 minutes

Setting:

Victorian – supposedly British, as there’s mention of pounds and shillings, but as often seems to be the case in American versions there’s little or no attempt at any British accents.

Background:

This was made for an anthology series called Shower of Stars, which ran on the CBS network in the United States from the autumn of 1954 to the spring of 1958. I have found some suggestion online that every edition of Shower of Stars was produced by Desilu, although I haven’t been able to verify that. Evidently broadcast approximately once a month, it was mostly known for lighter, musical and comedy fare rather than hard-hitting drama.

Desilu, of course, were one of the top independent production companies in US television during the 1950s and 60s, known particularly for their co-founder Lucille Ball’s sitcom I Love Lucy. These days, however, they are probably best known for being the original makers of Star Trek.

Cast and crew:

Fredric March is probably one of the most distinguished actors ever to have played Scrooge, going solely in terms of awards – he was twice a winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor, although I would suggest that these days he is little known outside of the world of film buffs. Basil Rathbone as Marley might be a slightly better-remembered performer, particularly as he is well-known for his role as one of the big screen’s most prominent Sherlock Holmeses.

Director Ralph Levy handled various other entries into the Shower of Stars series, and had been working in television since its earliest days in the United States in the 1940s. He continued directing filmed drama series right up until the dawn of the 1980s, helming episodes of Hawaii Five-O.

The adaptation and the lyrics for the songs were written by acclaimed American playwright Maxwell Anderson, celebrated for such works as Anne of the Thousand Days, although I doubt this features very high in anybody’s lists of his greatest achievements. Bernard Hermann, the hugely successful Hollywood composer behind such things as Psycho’s strings, provided the score, although again I don’t think this is likely to be remembered as one of his greatest achievements.

One unusual note on the acting score is that Queenie Leonard reprises the Mrs Cratchit role she had previously played in the 1949 American television version.

"Humbug!"

Underdone Potato:

In an interesting twist to how these things usually work, we start outside in the street, see the two charitable gentlemen soliciting another donation from someone else, and then follow them into Scrooge’s office, where they are met with their usual response. March gives a bizarre smile after delivering the “surplus population” line, as if Scrooge were utterly delighted for having come up with it, and it makes him seem a little demented.

Ray Middleton seems a bit too old, a bit too solid and several shades too over-the-top for Fred, and is frankly pretty dreadful in the part. He’s clearly been cast with more of an eye on the second role he plays in the production, as we’ll come to later.

Despite not having much of the original dialogue to deliver, Basil Rathbone does a good turn as Marley. Indeed, he’s possibly the best thing in this, and his mournful cries of “Oh God…” as he backs out of the room and fades away after speaking to Scrooge are quite genuinely disturbing.

Past:

The Ghost of Christmas Past is very definitely female, and for a good reason – Sally Fraser is cast both as the spirit and as Belle, with Scrooge noticing the resemblance. She’s actually quite cheerful and kind towards Scrooge, more so than the Spirit seems to be in the original book when it’s perhaps a little more distant towards him.

There’s quite a nice transition when she persuades Scrooge to follow her out of his bedroom window, and they step through the shutters onto the edge of the dance floor at old Fezziwig’s Christmas party. Anderson does rather labour the point, however, when he has the spirit reply to Scrooge’s delight at seeing “Old Fezziwig, alive again!” with “No, not alive again, this is Christmas Past.”

The part as a whole seems a bit too posh and refined – less of a works Christmas Eve knees-up, and more like something out of a Jane Austen adaptation. Ebenezer and Belle getting all operatic with one another probably doesn’t help things a great deal in this regard.

When the spirit then moves things on to show Belle rejecting him, it’s handled in something of a cack-handed manner which makes it unclear whether this is something which happened in the same location at a later Christmas, or whether after singing their song she’s decided that’s quite enough of that, and dumped him on the spot.

This is all we see, with nothing of Scrooge at school, no mention of Fan, and no glimpse of Belle happily married later in life.

Present:

The Ghost of Christmas Present is also a figure familiar to Scrooge – it’s Ray Middleton again, who also plays Fred. A beardless version of the spirit seemingly covered in cheap tinsel, he’s better here than he is as Fred, but that’s not saying a great deal. After singing an interminably dull song about how Christmas, he shows Scrooge just a single vision, a rather treacly depiction of Christmas in the Cratchit household.

Once again Anderson seems to lay it on a bit thick, having Bob tell his wife that he’d be able to buy Tiny Tim the medical care he needs with “…just a few more shillings a week.”

As this is the only scene of the present we are shown, Anderson takes the guessing game about Scrooge being a dangerous animal and transposes it from Fred’s party to the Cratchit house, with the children trying to guess from Bob’s clues, which feels rather out of character for him.

Yet to Come:

In trimming the story down to fit an hour-long slot on commercial television, this is the section that has suffered the most. During the early part of the story, I noticed that weirdly, Scrooge’s dwellings had a stuffed raven as a bit of set decoration. During the Christmas Present section, the spirit seems to bring this creature back to life and send it flying out of Scrooge’s window.

Now the bird returns, sitting and shuffling around to sort of indicate that it wants Scrooge to look at some graves in a graveyard. He sees his own grave, dated 1843 – the year of the book’s release, of course, which perhaps suggests he’ll die this very year if he doesn’t reform his ways – and then the grave of Tiny Tim (bizarrely, labelled “Tiny Tim” and not “Timothy Cratchit”).

And that’s it.

Er... The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, apparently. I can't help but feel this was a rather serious piece of miscasting...

What’s To-Day:

Scrooge asks the boy what day it is out of his window, but doesn’t send him for a turkey. He meets the charitable gentlemen in the street again and gives them what seems to be nothing more than a bit of loose change, but they appear amazed and delighted by it.

He goes to Fred’s and asks him to “save me some mince pie…” as he’ll be coming back later, before he heads of to the Cratchits. There is no pretending to still be mean and horrible in this version, he’s forgiving and repentant. He’s not that kind, though, as he’s invited them round for Christmas dinner without even having provided a new bird himself – perhaps Anderson was making a point about not liking what Dickens does in the original, as Mrs Cratchit has a line earlier on about how many hours their meagre goose will take to cook.

“Would you like to hear my Christmas song?” Tim asks Scrooge at the end. No, we bloody wouldn’t! We heard it a few minutes ago in the Christmas Present section, and it was terrible then! However, we – and Scrooge – have to sit there and suffer it, and incredibly the whole thing ends with about two minutes of a close-up on Scrooge’s face while he listens to this dirge.

Review:

Often labelled as a musical, I’m not sure whether that’s actually the case with this production. For one thing the songs are – mercifully! – relatively few, but also they are actually all a part of the action, all sung by characters in context. So, for example, you have carollers singing in the street, people singing at a party, the Ghost of Christmas Present singing to Scrooge… the characters are all aware of singing and having sung as a part of their actual world.

The main problem with the songs is that none of them serve to move the story on in any fashion – they simply appear, sit there wasting time for a couple of minutes usually repeating one line over and over again, holding up the action for no good reason and bringing the pace of the whole production to a complete standstill. Nor do any of them have the redeeming quality of being in any way special or memorable.

Maxwell Anderson may have been a highly-acclaimed writer, but his decision to throw out a lot of Dickens’s original dialogue and replace it with inventions of his own only results in disappointment here. According to the Associated Press in 1955, at $100,000 this was reckoned to have possibly been the most expensive one-hour television special yet made. While some of the effects work quite well, it’s hard to work out what they spent all of that money on, as for the most part this is quite a threadbare production, both physically and imaginatively.

In a nutshell:

Distinctly unimpressive, and not worth seeking out.

Links:

Wikipedia

IMDb