The Stingiest Man in Town - 1978, animation

Title:
The Stingiest Man in Town
 
Format:
Animated television special
 
Country:
USA / Japan
 
Production company:
Rankin/Bass Productions and Topcraft, for NBC
 
Year:
1978 (first shown on the NBC network in the USA on December 23^rd that year)
 
Length:
50 minutes
 
Setting:
Fantasy Victorian – a London where talking and singing animals are unremarkable, and everyone speaks with American accents
 
Background:
The Stingiest Man in Town had originally been a live-action – and, indeed, live broadcast – television production for NBC back in 1956, and while not being as big a success as other stage or feature film musicals of the time, it did receive a soundtrack release. 22 years later, NBC commissioned the well-known Rankin/Bass animation house to make this new version for Christmas 1978. Rankin/Bass were best known for their festive specials, although they usually worked in stop-motion animation rather than traditional drawn animation as here. Perhaps because of this, for The Stingiest Man in Town they collaborated with the Japanese animation house Topcraft, with whom they had an existing relationship from several other such collaborations throughout the 1970s – including an adaptation of the poem The Night Before Christmas broadcast on NBC in 1974.

Cast and crew:
Starring as the voice of Scrooge is Walter Matthau, best known at the time for his curmudgeonly starring role in the film The Odd Couple. You’d think that in an animated version they wouldn’t necessarily need to get someone else in to play the young Scrooge, but perhaps they felt Matthau’s voice wouldn’t convince as a younger man, so Robert Morse – later to be a star of the 21^st century TV drama Mad Men – plays young Ebenezer. Weirdly, Matthau’s then-teenage son Charles – who is in the voice cast in another, minor part – didn’t get the role, which you’d think might have made more sense if they were having him in it anyway.
 
Happy Days star Tom Bosley plays B. A.H. Humbug, Esquire (get it?) a sort of narrator figure who guides us through the action. Paul Frees, who was a stalwart of animation voices over many years for Disney and others, is both the Ghost of Christmas Past and Christmas Present, while Austrian-born movie veteran Theodore Bikel voices Marley.

While the songs are adapted from the original, the script is a new one from Romeo Muller, who was a Rankin/Bass regular for their Christmas specials. Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin themselves directed the American side of things, with Katsuhisa Yamada directing the work of the Japanese animation team.
 
Underdone Potato:
There is a very interesting little tweak at the start here, in that the story begins post-redemption – our humbug narrator tells us that Scrooge is known to be the kindest and most generous man in town. However, they’re clearly a bit over-delighted with this conceit, as he then rather archly asks if we’re surprised by this, before explaining that it wasn’t always the case. To underline the point, we even have Scrooge referred to as the “Devil’s stooge!” (Although this, presumably, was more for want of a rhyme…)
 
I thought for a moment we were going to cut almost all of the pre-Marley material altogether, but it seems jumping to Scrooge in bed is just a little tease ahead into the opening titles. Once those are over and done with, we’re back into the offices of Scrooge & Marley for a visit from Fred, who as well as serenading his uncle also brings him some presents.

I never knew Marley was such a bighead...

 
Bob Cratchit is surprisingly over-confident in this version, being so bold as to say to his employer that he, “didn’t think he’d have to ask” to have Christmas Day off. Scrooge then pulls a bit of emotional blackmail, pretending to be hard-up and unable to spare the money himself, so Bob says he doesn’t have to pay him or Christmas Day.
 
As was the case in the original version of The Stingiest Man in Town, Scrooge has actually already gone to bed before Marley appears and warns him of the coming of the three spirits. Perhaps surprisingly, before Jacob takes his leave he does a bit from the book not included in all that many versions – showing Scrooge the other spirits hopelessly wandering the world outside his window.
 
Past:
Quite a short section this, and with the Spirit rather different to the norm – he keeps the flame-like characteristics of Dickens’s description, but as with the original 1956 version of The Stingiest Man in Town he is depicted as an old man.

We only really get two scenes with Belle and that’s it. The first one does the common thing of bringing her to the Fezziwigs’ Christmas Party, although the party isn’t named as such. Indeed, we don’t actually really see anything much of the party at all – instead, Ebenezer and Belle go outside to cool down from the warmth within, and debate whether or not they can afford to get married.
 
We then get the first Belle scene from the book, where she releases him from his obligation. Interestingly, it’s sort-of merged with a version of the second Belle scene – but instead of Scrooge seeing her actual husband and children, he sees a vision of what might have been had they married and had children of their own.
 
There’s a suggestion that perhaps Belle didn’t end up happily married as she does in the book – we are given a brief glimpse of her as a rather sad and lonely-looking old woman, mirrored with the present-day Scrooge in a split screen, with the hint perhaps being that he didn’t only ruin his own life, he ruined hers, too.

Poor old Belle... Literally, in the latter case

 
There’s a nice moment when Scrooge wakes up after snuffing out the ghost, and he is reaching across and using a snuffer to put out a real candle on his bedside table.
 
Present:
The Spirit looks even more Father Christmas-like than usual here – he already has a white hair and beard, so doesn’t age across his time with Scrooge. This is probably very deliberate, as there is a moment when Santa Claus is being sung about when we see a shot of him with his green cloak turned to red, linking them very much as one and the same figure with a tad less subtlety than usual.

 
We get the two main visits of the section – to Bob’s house, and then to Fred’s. One thing that struck me about the animation here is that the Cratchit children, or at least the boys, really do have grotesquely thin legs. It’s a wonder any of them can stand up without the things snapping beneath them.
 
There’s a very syrupy song that slows the whole thing down into a kind of second-rate version of Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus, and then when we get to Fred’s there’s only a brief bit of the party before we get into a very religious mode, with stained glass-style shots of the Nativity and the same reminder of the Christianity of Christmas as in the 1956 version. Still a good point about the gold being a pointless present for a king, though.

Oddly, it’s after the visit to Fred’s that Scrooge asks whether Tiny Tim will live. This then all gets sidetracked into another rather mawkish and forgettable song.
 
Yet to Come:
Quite a brief rendition, here. There’s the tiniest glimpse of the Old Joe segment, and then the Spirit – depicted in traditional fashion – shows Scrooge his gravestone. We also get a revisit from the spirits Scrooge was shown outside of his window, and the Devil himself makes a brief cameo appearance – harking back, I suppose, to that earlier line about Scrooge being his stooge.

 
What’s To-Day:
Scrooge not only sends the boy to go and buy the turkey, he also gets him to deliver it to the Cratchits – not even having to give the boy their address. In a scene which evokes memories of the 1970 musical, Scrooge then heads off to the toyshop, although unlike in that film he has the toys sent to the Cratchits, rather than delivering them himself.

He then heads off to Fred’s party, and the next day we have the usual closing scene of him playing his little joke on Bob. We then also get various little glimpses of Scrooge handing out piles of gold coins to people with abandon – including a pair who I assume to be the two charitable gentlemen, who didn’t feature in their usual place near the start. The Ghost of Christmas Present did refer to Scrooge’s “surplus population” remark, however, so I wonder if perhaps they were originally included but then cut for time.
 
Review:
As with the original live television version of 1956, there are a few nice songs – the opening number especially, with its lines about a Christmas story written long ago. But few of them are as memorable or striking as the biggest hits of the 1970 or Muppet versions. Those in the Christmas Present section particularly transgress what’s sure a cardinal sin of musicals – slowing the whole story down rather than moving it along.

Aside from that, though, there’s little that you could say was really bad here. The animation’s of a high standard, and there are some very interesting touches like the old, sad Belle. It’s certainly miles ahead of many if not most of the other animated versions I have so far covered here on the blog. But it’s difficult to say it’s particularly great, either.
 
The 1956 version was impressive because of its nature as a live action musical done as a live television production, and managing to pull that off. No matter the skill involved – and there certainly is that – this animated version can never quite match that, really.
 
In a nutshell:
Not at all bad, but even if you want a child-friendly version there are better ones out there.
 
Links:
Wikipedia
IMDb