This time of year my Dear Wife and I do our annual read aloud of Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, and we usually watch one or two movie versions of it as well.
Some of the takes on it we’ve seen are pretty conventional, such as the 1938 edition starring Reginald Owen as Scrooge along with Gene and Kathleen Lockhart as the Cratchits. A standard, old-school B&W production of it.
We’ve also enjoyed the 1999 television movie starring Sir Patrick Stewart as Scrooge. While Stewart is famous for his one-man stage version of the show, this production has a full cast.
Moving into the slightly stranger realm you will find The Muppet Christmas Carol starring Michael Caine as Scrooge (playing it absolutely straight), Gonzo as narrator Charles Dickens, and the rest of the Muppet crew as the remainder of the characters. A surprisingly good and true-to-the-book version with a number of well-done Paul Williams songs.
For a stranger-yet revisionist version, as I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m a partisan for Bill Murray’s mean-spirited Scrooged. Murray plays a TV executive producing a live version of A Christmas Carol with way too many 80s movie tropes included in its promotional materials. Meanwhile, his late business partner, played by John Forsythe, comes back to haunt him, setting up the story of the familiar ghosts. Only this time they are a crazed taxi driver played by musician David Johansen/Buster Poindexter and a nasty fairy with a wicked left hook played by Carol Kane. Alfre Woodard plays a gender-swapped Bob Cratchit with a mute son who hasn’t spoke since his father died. Not for everyone, but one of my favorites.
But this year Dear Wife and I watched the oddest of all versions ever made, A Carol for Another Christmas written by The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling as a call for world peace and cooperation in the atomic age of the early 1960s. A part of a series of TV films promoting the United Nation’s mission, it aired only once on ABC on Dec. 28, 1964. Since then, it went unseen until Turner Classic Movies pulled it out of the vault. It can also be viewed on YouTube.
You can watch the complete film here.
For a telefilm that has largely disappeared, it has an amazing pedigree. Written by Serling, it was directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve, A Letter to Three Wives, and – infamously – Cleopatra), and it stars:
- Sterling Hayden (star of endless westerns and noirs, as well as acting with Peter Sellers in Strangelove) as isolationist industrialist Daniel Grudge – aka Ebeneezer Scrooge;
- Actor/singer Steve Lawrence in a powerful performance as the Ghost of Christmas Past taking Grudge through the stories of the endless soldiers and sailors who’ve died in past wars;
- Pat Hingle as the Ghost of Christmas Present (best known for playing Commissioner Gordon in the Burton Batmanfilms);
- Robert Shaw (Jaws, The Sting, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three) as the Ghost of Christmas Future;
- Ben Gazzara as Grudge’s loving nephew Fred, Eva Marie Saint as a WWII WAVE lieutenant, and Britt Ekland as a crazed future mother;
But overshadowing all of them is Peter Sellers as a crazed Santa-suit-cowboy-hat-wearing demagogue named “Imperial Me” calling for everyone to just be out for themselves.
As this brief description suggests, this is a heavy handed propaganda film that nevertheless includes some of Serling’s trademark compelling monologues and storytelling. It’s not a film for an evening of light family entertainment, but it’s a fascinating time capsule featuring an extraordinarily talented group of actors, writers and crew. If you find yourself intrigued by this introduction, it’s worth a watch – once.
If you watch it, tell us what you think of it in the comments.