My Favorite Versions of Dickens' A Christmas Carol

I am fortunate to have joined a talented group of bloggers for the Global Writing Challenge. Each month, we write about a very broadly defined topic, and the responses are quite varied. The group includes Deb’s World, Marsha in the Middle, MK’s Adventures, Rosie Amber, Suzy Turner, Women Over 50 Living Well,   and now me.

This month, Rosie selected the topic of "A Christmas Carol," and while there are many carols I enjoy, I decided to talk about the Charles Dickens' novel A Christmas Carol. This holiday favorite was published in 1843 and was an instant success, selling out its initial 6,000 copy print run by Christmas Eve. Dickens wrote the book in only six weeks because he was desperate for money. If you ever wish anyone a "Merry Christmas," it's because of this book; although the phrase first appeared in writing in 1534, it didn't become popular until it appeared in A Christmas Carol:

• Scrooge's nephew Fred calls out "A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" to Scrooge

• After his transformation from miser to merry maker, Scrooge himself says "A Merry Christmas to everybody!" and "A Merry Christmas to you Sir!"

• Bob Cratchit wishes everyone "A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears! God bless us!"

Approximately 10 trillion Christmas cards later and here we are!

I first read A Christmas Carol in early high school. I believe it was the second Dickens novel I'd read in full; I read Great Expectations for English class in junior high (and boy were the wonders of that amazing novel lost on me at that tender age!), and I had read condensed versions of Oliver Twist and David Copperfield when I was young.

A Christmas Carol was not a book I had sought out. You see, as a teen, I was a regular book shopper at the Tulsa Goodwill, and at that time, the store priced their books as some fraction of the original cover price. So to a person with a greater appetite for books than their money would allow, the correct strategy was to find the oldest books possible because they were the cheapest. I amassed a pretty fine library of old (but not in a valuable way) editions of classic literature this way, including A Christmas Carol.

Due to the many moves I've made across the country in the intervening 35+ years, most of these classic works have been donated back to Goodwill...but not, thankfully, A Christmas Carol! Here is my copy. Published in 1961 with a 35 cent cover price! I paid maybe half that and have had the book over 35 years, so that's a cost of perhaps half a penny per year. (Even in 1843, half a penny would hardly buy you a single piece of hard candy or a single match.) I have not read this book every Christmas, but I have read it quite a few times. I have read the first part - from the appearance of Marley's Ghost to just before the Ghosts of Christmas appear - even more times than that. What a great first line this book has: "Marley was dead, to begin with."

Of course, Dickens' classic tale has been interpreted on stage and screen many, many times. Here is a rundown of my favorite versions of the story, in the order I thought of them...

#1: Mickey's Christmas Carol (1983)

It's not the original, but it's the one I saw first (and thus was my introduction to the story), and it remains my absolute favorite. As a child, I just fell in love with the entire thing. Seeing the familiar Disney characters taking on the role of these old-fashioned (i.e., classic Victorian) characters was really cool, and of course I know now that Ebenezer Scrooge was the character that Scrooge McDuck was born to play! I've watched it many times as an adult, and I think it really holds up. Some of my favorite moments from the film:

• Scrooge's conversation with the two men collecting for the poor, in which Scrooge sarcastically with faux-concern says, "Oh please, gentlemen, don't ask me to put you out of a job, not on Christmas Eve."

• Goofy as the Ghost of Jacob Marley tells Scrooge "You will be visited by three spirits" while holding up two fingers.

• Jiminy Cricket as the Ghost of Christmas Past pulls Scrooge out of a window and flies him across the time/space continuum. My mom can attest (from how often I rewound and rewatched this sequence on our homemade VHS recording) that I love watching Scrooge's dangling duck feet floating as he's pulled through the air.

• Daisy Duck as Scrooge's past love interest Isabelle tells young Scrooge that she's standing under the mistletoe and he replies that she's also standing on his foot.

• I was basically devastated when we learned how Scrooge chose money over love, foreclosing on the honeymoon cottage that Isabelle had purchased in more hopeful times and breaking her heart. Even as a child, I was shocked that Scrooge had once had everything but threw it all away, ruining his own life.

• Everything about Donald Duck, Scrooge McDuck's nephew, playing Fred, Ebenezer Scrooge's nephew. Every. Thing.

#2: Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol (1962)

This is a weird, rather meta cartoon in which Magoo is playing Scrooge in a stage production of A Christmas Carol. I only saw this one a couple times on TV and am not sure I would want to spare the time on it now, but I did enjoy it well enough as a kid. I hadn't known before now that it was the first animated Christmas special to be produced specifically for television.

The Disney cast of Mickey's Christmas Carol needed no introduction, but does everyone even know/remember Mr. Magoo? Wikipedia sums up the character perfectly:

Mr. Magoo is an elderly, wealthy, short-statured retiree who gets into a series of comical situations as a result of his extreme near-sightedness, compounded by his stubborn refusal to admit the problem. However, through uncanny streaks of luck, the situation always seems to work itself out for him, leaving him no worse than before. Bystanders consequently tend to think that he is a lunatic, rather than just being near-sighted. In later cartoons, he is also an actor, and generally a competent one, except for his visual impairment.

#3: A Christmas Carol (1984) with George C. Scott

At first, I conflated this movie version with the next one on my list, having a strange sense that it both (1) starred George C. Scott (or as I thought of him, "the guy with the name like First Name C. Another First Name," until Robert supplied the actual name) as Scrooge and (2) was a classic black and white film. This is a movie I'd like to watch again, to see what I think of it as an adult.

#4: A Christmas Carol (1951) with Alastair Sim

Here is the old black and white movie I remember being on broadcast television every Christmas season growing up. The thing I remember about it most was that the actor playing the Ghost of Jacob Marley was top-notch. I feel a little bad that my memory of Alastair Sim as Scrooge is so poor that I mixed it up with George C. Scott because I have read that Sim was excellent, but this movie is all Marley for me.

#5: A theater version of A Christmas Carol circa the 1990s

Now for a local stage adaptation that I attended with my parents, of which I remember very little except that the actor who played...well, one of the Ghosts of Christmas...had an incredible presence, energy, and authority in the role. He was a Black man, probably 6'6" and solid with it, in perhaps his 40s, with a booming voice.

Strange fact: that actor was the drama teacher at the middle school my dad worked at. I can't remember his name so I'll call him Mr. Ghost. In the fall after I graduated from college, I worked for a few months as a substitute teacher before starting my first full-time job. My last gig as a sub was substituting for Mr. Ghost while he was out on an extended sick leave. The first day, the first period I covered his class, the kids came in and immediately started unpacking huge bags of chips, candy, and bottles of soft drinks from their backpacks. And I was like, "Whoa, wait, this isn't lunch period, guys!" Inevitably, one of the kids said "But Mr. Ghost lets us eat snacks in class." And it was one of the most satisfying moments of my short-lived teaching career to stand before them - a 22 year old blonde white woman, 5'8" with a medium build - and say "Do I look like Mr. Ghost to you?" They all agreed that I absolutely DID NOT look like him and readily put all the snacks back away. The snacks did not reappear on my watch.

Honorable Mention: The cast of A Christmas Carol in The Cocoanuts at Guthrie Theater (2015)

Hard to believe it was 10 years ago that Robert and I went to see an adaptation of the Marx Brothers' Cocoanuts to celebrate my birthday! It was a fun show, and befitting the sometimes random and always zany Marx Brothers atmosphere, at one point in the show, the cast of A Christmas Carol (which was playing at the same time on a different stage in the theater) did a walk-through across our stage in all their regalia. Some day we'll actually go see the performance of A Christmas Carol, which the Guthrie puts on every year, but I did enjoy getting a taste of it on stage with the Marx Brothers.

For an entertaining "history of A Christmas Carol on film" that covers everything from the early silent movies to a strange Western version with Jack Palance, see this post by a professional Dickens tour guide.

Check out what other bloggers have to say about A Christmas Carol:

Debbie: Not sure whether she is posting this week.

Marsha: Marsha writes about her favorite Christmas carol to play on handbells with a bit of a caveat.

Mary Katherine: She is on vacation.

Rosie: Rosie's written a comedy version of the 12 Days of Christmas.

Suzy: Suzy writes about the unexpected memories and meaningful moments that surfaced when she reflected on this month’s “Christmas Carol” theme.

Sue: She is on a break from blogging.

Have you read or seen a version of A Christmas Carol? What is your favorite...or least favorite?

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