12 Scrooges of Christmas

With The Muppet Christmas Carol back in cinemas to mark its 30th anniversary, Cinema Paradiso takes a look at the various versions of Charles Dickens's Yuletide classic that have been delighting audiences young and old for over a century.

Eight years had passed since The Muppets had last appeared on the big screen and the focus was more on theme park attractions than motion pictures when the parent company signed a deal with Disney. However, following the sudden death of founding father Jim Henson in May 1992, the production team decided to devote its creative energies to a follow-up to James Frawley's The Muppet Movie (1979), Jim Henson's The Great Muppet Caper (1981), and Frank Oz's The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984). The initial plan was to spoof the classic Charles Dickens novella, A Christmas Carol. But screenwriter Jerry Juhl felt that a faithful approach would be more effective.

Indeed, Brian Henson's The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) uses more of the original text than any other screen adaptation. As Kermit the Frog told Entertainment Tonight, the only difference is that 'there's lots of frogs and pigs and chickens and rats playing the main parts'. As he rightly concludes, 'I think Charles would have liked it that way.' Quite how he would have felt if Robin or Scooter had been cast as the Ghost of Christmas Past, is another matter. Similarly, he might well have thought 'What the Dickens' if Miss Piggy had essayed the Ghost of Christmas Present and Gonzo or Animal had played the Ghost of Christmas Future.

In fact, Gonzo was perfectly cast as Dickens himself, who narrates the story of Ebenezer Scrooge with a little help from Rizzo the Rat. Fulfilling a lifetime ambition, Michael Caine took the role of the Victorian miser who is reformed during a dark night of the soul and it's hard to believe that rival candidates David Hemmings, Ron Moody, David Warner, or American comedian George Carlin could have bettered a performance that Caine (who had worked with Muppet icon Frank Oz on Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, 1988) achieved by treating the puppet ensemble like the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Debuting director Brian Henson was impressed by Caine's gravitas and there's no question that the film would not have become such an enduring favourite if he had betrayed a single hint that he was in on the gag of acting alongside puppets. He even carries off the songs, 'Thankful Heart' and 'When Love Is Found/It Feels Like Christmas', with tuneful aplomb. But not every screen Scrooge had the benefit of collaborating with a Muppet menagerie.

Echoing Down the Ages

Charles Dickens started writing A Christmas Carol in October 1843 because funds were running low after the disappointing sales of his favourite novel, Martin Chuzzlewit. According to Bharat Nalluri's The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017), Dickens (Dan Stevens) drew on his own father, John (Jonathan Pryce), as the inspiration for Scrooge. As a 12 year-old boy, Dickens had spent time in a shoe-blacking factory after his father had been taken to a debtors' prison in 1824 because of his financial recklessness and Charles had never forgiven John for the humiliation. Indeed, his experience of the Marshalsea also shaped the action in Little Dorrit, which was epically filmed in two parts in 1987 by Christine Edzard before Andrew Davies adapted it for the BBC in 2009.

It seems likely, however, that Scrooge's personality also owed much to renowned misers, John Elwes and Jemmy Wood, while his name came from a combination of local trading firm Goodge and Marney and the Edinburgh gravestone of corn merchant Ebenezer Scroggie. A visit to the Field Lane Ragged School prompted the inspirational denouement, in which Scrooge recognises the error of his ways and devotes himself to charitable works and the care of clerk Bob Cratchit's sickly child, Tiny Tim.

The book didn't provide Dickens with the windfall he had anticipated. But it has not been out of print for the last 179 years. According to scholars, there have been over 400 different versions of A Christmas Carol, with around a dozen having gone into production in the last couple of years. Perhaps this should come as no surprise, as Dickens had used his text to denounce the capitalist callousness of the industrial economy and the social misery it had heaped upon those on the lowest rungs.

The three nocturnal spirits are usually credited with guiding Scrooge towards recognising his faults. But it's Belle, the fiancée who is about to jilt him, who actually compels him to examine his conscience by scolding him for placing material wealth above things that really matter, such as love and charity towards his fellow beings. Given the current state of our world, this is something we should all remember, as we prepare to enjoy the most wonderful time of the year.

In Black and White

Ebenezer Scrooge has been played by dozens of actors since Daniel Smith took the role in Walter R. Booth's Scrooge; or, Marley's Ghost (1901), the first-ever adaptation of this most enduring of Yuletide yarns. Made just 31 years after Dickens's death, this four-minute saga can be found on the BFI's Dickens Before Sound compilation, which also contains D.W. Griffith's 1909 interpretation of another Christmas classic, The Cricket on the Hearth.

It's intriguing to think that some of the people who saw these films might also have heard Dickens give one of his live readings before his death in 1870. The same goes for the first American rendition, which saw Tom Ricketts take the lead in Essanay's A Christmas Carol (1908). Director J. Searle Dawley used the same title for his 1910 Edison production, which starred Marc McDermott as the miser. Bob Cratchit was played by Charles Ogle, who had made screen history earlier the same year by being the first cine-incarnation of the Creature in Dawley's take on Frankenstein.

The tale of a miser who comes to embody the spirit of Christmas was frequently reworked during the silent era, with Scrooge being played by Charles Rock (1914), Henry V. Esmond (1922), and Russell Thorndike (1923). Rupert Julian directed himself in the first feature-length version, The Right to Be Happy (1916), while Hugh Croise's Scrooge (1928) used Lee DeForest's Phonofilm process to become the first sound adaptation.

Born just a few weeks after Dickens died in June 1970, British actor Bransby Williams took the title role in this pioneering short. Nicknamed 'the Henry Irving of the music halls', he also had the distinction of being the first television Scrooge when he headlined the BBC presentation that aired live on 24 December 1936. But the first actor to play the old skinflint on screen twice was Sir Seymour Hicks, who followed numerous stage interpretations and his 1913 performance for director Leedham Bantock with the the lead in Henry Edwards's Scrooge (1935). This was the first talking feature version and it's available from Cinema Paradiso in a double bill with Peter McCubbin's Home For Christmas (1990), which stars Mickey Rooney.

What made this British picture so distinctive was that it was the first to cast a woman (Marie Ney) as one of the nocturnal visitors and its success prompted MGM to hire Ann Rutherford to play the Ghost of Christmas Past in Edwin L. Marin's 1938 adaptation, which saw Reginald Owen play Scrooge after Lionel Barrymore was forced to withdraw with arthritis. This is a fine version and really should be available on disc in the country of Owen's birth. However, Cinema Paradiso regulars can hear Barrymore in Orson Welles's 1938 radio broadcast on A Dickens of a Christmas (2009), which also examines the story's origins.

MGM's version proved to be the final one before the Second World War, after which television took over as the new home of Dickens's morality tale. John Carradine and Taylor Holmes led the cast in live versions respectively screened on Christmas Day in 1947 and 1949, with the latter boasting Vincent Price as the narrator (now why did no one ever think of casting him or Boris Karloff as Scrooge?). This version is available from Cinema Paradiso on Silent Night & A Christmas Carol, with the former history of the popular carol starring James Mason. In 1951, Ralph Richardson led a Fireside Theater playlet based on the story for NBC. But Richardson's timing proved unfortunate, as he was upstaged by the finest Ebenezer of them all.

Such was the brilliance of Alastair Sim in Brian Desmond Hurst's peerless Scrooge (1951) that no one else attempted the role for another two decades. With George Cole playing the young Ebenezer and Jack Warner in the part of Jorkin that was devised for the film by screenwriter Noel Langley, this atmospherically designed and photographed picture has a companion in Richard Williams's 1971 Oscar-winning short animation, A Christmas Carol, as Sim and Michael Hordern reprised their roles as Scrooge and the ghost of Jacob Marley. For a fuller exploration of this perennially popular picture, see What to Watch Next If You Liked Scrooge.

Just Drawn That Way

Given the calibre and imagination of the animators working in Hollywood during the Studio Era, it's flabbergasting that nobody seems to have produced a cartoon version of A Christmas Carol. The earliest we can track down is Mr Magoo's Christmas Carol (1962), which was produced for television during the last days of United Productions of America, the animation company that was formed following the strike at Walt Disney's studio during the 1940s. Equally accomplished were the BBC's A Christmas Carol (1977) and Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass's The Stingiest Man in Town (1978), in which Scrooge was respectively voiced by Michael Hordern and Walter Matthau.

Legendary director Friz Freleng and voiceover maestro Mel Blanc teamed up for Bugs Bunny's Christmas Carol (1979), in which Yosemite Sam played Scrooge, Porky Pig was Bob Cratchit, and Bugs Bunny doubled up as Marley and Fred. Instead of a trio of spirits guiding Scrooge towards the light, Bugs gives him a shock in Hades. This eight-minute gem can be rented from Cinema Paradiso on Bugs Bunny: Looney Tunes Christmas (2010). Warner Bros returned to the theme with Charles Visser's Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas (2006), which features Daffy Duck as the miser and Bugs as the host.

Having curiously neglected it for decades, Disney also turned to the tale in 1983. It's not currently possible to bring you Mickey's Christmas Carol, which centres on Scrooge McDuck. But Cinema Paradiso users can order Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas (1999), Mickey's Magical Christmas: Snowed In At the House of Mouse (2001), and Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas (2004). They can also enjoy variations on the Scrooge narrative featuring such favourite characters as Brer Rabbit (Brer Rabbit's Christmas Carol, 1992), Fred Flintstone (A Flintstones Christmas Carol, 1994), Barbie (A Barbie Christmas Carol, 2008), Dora the Explorer (Dora's Christmas Carol Adventure , 2009), and The Smurfs (The Smurfs: A Christmas Carol, 2011).

Even Oscar the Grouch got a new perspective on the holidays in A Sesame Street Christmas Carol (2006). Meanwhile, on the island of Sodor, grumpy old Diesel receives some locomotive spirits in Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends: Thomas' Christmas Carol, while Snowfall Frost comes to see the error of her ways in 'A Hearth's Warming Tail', which is contained in the collection, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (both 2016).

Older children are also catered for when it comes to Scrooge reboots. In addition to the 'Xmas Marks the Spot' episode of The Real Ghostbusters (1986-91), there are also more supernatural shenanigans in 'Scroogey Doo', which formed part of the Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! (2017) series and took the Mystery Machine back to 1843 to help Scrooge deal with the ghosts that have been pestering him. Everyone's favourite couch potatoes encounter some spectres in the 'Huh-Huh-Humbug' instalment of Beavis and Butt-head (1995), while the ghost of Patrick Swayze teaches Peter Griffin a few lessons during a tour of Quahog in the 2017 'Don't Be a Dickens At Christmas' episode of Family Guy (1999-).

Feature-length animations have been fewer and further between. But Cinema Paradiso has the ones that matter, including Jean Tych's Australian rendition, A Christmas Carol (1982), which saw Ron Haddrick reprise the role of Scrooge that he had taken in a 1969 small-screen version. The candlestick passed to Garry Chalk in Toshiyuki Hiruma and Takashi Masunaga's A Christmas Carol (1994), which unusually saw the actor playing Scrooge accompany himself as the Ghost of Christmas Past.

Following Don Bluth and Gary Goldman's All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989) and Larry Leker and Paul Sabella's All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 (1996), Sabella directed An All Dogs Christmas Carol (1998), which cast Carface (Ernest Borgnine) as Scrooge, with his spooky triumvirate being Itchy (Dom DeLuise), Sasha (Sheena Easton), and Charlie (Steven Weber). The cast is even more impressive in Stan Phillips's A Christmas Carol (1997), with Tim Curry as Scrooge, Whoopi Goldberg as Christmas Past, and Michael York as Bob Cratchit. However, it's not currently available for rental.

Fear not, Jimmy T. Murakami assembled an even more stellar line-up for Christmas Carol: The Movie (2001). which brings you Simon Callow as Dickens and Scrooge (roles he would recreate in a 2018 one-man show), Kate Winslet as Belle, Rhys Ifans and Juliet Stevenson as the Cratchits, Jane Horrocks and Michael Gambon as Ghosts Past and Present, and Nicolas Cage as Jacob Marley. What are you waiting for? Click to order now! Or are you spoilt for choice with Robert Zemeckis's computer-generated adventure, A Christmas Carol (2009), utilising the latest image-capture technology to enable Jim Carrey to play both Scrooge and the ghostly trinity? This Disney production was the first in 3-D and saw Gary Oldman double up as Marley and Cratchit, while even providing the body movements for Tiny Tim. Bob Hoskins added Old Joe to the role of Nigel Fezziwig, while Colin Firth cropped up as Fred.

Another year, another animated remake, with Stephen Donnelly's 2022 model, Scrooge: A Christmas Carol, recyling the Leslie Bricusse songs originally written for a 1970 musical that we shall discuss below. Luke Evans voices Scrooge, while Olivia Colman makes a haunting Ghost of Christmas Past, alongside Johnny Flynn's Bob Cratchit, James Cosmo's Fezziwig, and Jessie Buckley as his daughter, Isabel.

Versions and Variations

Although the Sim Scrooge was a major box-office hit in the UK, it fared less well in the United States, where the Scot was relatively unknown. The prevailing wisdom in Hollywood was that the story was better suited to television specials than features, although stars of the calibre of Fredric March and Basil Rathbone were paired as Scrooge and Marley in the first musical variation of A Christmas Carol in 1954. The lyrics were provided by playwright Maxwell Anderson, while the music was composed by Bernard Herrmann, who was about to embark upon a seven-film partnership with Alfred Hitchcock that ran from The Trouble With Harry (1955) to Marnie (1964). This was also the first colour telling of the tale, although only a black-and-white recording remains (alongside a colorised version of Sim's performance).

Rathbone was promoted to the lead alongside crooner Vic Damone in a second musical rendition, The Stingiest Man in Town (1956). Back in Blighty, Talbot Rothwell came up with a teleplay to bring Sidney James's Scrooge up against Terry Scott's Frank N. Stein (with Bernard Bresslaw and Barbara Windsor as his creations) and the unlikely duo of Frankie Howerd and Hattie Jacques as Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. The 1969 Carry On Christmas show can be rented from Cinema Paradiso as part of the Carry On Christmas Specials collection.

Following the unexpected Oscar success of Carol Reed's Oliver! (1968), director Ronald Neame was entrusted with Leslie Bricusse's musical, Scrooge (1970). Golden Globe winner Albert Finney made a decent fist of his songs and received fine support from Alec Guinness as Marley and Edith Evans and Kenneth More as the first two ghosts. Clive Donner (who had edited the 1951 Scrooge) was installed in the director's chair for A Christmas Carol (1984), which saw an Emmy-nominated George C. Scott receive sterling support from David Warner and Susannah York as the Cratchits and Edward Woodward as the Ghost of Christmas Present.

The influence of Sim and Brian Desmond Hurst was evident and it can be further felt in David Jones's tele-version of A Christmas Carol (1999), which paired Patrick Stewart (who had played the miser in a one-man stage show) and Richard E. Grant as Bob Cratchit. Containing maritime sequences omitted from other adaptations, this has been rather overlooked amidst the growing number of novelty variations. The same goes for Arthur Allen Seidelman's A Christmas Carol: The Musical (2004), which draws on Alan Menken and Lynn Ahrens's stage musical to provide Kelsey Grammer with a change of pace after two solid decades of playing Dr Frasier Crane in Cheers (1982-93) and Frasier (1993-2004).

Irish director Jason Figgis worked atmospheric wonders with a modest budget for his digital adaptation, A Christmas Carol (2012). It's currently unavailable, however, along with Anthony D.P. Mann's A Christmas Carol (2015), which starred former Doctor Who Colin Baker as Scrooge; David Izatt's A Christmas Carol (2018), which featured Stuart Brennan in a Scottish twist on the tale; and Steven Knight's A Christmas Carol (2019), a three-part BBC serialisation, with Guy Pearce as Scrooge, Andy Serkis as the Ghost of Christmas Past, and Stephen Graham as Marley.

Cinema Paradiso can offers users a treat, however, in the form of Jacqui Morris's A Christmas Carol (2020), which is available on high-quality DVD and Blu-ray. Narrated by Siân Phillips, this handsomely staged balletic interpretation creates a unique magic, as Simon Russell Beale voices Scrooge for dancer Michael Nunn, while Carey Mulligan can be heard as Belle, Martin Freeman as Bob Cratchit, Leslie Caron as Christmas Present, Daniel Kaluuya as Christmas Present, and Andy Serkis as Marley's Ghost.

Two films made in Hollywood after the Second World War demonstrated that it was possible to rework the Scrooge saga in modern settings. Both Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Henry Koster's The Bishop's Wife (1947) are redemption tales that respectively see suicidal financier George Bailey (James Stewart) and conflicted cleric Henry Brougham (David Niven) find their way to a better place with the aid of angels Clarence (Henry Travers) and Dudley (Cary Grant). See Cinema Paradiso's What to Watch Next articles to learn more about these timeless festive classics.

Such was the affection with which this duo was held by the American public that it took four decades before anyone revisited the idea of giving A Christmas Carol a makeover - with the dubious exception, of course, of Shaun Costello's The Passions of Carol (1975), the first X-rated variation, which starred Mary Stuart as Carol Scrooge, the owner of a porn magazine who is taught by a spectral trio to value employee Bob Hatchet (Jamie Gillis).

Richard Donner's Scrooged (1988) also took amusing liberties in showing how overbearing TV boss Frank Cross (Bill Murray) is reformed during a haunted night by such Hollywood stalwarts as Robert Mitchum, John Forsythe, Carol Kane, and Alfre Woodard. The same year, Ebenezer Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) drew a very different conclusion from the ghost (Robbie Coltrane) haunting Richard Boden's Blackadder's Christmas Carol, as writers Richard Curtis and Ben Elton ease him out of the festive spirit by showing how the kindly owner of a London moustache shop transforms into a killjoy of the first water.

For all the tweaks of the Dickens format, few film-makers had considered building the action around a female curmudgeon. Susan Lucci had shown well as department store boss Elizabeth Scrooge in the TV-movie, Ebbie (1995), while Cicely Tyson had been typically impressive as the first Black incarnation in Ms Scrooge (1997). Such are the vagaries of disc availability, however, that Cinema Paradiso members are going to have to make do with Matthew Irmas's A Carol Christmas (2003), a Hallmark comedy that sees diva-ish talk show hostess Carol Cartman (Tori Spelling) being schooled by Aunt Marla (Dinah Manoff) and the usual festive suspects, who are spiritedly played by Gary Coleman, William Shatner, and James Cromwell.

The Wild West provides the setting for Ken Jubenvill's Ebenezer (1998), a Canadian teleplay that stars Jack Palance as the cattle baron-cum-card sharp who is persuaded to turn over a new leaf after cheating Ricky Schroder out of his savings. Ross Kemp proved equally grasping as loan shark Eddie Scrooge, who gets his comeuppance after collecting debts on a London housing estate in Catherine Morshead's A Christmas Carol (2000).

Staying on the small screen, Joanie Taylor (Catherine Tate) gives the spirits as good as she gets when they descend upon her council flat in Nan's Xmas Carol (2009). The spectres are played by Ben Miller, David Tennant, and Roger Lloyd-Pack, and one of Tennant's time lord successors, Matt Smith, would confront Michael Gambon's miserly Kazran Sardick in the Steven Moffat-scripted Doctor Who: Series 5: Christmas Special: A Christmas Carol (2010).

Still on the Beeb, Cinema Paradiso can bring you such offbeat temptations as CBeebies Panto: A Christmas Carol (2013) and Dickensian (2015-16). Conceived by Tony Jordan, the latter is a 20-part masterclass in literary re-imagining that follows the efforts of Inspector Bucket (Stephen Rea) in the days after Christmas to discover who murdered Jacob Marley (Peter Firth), the partner of one Ebenezer Scrooge (Ned Dennehy).

Frustratingly unavailable at present are Jon Deak's operatic The Passion of Scrooge (2018) and Sean Anders's Spirited (2022), a modern musical variation that stars Will Ferrell as Scrooge. But let us end by pointing you in the direction of a pair of overlooked charmers. In Justin G. Dyck's A Christmas Carol (aka My Dad Is Scrooge, 2014), Brian Cook is taught about where his priorities should lie by his kids and the talking animals from Woodsleys Farm. Even more splendid, however, is A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong (2017), which it has Derek Jacobi and Diana Rigg run into the Cornley Polytechnic Dramatic Society that had been banned from television after the sublimely riotous Peter Pan Goes Wrong (2016). If your chuckle muscles can still stand it, there's also a Christmas fable and a Nativity to enjoy in the two series of The Goes Wrong Show (2020-21).