Who is your favorite Scrooge?

1938, 1951 and 1984 adaptations provide variety

From left: Alistair Sim, George C. Scott and Reginald Owen as Scrooge.

I don’t recall seeing a film or play version of “A Christmas Carol” before I read the book in junior high school in 1970. I had an English teacher with a strong affinity for Charles Dickens, so we read and studied his work, including his best known novels: “Great Expectations” and “A Tale of Two Cities.”

His words painted vivid images of foreign places and fascinating characters, but the plot of “A Christmas Carol” was especially appealing to me because of its social justice themes, and its story of redemption everyone can love.

1938 Hollywood version

I’ve now seen numerous film versions of the novella, but just this week I saw the first U.S. film adaptation released in 1938 by MGM Studios. A British film version titled “Scrooge” was the first with sound in 1935.

Unlike the Brits’ film that didn’t show the ghosts (you only hear their words), the Hollywood adaptation probably scared a few people with what would have been innovative special effects for the time.

Both films must have resonated with viewers suffering through the Great Depression or the Great Slump as it was called in the United Kingdom. The divide between poor and rich was far wider and more stark than today.

The book has been interpreted numerous times since the 1930s with both animated and musical adaptations. Even the more strictly dramatic versions have had variations in plot so the essence of the story can be experienced in different ways.

I’ve always envisioned the book’s setting and characters in black and white, possibly because I had grown up watching a lot of monochrome movies and television shows. But it also seemed to fit the nature of what I imagine life was like during an English winter in 1843— a bit dark and gloomy, filled with smoke, fog and shadows.

Trivia:

• The actor playing Marley is Leo G. Carroll who was the boss in “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” a popular spy show on television in the 1960s.
• Canadian-born Gene Lockhart and his English wife, Kathleen Lockhart, played Mr. and Mrs. Cratchit. Longtime character actors in numerous films, they also were…