Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with the 1971 animated version of the Christmas classic A Christmas Carol, directed by Richard Williams.
This was the only film version of A Christmas Carol to win an Oscar. After this television short won the Oscar, the Academy changed its rules so that a made-for-television cartoon could never again win this honor, even if it was shown theatrically.
Before the start of our feature presentation, ACME Eagle Hand Soap would like to share with some other versions of A Christmas Carol:
A Christmas Carol (1910) -
This is one of the earliest film adaptations of the story. It featured Marc McDermott as Ebenezer Scrooge and Charles S. Ogle as Bob Cratchit.
Scrooge (1935) -
Seymour Hicks first played Scrooge onstage in 1901 and it became his most popular role. Throughout his career he played it over a thousand times, often at fund-raising benefits.
The Christmas Carol (1949 TV special) -
This is a very rare example of a 1940s television broadcast still surviving in entirety. In the infancy of television, programs were always broadcast live because videotape recording technology did not yet exist.Although crude (a film camera was pointed at a television monitor filming the broadcast,) it was the only available method to record a live broadcast during the earliest days of television.
Scrooge (1970) -
Alec Guinness did not enjoy doing this movie. It required much more time than he expected, with the need of wires, and a harness for his floating character. He suffered a double-hernia that required surgery to repair.
Blackadders Christmas Carol (1988) -
Ebenezer Blackadder is the only incarnation of Blackadder who is not named Edmund.
A Christmas Carol (1999) -
This is one of the very few movies to include a certain short scene when Scrooge is with the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come: Bob Cratchit visiting Tiny Tim's body lying in repose in an upper bedroom. In the book, this takes up only one paragraph.
As always, ACME wants you to join them in celebrating the holidays with your friends at The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour - the official soap of our nation's bald eagles. Remember if your bald eagle's talons are filthy, do we have a soap for you! We are very close to the actual start of the holiday season; given Hanukkah is tomorrow and Christmas is a little more than a week away! Why join The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour in celebrating the season by watching our favorite version of the film, the 1951 Alister Sim adaptation of Scrooge produced and directed by Brian Desmond Hurst. Scrooge was likely based on a real person named John Meggot (born John Elwes), who was a local celebrity, a member of Parliament, and a famous miser from Charles Dickens' part of England. Meggot was dead by the time Dickens was born, but he heard quite a bit about Scrooge from locals where he grew up. Alastair Sim plays Scrooge so magnificently his performance, to our way of thinking, has become the standard by which all other Scrooges are compared. So please, push away from all the things you are work on this evening and join us in watching a holiday tradition.
Changes to the screenplay from the Charles Dickens book were made, mostly in the Christmas Past sequence. Among these changes are: reversing the birth order of Scrooge and his sister, so as to add that Scrooge's mother died giving birth to him; creating a character named Mr. Jorkin and flashbacks of several incidents in Scrooge's past (his sister's death, meeting Jacob Marley, taking over Fezziwig's warehouse, and Marley's death) which do not appear in the book.
Before you go - Please join us in watching what could be the greatest mash-up ever, or at least the most labor intensive. Heath Waterman spent 18 months putting together this labor of love, retelling the story of Ebenezer Scrooge in his video A Christmas Carol Encyclopedia, Stave 1 (which is an update of his original Twelve Hundred Ghosts - A Christmas Carol in Supercut.)
Mr. Waterman originally uses clips from over over 400 versions of the holiday classic for his first version. In his updated revision, you has used over 850 clips. (Make it your business to watch this!)
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