A Christmas Carol: Scrooge

This 1951 film was a British produced version of Charles Dickens' story "A Christmas Carol," which was also the name used for the film's release in the United States, while the title for release in the UK was "Scrooge." If Americans remember the name Alastair Sim, it is likely because of this movie, which, from what I can tell, has received the most accolades of the "Scrooge" films, and it IS a good one. Americans might also recognize some other performers, like Michael Hordern, who was in quite a number of movies like, "Gandhi," "Where Eagles Dare," "El Cid," and "Khartoum;" and Francis de Wolff, who appeared in films like, "Ivanhoe," "From Russia With Love," "Walt Disney's Treasure Island" and "Moby Dick;" while Hermione Baddeley was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in "Room at the Top," and she also appeared in "Mary Poppins," "The Unsinkable Molly Brown," and she was the maid, Mrs. Naugatuck, in the CBS television series "Maude," and she won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for that role (she had replaced Esther Rolle, who had been the maid, but who joined the cast of the new show "Good Times" in 1974); and Patrick Macnee was on the ABC television show "The Avengers" in the U.S. in the 1960s (the first couple of seasons originally aired in Britain, not in the U.S.).

 

A very sad note about one of the cast members, John Charlesworth committed suicide at the age of 24, nine years after the release of this film. Please folks, if you or someone you know suffers with depression, seek help, preferably professional help, but even talking with family or friends can help. Don't wait and hope things will get better on their own. Don't worry about what someone might say about you, or what they might think about the situation. Be an activist!  

 

Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" is undoubtedly one of the best known Christmas stories of all time. Unfortunately, but realistically, the story never goes out of style, although it was set in the England of the early 1840s, and it is a story that deserves more than just a traditional telling to celebrate the Christmas season, but rather it is important to really think about and understand the story, as it is more than a story about a mean old moneygrubbing man. It is a story about redemption and renewal. As we get older, we often can become bitter about the things we did, or perhaps about the things we wish we had done, but didn't do (notice I didn't say EVERYONE). We can grow more than a little skeptical, letting ourselves become so negative that we become a pain in the neck (or lower) to those around us. Life takes a toll on us, and that toll is oft manifested by our bitterness and negativity as we get older. So think deeply about the story and how it relates to you, as each of us may well see the story somewhat differently. There are several film versions, although they are pretty much the same basic story, and back in the early 1960s, there was even a cartoon version featuring Mr. Magoo as Scrooge (Jim Backus was the voice of Mr. Magoo).      

 

 

Main Cast:

 

Alastair Sim (Irish actor) as Ebenezer Scrooge

Kathleen Harrison (English actress) as Mrs. Dilber, the housekeeper

Mervyn Johns (Welsh actor) as Bob Cratchit 

Hermione Baddeley (English actress) as Mrs. Cratchit 

Michael Hordern (English actor) as Jacob Marley 

George Cole (English actor) as younger Ebenezer Scrooge

Glyn Dearman (English actor) as Tiny Tim

John Charlesworth (English actor) as Peter Cratchit

Francis De Wolff (English actor) as the Ghost of Christmas Present

Michael Dolan (Irish actor) as Ghost of Christmas Past

Czeslaw Konarski (Polish actor) as Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come

Patrick Macnee (English actor, of Scottish descent on his paternal side), as young Jacob Marley

The movie opens with the narrator telling us that "Old Marley is dead as a doornail," and that we need to understand this fact to understand the coming story. Ebenezer Scrooge appears and briefly talks with a couple of businessmen, telling them he doesn't celebrate Christmas, as Christmas keeps men from doing business. When Mr. Scrooge goes outside, he berates a debtor over the money the man owes him. In all of about one minute, we find out that Ebenezer Scrooge is a mean and angry man, and this is reinforced within about another 60 seconds, as Mr. Scrooge chases away three young carolers singing outside of his business. When one approaches him seeking a bit of change, Scrooge pushes her aside. Inside, Mr. Scrooge meets briefly with two businessmen who have come to ask for a contribution to help provide food and shelter for the poor, but Scrooge crudely points out that he supports things like prisons and work houses for the poor, but when the men protest that most of the poor would rather die than go to such places, Scrooge tells them that the poor should go on and die then, "and decrease the surplus population." He goes on to say that such things about the poor and their fate are not his business, and he sends the men on their way. In comes Scrooge's nephew to wish his uncle a merry Christmas, which goes over about as well as the men asking for a donation to help the poor. Mr. Scrooge tells his nephew that the young man married against his wishes, because his nephew's wife was penniless. Though his uncle is so unpleasant and so hostile towards Christmas, his nephew wishes him a good Christmas anyway and leaves. During the first few minutes of the film, we have heard Scrooge utter the word "humbug" more than once; and indeed, I would have to say that while the origin of the word is not known, it almost certainly is still with us because of this popular Dickens' Christmas tale. The word appears in the mid 1700s, but that doesn't mean it wasn't around earlier, perhaps in a somewhat different form. It's basic meaning is "a hoax, a fraud, a deception;" thus also, "nonsense."  

 

We next see a crippled boy with a crutch looking at and enjoying the display of various mechanical dolls and toys as his mother buys the family Christmas goose. This is Mrs. Cratchit and the boy is her son, Tim. As they begin their walk home, Mrs. Cratchit lets us know she's not the least bit fond of her husband's boss, Ebenezer Scrooge. At Scrooge's business, Scrooge prepares to leave and he tells Bob Cratchit how unfair the Christmas holiday is to himself and to other business people (he says it's workers getting to pick the pockets of their employers). While Scrooge grudgingly grants Cratchit Christmas Day off, the nasty old man tells his employee he expects him in early the day after that. When the brooding Mr. Scrooge gets to his house, the face of his deceased former partner appears on the entrance door, but Scrooge scoffs and goes into his house, locking the door well from the inside with upper and lower locks, beside the door's main lock. He goes up to his room and he locks the door there the same way. As he prepares to eat a bit of hot soup, Scrooge hears a voice call his name, then he hears various noises, mainly the sounds of small bells. The well locked door to his room flies open and in comes the image of a man who says he's Jacob Marley, and he lugs along a large chain with a lock. Scrooge tries to act brave, but when the image screams in a tortured agony, and asks if Scrooge believes in him, Scrooge cringes and mutters that he does believe in him. Scrooge asks why Marley is chained and why he walks the earth. Marley answers that he didn't walk among his fellow men in life and now he must do so incessantly in death and that he made the chain that he must bear by his actions in life. When Scrooge defends Marley as having simply been a good man of business, Marley yells out that mankind and the common welfare should have been his business. He warns Scrooge that he needs to change his ways, or he will share the same fate in death. Marley lets Scrooge know that he will be visited by three spirits and that only by their help can Scrooge hope to escape Marley's fate. Marley has Scrooge look out the window where there is a homeless woman clutching a child to her in the cold of Christmas Eve. (Comment: Remember, Scrooge told the men who sought a contribution to help the poor, that the fate of the poor was not his business.) 

 

Scrooge hops into bed and draws the drapes around the bed, as if drapes can protect him from ghosts. As Marley's ghost had told him, at 1 o'clock, a bell clangs and the first ghost appears to Scrooge and introduces himself as "the Ghost of Christmas Past," Ebenezer Scrooge's past. The ghost takes Scrooge back to Scrooge's school days. We learn that Ebenezer's mother died when giving birth to him and that Scrooge's father then foolishly blamed his son for his wife's death, never having anything to do with his son, and never giving the boy the love he needed. We see Scrooge's sister come and visit Ebenezer when he was a young man, and she tells Ebenezer that their father sent her to bring Ebenezer home, that he is a changed man regarding his son, even though he has never known his son. The ghost then takes Scrooge to his former place of apprenticeship, where the owner and his employees are having a merry time with music and dancing, and Scrooge can't help but to find himself enchanted by the fun, as he recalls his time there many years before. He asks the ghost if there ever was a kinder man than the owner. The ghost then reminds Scrooge that the party cost the owner a small sum of money, and Ebenezer quickly replies that the amount of enjoyment it gave to the employees made it seem to have cost a fortune. With this, Scrooge realizes what he's just said, that maybe money isn't everything, after all. The ghost then shows Ebenezer when he was in love with a woman named Alice, to whom he gave a ring. She is fearful to accept the ring, as she has no money or wealth whatsoever, but the Ebenezer of those days said that didn't matter. Next, the ghost takes Scrooge to when he was working for the owner mentioned above. The man is offered a large sum for his business in the name of "progress" by a big businessman, but the owner turns down the offer, telling the big businessman that there's more to life than money. When the owner goes to tend to some matter, the businessman talks with Ebenezer about him being able to get more money and advancement working in a new company, but Ebenezer tells the businessman he understands his employer's feelings, but the businessman still offers to meet with Ebenezer sometime. The ghost then takes Scrooge to the bedside of Scrooge's dying sister. Like their mother, the woman is dying after giving birth to a boy, the grown nephew we met earlier in the story. Scrooge leaves his sister's room before she is able to get Ebenezer to promise to take care of her newborn son, and she then passes away. The Scrooge who is with the ghost is now sorry. And the scene shifts to Scrooge working for the big businessman, having left his old employer. There he meets Jacob Marley, who works for the businessman too, and the two men find they have many similar beliefs, first and foremost, that the world is changing and that the changes will bring hardship to many, and that "one must steel oneself to survive it and not be crushed under with the weak and the infirm." (Comment: Dickens' story was set in the early 1840s, but since the ghost has taken Scrooge into the past when he was a young man, this part of the story would have been in the earlier 1800s.) We then see that Scrooge's former employer is going out of business, and when Scrooge comes to the building as it is being taken over, a young employee asks if he will still have a job, and Scrooge asks if he'll take a pay cut, which the young man accepts, then thanking Scrooge for helping him retain his job. When Scrooge looks over, he sees his former employer, but he can't bring himself to go to him; instead, he chooses to walk away. The ghost takes Scrooge back to Alice, who has released Ebenezer from his promise of marriage as she watched him change, and she tells him, "Another idol has replaced me in your heart, a golden idol." Scrooge answers by asking if it can be wrong to want to better yourself. Alice and Scrooge discuss his changes in attitude toward the world, and she reminds him that when he first courted her, they were both poor, but they were content in their lives, but that now he judges everything by gain, and she is still poor and brings nothing to his rising wealth. He leaves her. Scrooge tells the ghost he doesn't want to see and hear more, but the ghost says that he hasn't created this life story, as it the life story of Scrooge himself, and it is he who is responsible for these things. He takes Scrooge to the time of his joining with Marley in partnership when the big businessman has stolen money from the company, and Scrooge and Marley make good on the stolen money, but they then acquire a controlling interest in the company as partners. (Comment: Scrooge and Marley are such greedy and ruthless men, even the crooked big businessman warns the company directors about them!) Years pass and as Marley lies dying, a message is sent to Scrooge to come and see Marley before he dies, but Scrooge won't leave the business during business hours, which end at 7 o'clock. At that time Scrooge goes to see Marley, who is barely alive. When Scrooge gets to Marley's, a man is sitting outside Marley's room, and Scrooge asks the housekeeper if he is the doctor. She answers, "The undertaker," and the man tells Scrooge he is there before Marley dies, because it's a very competitive business. (Comment: Damn!) Marley tells Scrooge they were wrong, but Scrooge asks "Wrong about what?" Marley then warns Scrooge to "Save yourself," but Scrooge asks "Save myself from what?" But Marley has died. (Comment: At least the undertaker's happy.) Scrooge tries to stop the ghost from showing him more of his life, but the ghost tells him there is one more thing, and that is about Marley's funeral, and how Scrooge ruthlessly took Marley's money, house and furniture. Scrooge is now back in his bed and a bell clangs again, as a second ghost comes calling.

 

This is the Ghost of Christmas Present and he has Scrooge touch his robe to receive the magic power to be transported with the ghost to the places of the ghost's choosing. First they go to where a group of coal miners and their families are celebrating Christmas, and the group is having a warm celebration, although the miners work very hard in rough conditions, but still they celebrate. Next they go to the household of Bob Cratchit, Scrooge's employee. The Crachit family can be seen enjoying Christmas Day after Bob Crachit carries in his crippled son, Tiny Tim. Scrooge asks the ghost if Tiny Tim will live, and the ghost answers that there is a shadow of an empty seat and an unused crutch that suggests that Tim will no longer be alive, unless events can alter this situation. He uses Scrooge's own words against him when he says the boy could "die to decrease the surplus population." As the family has their dinner and punch, Bob Cratchit offers up a toast to Mr. Scrooge, but the complaints rise about the nasty, miserly Scrooge from every corner, including Bob's wife. Bob objects to the complaints, especially on Christmas, so everyone settles down and drinks to Scrooge's health, in spite of their inner feelings. The next stop for the ghost and Scrooge is at Scrooge's nephew's home, where there is more great celebration of the Christmas holiday, as well as a toast from his nephew, but as happened in the Cratchit home, complaints rise at the very mention of Scrooge's name. His nephew stands by his uncle, saying that he feels sorry for him, and that his uncle's behavior hurts himself and leaves him alone in life. Off the two go to see Scrooge's former fiancée, Alice, who is tending to elderly, sick and poor people. Alice's kindness cheers these people and one old soul tells her that it's the best Christmas she's ever had. The ghost reminds Scrooge that he cut himself off from his fellow human beings when he lost Alice's love. The ghost takes Scrooge back outside and asks if Scrooge has learned any lessons yet, but Scrooge is unsure. The ghost opens his robe to show two young children, one boy and one girl, both with rags for clothes. Scrooge asks if the children belong to the ghost, but he answers, "They are man's. The boy is 'ignorance' and the girl is 'want.' " The ghost tells Scrooge to beware of both of the children, but especially the boy. When Scrooge asks, "Have they no refuge? No resource?" The ghost again uses Scrooge's own words as an answer, "Are there no prisons, are there no workhouses?" And as Scrooge covers his ears to block out his own words, the ghost repeats the words again and again, much to Scrooge's discomfort. As Scrooge tries to run away, an upraised hands stops him, and a bell clangs again. Scrooge realizes this is the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, and Scrooge tells the ghost he fears this ghost more than any other, but that he is too old to change his ways, although he feels sorrow for the things he has done in life. 

 

The ghost takes Scrooge to the Cratchit home again, but there is no joy or celebration this time. In the corner is the empty seat and the unused crutch mentioned by the previous ghost. The family mourns the loss of Tiny Tim. The ghost takes Scrooge to a group of cleaning women who are selling the belongings of a now deceased man, a man about whom they offer no kind words. Next we hear a conversation between two businessmen about the funeral of a man yet unnamed, and one of the men says he'll attend the funeral, but only if there's free food. The ghost takes Scrooge to the graveyard, where Scrooge asks if these are all things that must be, or whether these events can be altered by changes in a person's deeds. The ghost points to a gravestone with the name "EBENEZER SCROOGE." Scrooge breaks down and begs the ghost for mercy, saying he will make good the wrongs he has done, and then repeatedly uttering, "I'm not the man I was." Scrooge is back in his bed and his housekeeper knocks at his door to bring him his breakfast. Scrooge asks her the day, and she tells him it's Christmas, and Scrooge is happy and skips about joyfully. At this behavior, the housekeeper asks Scrooge, "Are you quite yourself, sir?" Scrooge tells her, "I hope not," as he runs and skips about, wishing himself and the housekeeper a merry Christmas. The woman is absolutely terrified by Scrooge's actions, but Scrooge tries to reassure her that he's not gone mad. He gives her some money and he then raises her pay substantially. Scrooge runs and opens the window to better hear the sound of the ringing church bells. He yells to a boy passing by and arranges for him to bring the butcher to him with the promise of a great tip for the boy. Scrooge has the butcher send a huge turkey to Bob Crachit and his family, but only Tiny Tim seems to think the massive bird has been sent by Mr. Scrooge. Then Scrooge goes to his nephew's house, where the group gathered there is singing, only to stop at the sight of Scrooge, who asks if it's too late to accept his nephew's invitation to dinner. His nephew welcomes him, and Scrooge asks his nephew's wife, "Can you forgive a pigheaded old fool for having no eyes to see with, and no ears to hear with all of these years?" The piano player plays an upbeat song and Scrooge dances with his nephew's wife, as the others join in. The next day, Scrooge sits in his office acting busy as Bob Cratchit comes into work a bit late. Scrooge acts as if he's about to fire Cratchit, but instead, he gives Cratchit a raise, as he laughs and laughs. The look on Cratchit's face leaves no doubt that he thinks Scrooge has lost his mind, but Scrooge assures him otherwise, and he tells Cratchit that he wants to help him raise his family. Scrooge can't keep from smiling, he's so happy. The narrator tells us that Ebenezer outdid himself and became one of the best men the city ever knew, and that he became a second father to Tiny Tim, who lived and got better.                          

 

 

 Photo is of the 2014 VCI Video colorized DVD version           

 WORD HISTORY:

Crutch-This word is related to "crook/crooked," "crouch" and "creep," all words from Germanic, and "likely" all are original English words, with some caveats for "crook" and "crouch" "perhaps" being from, but maybe just reinforced by, Old Norse, another Germanic language), and it is also related to "crochet," a word borrowed by English from French, which had borrowed it from Germanic (likely from Frankish, but here too Old Norse "could" have been involved). "Crutch" goes back to Indo European "ger/grewg," which had the notion, "to bend, to turn, to twist." This gave Old Germanic "krukjon," meaning, "crooked staff," which then became "krukjo" in West Germanic, meaning, "staff with a crooked handle or arm support." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "crycce," with the same basic meaning. This then became "crucce," before the modern form. Other Germanic languages have: German "Krücke," Low German Saxon "Krück," Dutch (and Frisian?) "kruk." The North Germanic languages borrowed forms from Low German: Danish and Norwegian "krykke" and Swedish "krycka." Icelandic does not have a form, as apparently, it (Icelandic) was already established out in the North Atlantic when these other borrowings (into North Germanic languages) took place.