A Christmas Carol (1938) - What It's not!

A Christmas Carol (1938)
Director: Edwin L. Marin
Scrooge: Reginald Owen

OK, first off - that tagline? Greater than "David Copperfield." Ummm, no!

Now that we've taken a look at the well-regarded 1951 adaptation, next up is the less-regarded 1938 version.

Back in the prehistoric days of no home video and before the more recent glut of "A Christmas Carol" adaptations, there were two old black & white versions you'd see on TV. You'd have to catch them when they were on, but they would definitely be on.

It may not be fair, but naturally you had to compare the two. It was Reginald Owen vs. Alastair Sim and Sim always won in a unanimous decision!

I always thought that the 1938 version produced by MGM and starring Reginald Owen as Scrooge was lacking something. It's OK and I was always glad to have another version, but it's just a bit lightweight.

So, it got me to thinking what does this not have? (We'll talk about what it does have later.)

The obvious thing to me is that is does not have a strong Scrooge to dominate the proceedings. I've seen Reginald Owen in a bunch of MGM movies from that same period and he seems like a fine, versatile character actor. Not a star, though. I'm not sure if he ever had another lead role. The billing on that poster is telling. He's listed with everyone else without any kind of star billing.

I also think that while his makeup gives him a good Scrooge look, iconic in fact, you can tell it's makeup!

Who should have played he role instead?

Well, in a perfect world, it would have been Lionel Barrymore. By this point in time, he had already established a reputation for playing Scrooge in annual radio adaptations. He was also a "star" character actor. Someone who could carry a movie without being a romantic lead. So, this was a perfect opportunity.

Unfortunately, this movie was going into production about the same time that illness and accidents left Lionel Barrymore confined to a wheelchair. So, he was out. You can convince just about anybody that Barrymore would've been a great Scrooge by telling them that he played "Mr. Potter" in "It's a Wonderful Life." Anybody can totally see it!

Publicity for the movie said that Barrymore was sorry he couldn't play the role, but personally recommended his good friend Reginald Owen, but if you believe old studio publicity, there are many things I'd like to sell you!

We also don't get an all-star cast of supporting actors. Not to say the supporting cast isn't good, but it's not full of well-known actors, even by 1938 standards. If Barrymore had been able to star in the movie, would it have elevated the status of the production and got us a better known supporting cast? Who knows?

There's a pretty fun trailer for the movie with Lionel Barrymore himself telling us all about the movie. The hyperbole is understandable. Check it out...

But MGM can't help but invoke their earlier successful Dickens adaptations, both from 1935, "David Copperfield" and "A Tale of Two Cities." Is this a fair comparison? Well, since they brought it up...

This adaptation of "A Christmas Carol" comes nowhere close to those classics. It's not nearly as ambitious and only runs a little more than an hour, where both of the others exceeded two hours. Granted the source material is shorter in length too, but still...

The big difference is that the earlier films were produced by David O. Selznick for MGM. They were big budget affairs with lavish production values and large casts of star actors and character actors.

After these triumphs, Selznick started his own independent studio and continued to produce such top pictures as "The Prisoner of Zenda," "Gone with the Wind," Rebecca," etc. He was apparently done with Dickens adaptations, however.

So, it gets me thinking what if David O. Selznick had produced a version of "A Christmas Carol" back in the 1930s, either with MGM or independently.

I can see, say, Ronald Colman (superstar of "A Tale of Two Cities" who later played Scrooge on records and radio) as Scrooge with Freddie Bartholomew (breakout child star of "David Copperfield") as Tiny Tim. How's that for thinking big?

Well, now we know what we don't have, so what do we have?