Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol (1962)
Director: Abe Levitow
Scrooge: Quincy Magoo
So, now we've looked at two movie adaptations and an audio recording. Let's switch gears and check out a cartoon...
Not just any cartoon, but "Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol," a highly regarded version of the story.
So, is it deserving of it's lofty status? Of course it is!
This was apparently the first made-for-TV animated Christmas special, predating "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "A Charlie Brown Christmas" by a couple of years. (Hmmm... Those three would make an awesome mini-marathon. I'm totally doing that!)
The special is presented as a Broadway musical and it has some terrific original songs by the well-established Bob Merrill and Jule Styne, who also teamed up for the actual hit Broadway musical "Funny Girl" a couple of years later.
Side note: I've heard the urban legend that the song "People" was written for Mister Magoo, but it was rejected and wound up in "Funny Girl." Or that that he producers wated "People" for Magoo, but Merrill and Styne were saving it!
It's certainly a novelty to have an established cartoon star such as UPA's Mister Magoo appear in a largely serious role, but "he" is actually very well-cast in the role. Hey, Mister Magoo's a two-time Oscar winner, so he's got some cred!
The voice acting of Jim Backus as Magoo as Scrooge is top-notch. You really feel like you're watching Scrooge, not just Mister Magoo playing Scrooge. Not the easiest trick to pull off.
I like to think that in the Magooverse, his series of theatrical and TV cartoons show Quincy Magoo in his everyday life. In this special, we see that same Magoo as an actor on Broadway, which explains the wacky mayhem he causes in the bookends of the special. "The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo" series which followed this special is Magoo acting in a "filmed" TV show rather than a "live" play. We even see him in his dressing room introducing the stories. Makes sense?
A lot has been said over the years that Tiny Tim looks like Gerald McBoing-Boing (star of the groundbreaking 1950 Oscar winning UPA cartoon of the same title), but if it is Gerald, why does he talk? We all know "he doesn't speak words, he goes Boing! Boing! instead." My theory is that in that same Magooverse, the same actor who plays Tiny Tim in the Broadway show plays Gerald McBoing-Boing in the cartoons (which would be live-action to them). So, this actor can talk just fine. Kind of meta, but it works for me!
Besides Jim Backus, we have a lot of other talent voicing the characters.
I remember Jack Cassidy, who plays Bob Cratchit here, as one of those famous-for-being-famous celebrities that seemed so prevalent in the 70s, but I did know that he had a musical background, and not just because he was married to Shirley Jones and was the father of David and Shaun Cassidy! He does a great job here! I would not have known it was him.
We also have prolific voice artist Paul Frees in a bunch of roles. He's versatile, but I can always tell it's him. His best work to me was his Peter Lorre imitation on the old record of "My Old Flame"(1947) by Spike Jones.
The part of Belle is played by Jane Kean, who does a great job with her song "Winter Was Warm" in the Christmas Past sequence. A couple of years after this, she started appearing as "Trixie" in the musical episodes of "The Honeymooners." Jane had a sister, Betty, who was also a performer. Interestingly, Betty Kean had been married to Jim Backus about 20 years prior to this special. Awkward!
We get the great pipes of veteran radio actor Les Tremayne as the Ghost of Christmas Present. I remember him from the Saturday morning show "Shazam!" back in the day.
You can catch Morey Amsterdam (of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" fame) as one or two of the other businessmen in the Christmas Future sequence, but you have to listen for him.
The opening titles say that this was "freely adapted" from the Dickens work. Next up we'll talk about how free it is!
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