If you got a chance to listen to Charles Laughton's 1951 recording of "A Christmas Carol" for RCA Victor, you may have been as surprised as I was that he (SPOILER) does not play Scrooge!
This has a very interesting approach with the star as the narrator but a supporting cast as well. This reminds me most of the 1939 "Campbell Playhouse" broadcast with Orson Welles as narrator, but, of course, that had a strong Scrooge in Lionel Barrymore.
In this case it seems especially unusual to have the narrator say some of Scrooge's lines when there is another actor playing Scrooge.
I think Charles Laughton would have been a really good Scrooge in a big-screen adaptation. He certainly could bring the meanness to it, as most famously evidenced by his portrayal in MGM's 1935 production of "Mutiny on the Bounty." If Bob Cratchit had ever gotten together for a beer with Fletcher Christian and they started complaining about their bad bosses, Bob would have thought he was fortunate!
A good flipside of Charles Laughton's range as an actor is evidenced in anther 1935 film, "Ruggles of Red Gap" from Paramount. He's totally convincing as an English butler out West without a vestige of Captain Bligh in sight.
Throw in "Les Misérables," in which he played Inspector Javert, and 1935 was a really good year!
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| Laughton's billing: "Co-starring the Mighty 'Mutiny' Man as Captain Kidd" |
By 1951, the time of this recording, he was at an interesting career point. The next year he co-starred in "Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd." I love Abbott and Costello and I think Charles Laughton is a blast in that movie, but I can't imagine that he expected to wind up in a movie like that!
Anyway, I like hearing Mr. Laughton read and he's really good at enunciating each word while reading quickly. This needed to be done in order to get as much story as possible into those 16 precious minutes.
I think it's cool that this has a booklet with the text of the recording. The page above seems to indicate that it matches right up. I need to get a complete set of this (at a reasonable price).
The Christmas bells indicating when to turn the page takes me back and I think it's awesome to have the passive aggressive reminder!
If you try to Google "Charles Laughton" and "A Christmas Carol," you'll find that you get many more matches for the Decca Records coupling of Ronald Colman's recording of "A Christmas Carol" and Charles Laughton's "Mr. Pickwick's Christmas." Those two previous recordings were linked the year before (1950) and have remined together ever since!
As a bonus, here's "Mr. Pickwick's Christmas":
My theory is that Decca did so well with that album that RCA decided to fight fire with fire by having Charles Laughton record this set.
Whatever the case, I'm glad they did!
Next, a look at the supporting cast and crew...
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