I hope you got a chance to listen to the Columbia Records selections by Bransby Williams as Scrooge, circa 1912, as they're a lot of fun.
The way he is narrating the story as Scrooge in a very concise manner reminds me more of the Claude Rains record from the 1950s more than anything. Rains also played Scrooge's conscience and was telling us what had already happened to him, whereas Williams seems to be describing events as he goes, but that's where my mind went.
In any event Bransby Williams does a great job. What's kind of interesting is that he was born on August 14, 1870 which was only about two months after Charles Dickens passed away. This makes these recordings seem even closer to the time of source material.
Another cool artifact of back in the day (if the day were in 1913) is a book by Bransby Williams entitled "My Sketches from Dickens." Included in the book is the script for his Scrooge monologue.
They're pretty similar to those 78 rpm recordings, so you can sort of follow along. Pretty fun!
Check them out:
Bransby was around for a long time, passing away in 1961 at the age of 91. A couple of other projects he had worked on were an early "talkie" short in which he played Scrooge and an early British telecast in which he did the same. I guess these are lost, but you never know!
So, let's give Bransby Williams his due as a great Scrooge!
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