If you got a chance to listen to the BBC Radio adaptation of "A Christmas Carol" from December 25, 1965 starring Ralph Richardson, I'm sure you'll agree that it's a faithful, entertaining version of the story.
The feel is similar to the 1960 studio recording for Caedmon Records and not just because both feature Sir Ralph as Scrooge.
This radio broadcast is also extremely faithful to the book, with a lot of narration and most of the incidents from the book. The main difference is that Ralph Richardson is both the narrator and Scrooge, although the character of Scrooge is not narrating.
I can't dig up an awful lot of information on this show, but it was originally broadcast over the BBC on December 25, 1965. It must have had some sort of opening announcement, but the audio sources floating around just start with some music and go right into the narration.
This adaptation really doesn't add anything that was not included in the book, but it does have to omit a few things, despite the generous running time of about an hour. I'll just highlight a few interesting things.
The opening scenes feature just one gentleman collecting for charity and the description about the preparations for the Lord Mayor's Christmas dinner.
Marley's Ghost comes and goes pretty quickly, but we have the sequence of Scrooge waiting for the first spirit to appear.
In the Christmas Past sequence, we do have the scene where Fan comes to get young Ebenezer, which was not included on the 1960 album. We have Fezziwig's party and the breakup with Belle, but we don't see Belle happily married.
The Christmas Present sequence starts with a long description of all the shops and food and whatnot. It's fun to hear this, as it's usually skipped in most adaptations.
At Fred's house, it just seems to be Fed and his wife, although in the present, the narrator says the plump sister looked the same. That's a bit awkward, as we hadn't heard about the plump sister previously.
The Ghost of Christmas Present disappears suddenly without any mention of Ignorance and Want.
With the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, we get just two other businessmen and just the charwoman selling the bed curtains to Old Joe. We skip the Cratchit house and go straight tot he graveyard after hearing about Scrooge's unattended body.
The Christmas morning sequence is longer than usual with Scrooge jumping around and shaving and all that. He meets that charity collector and says out loud that he will donate 200 guineas. In the book he whispers the amount and we never know what the sum is, so that's a bit different.
The rest of the story is as expected and we're done with anther faithful audio adaptation with a lot of not-often-heard detail from the book!
Sir Ralph Richardson does a great job with the narration here and also provides another solid Scrooge.
I do wonder how that 1951 television version is. I don't think Ralph Richardson looks Scroogey on the whole. Someday I'll see it, though!
I'm not familiar with the rest of the cast of this 1965 radio broadcast, but a very interesting note is that Frederick Treves, who plays Bob Cratchit here, played Fred on that 1960 album. I think this counts as a promotion!
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| Who had the better autograph? |
The name Frederick Treves is familiar as that of the eminent British doctor associated with John Merrick, known as "The Elephant Man." Dr. Treves was played by Anthony Hopkins in the famous 1980 movie.
End of sidetrack, back to Sir Ralph Richardson. Good job!
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