The next Cratchit family member to join our "A Christmas Carol" All-Star team is the matriarch of the bunch - Mrs. Cratchit!
She looms pretty large in the scheme of things with her awesome pudding and frank assessment of the "founder of the feast," which is pretty good for someone without a first name!
We never do hear Mrs. Cratchit's first name in the book and, in fact, I don't exactly know the first or last name of the person whom I pick to represent Mrs. C on my team!
She's the actress who voices Mrs. Cratchit on the 1953 NBC broadcast of "A Christmas Carol" starring Laurence Olivier.
I've never seen an actual cast list for that show but the version available from Heritage Media has an outro that lists a few members of the supporting cast. The guy has a cool British accent, so he sounds reliable!
There are two females listed, Denise Bryer and Olive Gregg, both of whom were extremely prolific voice actors.
There are two female roles in this version, Mrs. Cratchit and Fan (referred to as just "little sister"), so you figure one did one and the other did the other voice. But who was who?
Some further research indicates that both actresses did kid voices, including boys (not an uncommon practice).
So, I thought, "Oh, I bet one of them plays Tiny Tim!" He only has his one line, said twice, but, yeah, it sounds like a woman doing a boy voice.
So, I tracked down what the "boy" voice of each actress sounded like, but they're pretty similar and they both do sound like Tiny Tim, so either one could've been TT, with the other probably Mrs. C!
Denise Bryer's actually still around at age 92! Do you think she remembers anything about this broadcast? Would she know which character she played?
In any event, as I mentioned when discussing this broadcast before, I listened to a record of it over and over as a kid and always thought Mrs. Cratchit stole the show!
So good job, Denise Bryer or Olive Gregg!
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