More Blitzin'!

Disney Emoji Blitz also includes emoji from the Muppets franchise, so more holiday cheer this year included new emoji from "The Muppet  Christmas Carol" featuring Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy in their roles of Bob and Emily Cratchit:

Love it!

Blitzin'!

You may recall that I mentioned way back when that the addictive matching game "Disney Emoji Blitz" added a couple of new emoji from "Mickey's Christmas Carol" last year.

Well, they were at it again this year, adding a new Tiny Tim emoji:

Adorable!

Happy Boxing Day!

 

Merry Christmas!

Tiny Timothy!

We sneak in a little more Jo Stafford and a little "A Christmas Carol" with this picture from the June 1953 issue of "Radio-TV Mirror":

Cute!

Is It Him?

I often see things for sale where the item is indicated as featuring Scrooge, but sometimes I don't know.

Take, for example, this postcard:

That's not really Scrooge, is it? There wasn't a subgenre of reformed Scrooge in scenes that would have taken place after the book ended, is there?

If not, should there be?

Happy Thanksgiving!

 Happy Thanksgiving!

Another Commercial

Here's another new commercial making the rounds:

Was that a passive-aggressive Christmas gift from Belle?

The Dark Knight Returns!

 You may recall that Funko released a "Batman as Ebenezer Scrooge" Pop! figure last holiday season.

Well, he's back this year as a little plush figure:

And, in a color variant, as an ornament:

Pretty fun!

"Fred" in Hi-Def!

A while back I had mentioned watching the 1934 British musical "Evergreen" starring Jessie Matthews as part of my Barry MacKay excavation project.

It recently popped up on TCM and the high definition version of movie looked absolutely dynamite!

If only every movie from the 1930s looked this good!

Not to pick on "Scrooge" from 1935, as it probably never looked as good as "Evergreen," but I'd still like to see a really good print of it.

Carry on!

Still Gold!

Keeping the Mickey thing going, here's a coloring book from 1984:

The publisher is "Golden," so it must be related to Little Golden Books?

In any event, for those keeping score, that's Dewey doing the painting on the cover!

PB (Hold the J)!

Besides fighting pirates and reissuing kiddie records over and over Peter Pan keeps busy driving buses and making peanut butter, that latter of which caught the attention of our favorite miser:

If Mrs. Cratchit had only sent Bob to work with a plate of cookies, everything could have been resolved much sooner!

Dragon Approved!

Time for another International edition of "A Christmas Carol" with a wacky cover, this one published by Hachette of Australia:

More info at their website.

You would think "A Christmas Carol" wouldn't need it, but cool to get a recommendation from Cressida Cowell, author of the popular "How to Train Your Dragon" series of books!

Vegan!

This is funny:

Commercial!

Here's a new commercial I've been seeing on TV:

I sometimes think how just a regular commercial these days pulls off special effects that say, Twickenham Studios would never have imagined when producing 1935's "Scrooge" with Sir Seymour Hicks!

One quibble  with that commercial, though: I was hoping the future would be Jetsons-style flying cars!

It's almost 2022! Where are they?

A Little More Archie!

The Archie-verse of comics is always good from some random Scrooge references as well as spins on "A Christmas Carol!"

The Little Archie story "George to the Rescue" is one such example. 

The basic story is that the school wants to buy some bird feeders, but Mr. Weatherbee is too cheap to sign off on the necessary expenditure, so Little Archie refers to him as an "Ol' Scrooge."

It happens that Little Archie brought "George," his new parakeet to school that day for show and tell.

George gets out if hsi cage and flies into Mr. Weatherbee's office, where he repeats the Scrooge reference and also throws in a few cheeps, which sounds like he's calling Mr. W "cheap."

Mr. Weatherbee thinks he's being haunted by the bird, so he has a change of heart and buys a bunch of bird feeders!

Probably more than you need to know, but that's the set-up for these panels from the story that mention Scrooge:

I always thought it was odd that in the Little Archie stories, everyone calls him "Little Archie." Since this is Archie as a younger child, there was no "Big Archie" at that time, so why does everyone go out of their way to make the distinction that this is Little Archie?

All of the characters are younger, but nobody calls the younger Jughead "Little Jughead," for example!

These are important things to think about!

More Archie!

Word is that an upcoming special Archie comic book, "Archie's Holiday Magic" is a take-off on "A Christmas Carol" with Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come segments.

You can read more about it here.

Intriguing!

Good Choice!

A quick little blurb from the December 24, 1955 issue of "Billboard" magazine:

That was a good choice!

Happy Halloween!

One More Monster!

One more future Scrooge had a memorable monster portrayal, but in a movie from Paramount, not Universal: Fredric March with his Oscar-winning role in 1931's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde!"

I think this movie holds up really well and Fredric March does a great job as both characters.

A must see!

I actually think that Mr. Hyde sneaks in as a Universal Monster based on the 1953 Universal release "Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" co-starring Boris Karloff.

I think the movie is underrated due to non-fans thinking that Bud and Lou get in the way of the horror (although it's first and foremost a comedy anyway) and because Universal had not previously made a Jekyll/Hyde feature.

When the boys met the Wolf Man, Dracula and Frankenstein's monster in 1948's "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein," those were the "real" monsters that had previously appeared in Universal movies.

And the original Invisible Man as portrayed by Claude Rains is referenced in 1951's "Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man."

The mummy from 1955's "Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy" is named Klaris rather than Kharis (as in the previous four mummy movies from Universal), but that's close enough!

So, these other "Meet" movies with A & C can be tacked on to the various series, but poor Mr. Hyde is an orphan! Is that why he's so upset?

Universal Monsters - Part 6

As we continue to make connections between the "Universal Monsters" series of films and various adaptations of "A Christmas Carol," we land in 1939 with "Son of Frankenstein" for perhaps the greatest connection of all!

The star of the movie is Basil Rathbone in the title role as Baron Wolf von Frankenstein (perhaps the best horror movie name ever!).

I think Rathbone does seem like he could be the son of Colin Clive from the first two "Frankenstein" films and gives the proceedings that certain oomph that he brought to whatever role in whatever genre.

Of course, Basil Rathbone looms large in the world of "A Christmas Carol" adaptations with his 1942 78 rpm album on Columbia Records, his turn as Marley's Ghost in the  1954 "Shower of Stars" production and his starring roles as Scrooge in 1956's "The Stingiest Man in Town" and 1959's "Fredric March Presents Tales from Dickens" version!

Always good!

Universal Monsters - Part 5

A somewhat tangential entry in the "Universal Monsters" series of films is 1942's "Invisible Agent," which sneaks in as part of "The Invisible Man" series.

It's a pretty fun blending of the invisible theme with topical WWII action.

The star of the film Jon Hall, was never a big star, but he has at least one important distinction: he was born on February 23, the same as Kelsey Grammer's Scrooge, Kathleen Harrison and yours truly!

Why are we talking about this movie? It was directed by Edwin L. Marin, known in these circles as the director of 1938's "A Christmas Carol" from 1938!

The picture was not sold by using his name, as it's in extremely fine print on the (very cool , if misleading) poster above and the (misleadingly Frankenstein-esque) one below!

But we needed reliable guys like him to keep the product coming back in the golden age of Hollywood!

Note: My editor, Slugger Jr., was particularly interested in what I had to say in this post:

He watches all the movies with me and must have liked this one! Maybe it was the walk-on by Walter Tetley as a newsboy!

On the subject of the 1938 version of "A Christmas Carol," you may recall that June Lockhart, daughter of Gene and Kathleen (who portrayed Bob and Mrs. Cratchit) made her movie debut as Belinda Cratchit in that film.

June's first lead role in a movie was in Universal's 1946 "She-Wolf of London," which also sneaks into the whole Universal Monsters thing, as it is sort-of part of the Wolf Man series. SPOILER: It really shouldn't be!

June is cute as a button, but doesn't get a chance to act much and she and co-star Don Porter are so not British!

But fun for 1960s TV fans to see Gidget's father and Will Robinson's mother 20 years prior!

Universal Monsters - Part 4

Often cited as the best of the Universal monster movies series, 1935's "The Bride of Frankenstein" certainly offers plenty to enjoy!

Perhaps the most colorful character in that movie is the off-kilter Dr. Septimus Pretorius, as portrayed by veteran British actor Ernest Thesiger.

Besides having a name that sounds straight out of Dickens, Dr. Pretorius has some peculiar ideas about science and basically drives the plot of the movie.

But did you know that Ernest Thesiger also played the undertaker in 1951's "Scrooge" starring Alastair Sim?

It's a small role, but he makes his presence felt and just the idea of Dr. Pretorius being an undertaker is fun in its creepy way!

One other thing to mention is that John Carradine had a bit part in "Bride of Frankenstein," but later was featured in a number of "Universal Monster" movies, including his excellent Count Dracula in "House of Frankenstein" (1944) and "House of Dracula" (1945).

Mr. Carradine apparently portrayed Ebenezer Scrooge in an early TV broadcast on the Dumont network in 1947. Alas, it was broadcast live and disappeared even more quickly than Dracula exposed to the rays of the sun!