Jane Kean Appreciation!

I had mentioned that Jane Kean appeared as Trixie Norton in 1977's "The Honeymooners Christmas Carol." 

She does a good job, but in typical Trixie fashion, she doesn't really get a lot to do. She does do a wacky kid voice as Bob Cratchit's daughter, though!

Jane was a versatile performer, having honed her performing skills as one-half of popular nightclub act with her sister Betty in the 1940s and 1950s.

She had an excellent singing voice, which was shown to advantage in her more famous "A Christmas Carol"-related role: that of Belle in 1962's "Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol!"

She does a great job with the song "Winter Was Warm" in the Christmas Past sequence.

For fun, here's the extended version of the song before it was trimmed for time:

Pretty cool!

Intriguingly, as I had mentioned way back when, Jane's sister Betty had been married to "Mister Magoo" himself, Jim Backus, years before this special.

That's show biz!

"The Honeymooners Christmas Carol" (1977)

"The Honeymooners Christmas Carol" 

November 28, 1977

Director: Jackie Gleason

Scrooge: "Ed Norton"

From 1977 comes one of a number of specials featuring Jackie Gleason's "The Honeymooners," this time featuring a version of "A Christmas Carol" as staged by Ralph Kramden!

I'm a big fan of "The Honeymooners" and watched reruns of the "Classic 39" all the time back in the day, so I was excited when they had these specials reuniting Jackie Gleason as Ralph and Art Carney as Ed Norton along with classic Alice Kramden played by Audrey Meadows. Also along was Jane Kean, the Trixie Norton of the later musical episodes.

I hadn't thought of these specials in years and probably wouldn't have expected ever to see them again, but the four of them showed up on DVD last year, so I grabbed a set!

Watching the "Christmas Carol" episode again, I thought it was good fun. Dated to be sure, with then-topical references to everyone from Anita Bryant to Billy Carter, but fun.

The framing story has  Ralph volunteering to direct the bus company's charity performance of "A Christmas Carol" to get in good with his boss. Hilarity ensues with Norton playing both Tiny Tim and Ebenezer Scrooge!

Ralph's boss, Mr. Marshall, is played by sitcom vet Gale Gordon and he easily fits in!

I won't spoil anything else, but it's a fun, nostalgic watch!

Whole Lotta Shakin'!

Here's another fun Scrooge cartoon:

No way pre-reformed Scrooge could ever guess!

Laden!

This 1920 ad for Baker's Chocolate is interesting:

It seems like a familiar scene until you think, "Wait! That's not Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim!"

It's the typical Cratchit pose, but the carrier looks like Scrooge and the carrie-ee looks like Little Red Riding Hood?

Maybe it's not really LRRH, but a similar looking character did pop up in a Baker's ad the year before:

And a couple of years earlier saw a grown Red in this 1916 ad:

Yes, please, to the Christmas dainties!

"Scrooge: A Christmas Carol" (2022)

"Scrooge: A Christmas Carol" (2022)

Director: Stephen Donnelly

Scrooge: Luke Evans

So, the new animated "Scrooge: A Christmas Carol" dropped on Netflix yesterday, so naturally I was right on it!

I thought it was a lot of fun!

I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll do my review and breakdown after the holidays!

So, if you already have Netflix, give it a watch. If you don't, sign up for a free trial or something!

"A Christmas Carol" (2021) - Frith Street Films - Part 2

A few words about the 2021 multi-media adaptation of "A Christmas Carol" from Frith Street Films...

I admit that I wasn't really sure what was going on at first, as the characters dance around a lot and their lips don't move although we hear them talking.

Then it dawned on me that we're seeing what the littlest girl is imagining as her grandmother reads "A Christmas Carol" to the family. This accounts for the different look of various sets and old pictures popping up here and there.

I rewatched the beginning and it all made sense! We see the kids setting up a toy theater (theatre?) and cutting out pictures including the John Leech illustrations from the first edition.

I hadn't watched those videos from yesterday's post before watching the movie, so I had to figure it out myself!

In any event, I enjoyed it quite a bit. I didn't know what to expect and I honestly wasn't expecting much, but I thought I'd at least give it a look as I have Amazon Prime anyway, but it held my attention and was well worth my time.

I quite liked the narration of Siân Phillips as the grandmother!

It kind of played like an audio dramatization with illustrations and the audio portion is a very faithful adaptation with only a few changes here and there.

The biggest addition, and a fascinating one at that, is the Cratchit children talking about Martha making hats and needing to ride a train to get home for Christmas dinner. And then we see Martha and some other girls making hats! I like it!

An intriguing aspect of the film is the various vintage (and vintage-looking) pictures that pop up to help illustrate the story.

This one really caught my eye:

Is that really how lighthouse keepers got their provisions? Yikes! I never knew! So, this was educational too!

A nit-picker (and there's some of that in me) would say that not everything we see looks like it would spring from the mind of a little Victorian girl, but I'm willing to go with the flow!

I think this film was a good kick-off to the Scrooge-watching of the season. An appetizer, if you will, before the main course of Sim and Magoo and the other perennials!

"A Christmas Carol" (2020) - Frith Street Films - Part 1

"A Christmas Carol" (2020)

Frith Street Films

Director: Jacqui Morris

Scrooge: Simon Russell Beale

Let's kick off December with a relatively new version of "A Christmas Carol, this one from 2020!

It's kind of a blend of different styles and hard to describe.

The trailer gives some of the flavor:

And here's a featurette with more background:

I don't remember having heard of it previously, but it popped up on Amazon Prime, so I gave it a watch!

Note that the video says it will be in theaters in 2021, but most sources say it's from 2020, so I'm going with 2020. I can say it's streaming in 2022 and that's what really matters!

Next up: The critique!