Who’s your favorite Scrooge?

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I know, I know: regardless of your specific religion, the winter holidays are all about sweetness and light. BUT…if it weren’t for Charles Dickens’s unforgettable Ebenezer Scrooge, would there be a Grinch? A Scrooge McDuck? Or, Bill Murray’s wonderful character, Frank Cross, in the 1988 film, Scrooged? Could there even be “sweetness and light” if it weren’t for the “grouchy and ill-tempered”? Of course not!
 
We owe a lot to Scrooge! Despite all the sweetness and light, we’re all secret fans of vivid “black hat” characters. Where would the ancient TV series, Dallas, have been without its star misanthrope, J. R. Ewing? Sherlock without his nemesis, Professor James Moriarty?

Scrooge is everybody’s favorite skinflint, because not only is he transformed at the end of the story, but also his curmudgeonly nature reflects a part of our own souls we prefer to keep hidden, what Carl Jung called the shadow. Fictional portrayals of those aspects of hidden selves allow us to accept, grapple with, and hopefully integrate those issues that we won’t admit having but which we very much need not to ignore.

Perhaps another reason Scrooge is such a favorite is that his character raises the core life issues of generosity, empathy, and values. When positive, those are qualities characteristic of someone who is a delight to know. Scrooge wasn’t a delight to know–at first.

I can still remember the plates in the classic edition book in our father’s library from when I was a child. I’m not absolutely certain–memory is malleable–but I think this html reprint with illustrations is the same edition we had.

But, it’s the film adaptations that have stuck with us. The Wikipedia webpage, List of A Christmas Carol adaptations, gives lists in the categories of theatre, film, television, radio, audio recordings, opera, and parody. The following is a quote from that Wikipedia page of just the film category.

Film

• Scrooge, or, Marley’s Ghost (1901), a short British film that is the earliest surviving screen adaptation.
• A Christmas Carol (1908), with Thomas Ricketts as Scrooge.
• A Christmas Carol (1910) is a 15-minute silent version of the film starring Marc McDermott as Scrooge and Charles Ogle as Cratchit.
• Scrooge (1913), starring Sir Seymour Hicks and retitled Old Scrooge for its U.S. release in 1926.
• The Right to Be Happy (1916), the first feature-length adaptation, directed by and starring Rupert Julian as Scrooge.
• A Christmas Carol (1923), produced in the U.K. and starring Russell Thorndike, Nina Vanna, Jack Denton, and Forbes Dawson.
• Scrooge (1935), a British movie, again starring Seymour Hicks as Scrooge.^[4]
• A Christmas Carol (1938), starring Reginald Owen as Scrooge and Gene Lockhart and Kathleen Lockhart as the Cratchits.
• Scrooge (1951), starring Alastair Sim as Scrooge and Mervyn Johns and Hermione Baddeley as the Cratchits. Many at the time of its release considered this film a classic, the best adaptation of the story yet made.^[5]
• It’s Never Too Late (1953), italian adaptation of Dicken’s novel, featuring Paolo Stoppa and Marcello Mastroianni.
• Scrooge (1970), a musical film adaptation starring Albert Finney as Scrooge and Alec Guinness as Marley’s Ghost.
• A Christmas Carol (1971), an Oscar-winning animated short film by Richard Williams, with Alastair Sim reprising the role of Scrooge.
• Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983), an animated short film featuring the various Walt Disney characters (including characters from Wind in the Willows, Robin Hood and The Three Little Pigs), with Scrooge McDuck fittingly playing the role of Ebenezer Scrooge.
• Scrooged (1988), a remake in a contemporary setting with Bill Murray being a misanthropic TV producer who is haunted by the ghosts of Christmas. Directed by Richard Donner.
• The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), featuring the various Muppet characters, with Michael Caine as Scrooge.
• A Christmas Carol (1994), an animated version produced by Jetlag Productions, written by Jack Olesker.
• A Christmas Carol (1997), an animated production featuring the voice of Tim Curry as Scrooge as well as the voices of Whoopi Goldberg, Michael York and Ed Asner.
• Christmas Carol: The Movie (2001), an animated version produced by Illuminated Films (Christmas Carol), Ltd/The Film Consortium/MBP; screenplay by Robert Llewellyn & Piet Kroon; with the voices of Simon Callow, Kate Winslet, and Nicolas Cage.
• A Christmas Carol (2006), a computer animated adaptation featuring anthropomorphic animals in the lead roles.
• Barbie in a Christmas Carol (2008), Barbie stars as the female version of Ebenezer Scrooge.
• A Christmas Carol (2009), a performance capture film directed by Robert Zemeckis, and starring Jim Carrey as Ebenezer Scrooge and the three ghosts, from Walt Disney Pictures and ImageMovers Digital. It was released in November 2009 in Disney Digital 3D.

Obviously, few stories have been so often adapted. Here’s a link to a free, complete IMDb online video of the early 1935 adaptation: Scrooge. Another was made around the same time, the 1938 adaptation, A Christmas Carol (IMDb has only the movie trailer).

This video from the New York times gives A.O. Scott’s Critics Picks opinion on the best version of A Christmas Carol–the same thing as the “best Scrooge” I think. So that’s his choice, the 1951 Alastair Sim. I definitely agree. This is the version I remember best from my own childhood. The IMDb page about the Alastair Sim version Scrooge, has a wonderful bit of trivia:

The word “humbug” is misunderstood by many people, which is a pity since the word provides a key insight into Scrooge’s hatred of Christmas. The word “humbug” describes deceitful efforts to fool people by pretending to a fake loftiness or false sincerity. So when Scrooge calls Christmas a humbug, he is claiming that people only pretend to charity and kindness in an scoundrel effort to delude him, each other, and themselves. In Scrooge’s eyes, he is the one man honest enough to admit that no one really cares about anyone else, so for him, every wish for a Merry Christmas is one more deceitful effort to fool him and take advantage of him. This is a man who has turned to profit because he honestly believes everyone else will someday betray him or abandon him the moment he trusts them. [more]

So…who’s your favorite Scrooge?

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