Advent Blog Day 27: A Christmas Carol - Musicals

Yesterday I started a four part series on the Christmas Carol. Mainly because it helps fulfill my goal of creating a blog post for every day of December. By the way, we're on day 3 of the twelve days of Christmas. So here are three French hens. If you've been reading my posts you might recognize this picture.

All right, so yesterday I concentrated on the traditional Christmas Carol movies. Today it's the musicals.

People have been performing a musical Christmas Carol in professional and community theaters for years. Let's face it, a grumpy miser, 4 ghosts, several Christmas parties, and a bunch of children beg to be put to music. It's not surprising that it would get made into movies. So here we go. This is not a comprehensive list.

Scrooge 1970 The tagline "What the dickens have they done to Scrooge" was on the poster of this musical with Albert Finney as a singing and dancing Ebenezer. He won a Golden Globe for this performance. Leslie Bricusse wrote the score for this. You know his work if you've ever watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and fallen in love with the music in that one (Pure Imagination, I Want It Now, I've Got a Golden Ticket, Candy Man) then you'll like the music in this one. At one point Albert Finney sings "I Hate People". But it was the song "Thank You Very Much" which won the Academy Award. This film got four Oscar nominations.

You can read my review of it here.

The Muppet Christmas Carol 1992 I had thought this was going to be silly. After all, it's the Muppets. They did The Muppet Show with all of it's clownish wackiness. But this version is both really funny, and heartwarming. And it sticks pretty close to the storyline Michael Caine takes on the role of Scrooge and is surrounded by the Muppets. Kermit is Bob Cratchit. But it's Gonzo, playing the brilliant addition of narrator Charles Dickens who steals the show. The songs were written by Academy Award winning songwriter (Rainbow Connection) Paul Williams. He wrote a ton of hits and showed up frequently on variety and talk shows in the 70's. This was the first Muppet film made after the death of creator Jim Henson. His son Brian took over the reins and he inherited his father's talents. I've written a review here.

A Christmas Carol The Musical 2004

Starring Frasier! Kelsey Grammer takes on the role here with Jason Alexander as Marley. The music was written by Alan Menken (that brilliant Disney songwriter), and Lynn Ahrens who is a veteran Broadway songwriter as well as one of the people behind Schoolhouse Rock. This is the adaption of the stage play.

There's some beautiful music in this one. You can read my review here. Part 3 tomorrow!