Tag Archives: Christmas Carol-A-Thon

December 21, 2011 · 12:44 am

CHRISTMAS CAROL- A-THON 2011: MR SCROOGE (1964)

Time for another post in Balladeer’s Blog’s annual orgy of entries on various versions of THE Christmas tale. The Charles Dickens classic has a certain  unquenchable charm that ensures it will continue to be adapted for at least another few hundred years. 

Mr Scrooge was originally broadcast on December 21st, 1964 by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It runs just an hour and stars Cyril Ritchard as Ebenezer Scrooge and the very appropriately named Eric Christmas as Marley’s Ghost. As with the  Continue reading →

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December 19, 2011 · 12:55 am

CHRISTMAS CAROL-A-THON 2011: SCROOGE’S ROCK & ROLL CHRISTMAS (1983)

 Time for another post in Balladeer’s Blog’s annual orgy of entries on various versions of THE Christmas tale. The Charles Dickens classic has a certain  unquenchable charm that ensures it will continue to be adapted for at least another few hundred years. 

Scrooge’s Rock & Roll Christmas grows on me more and more each time I watch it. It’s value as a version of A Christmas Carol is virtually nil, but it features some wonderful renditions of a variety of Yuletide songs along with some striking wintry scenery. Most sources list this Continue reading →

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December 14, 2011 · 10:02 pm

CHRISTMAS CAROL-A-THON 2011: THREE OPERA VERSIONS OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Time for another post in Balladeer’s Blog’s annual orgy of entries on various versions of THE Christmas tale. The Charles Dickens classic has a certain  unquenchable charm that ensures it will continue to be adapted for at least another few hundred years. Here’s an encore post from last Christmas season for my blogging buddy Didi Wright and her whippet George, the co-authors of the blog My Little Dog. Didi’s daughter Brianna hopes to be an opera singer someday so hopefully Brianna will enjoy this post, too.:

This time I’ll look at three opera versions of the classic Dickens tale. I’ll start off with the most lauded one- the 1982 Granada TV broadcast of the Royal Opera House’s staging of the opera by THE Thea Musgrave. Musgrave has also done the libretto and music for the celebrated operas Mary, Queen Of Scots … Harriet, The Woman Called Moses … Simon Bolivar  and Continue reading →

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December 12, 2011 · 9:08 pm

CHRISTMAS CAROL-A-THON 2011: SKINFLINT (1979)

Flint (Hoyt Axton) and his lost love (Barbara Mandrell)

Flint (Hoyt Axton) and his lost love (Barbara Mandrell)

Time for another post in my annual orgy of entries on various versions of THE Christmas tale. The Charles Dickens classic has a certain unquenchable charm that ensures it will continue to be adapted for at least another few hundred years.  

SKINFLINT (1979) – Skinflint is known to me and my fellow Carol-Geeks as “the country- western version”. This made-for- tv musical is so chock- full of stars that the Country Music Hall of Fame actually offers screenings of this film every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’m serious. My late mother was, unfortunately for me when I was a teenager, a country music fan so, strange as it may seem, I actually know who the singers in this flick are. This version of the Carol is set in fictional Flint City, Tennessee, a town dominated by the financial pull of banker Cyrus Flint, played by Hoyt Axton.

Naturally Cyrus Flint is the Scrooge stand- in and Axton is supported by plenty of other Continue reading →

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December 9, 2011 · 12:05 am

CHRISTMAS CAROL-A-THON 2011: CHRISTMAS IS COMIN’ UPTOWN (1979)

Time for another post in my annual orgy of entries on various versions of THE Christmas tale. The Charles Dickens classic has a certain unquenchable charm that ensures it will continue to be adapted for at least another few hundred years.  

The 1979 Broadway musical Christmas Is Comin’ Uptown is one of the versions of A Christmas Carol that often get pigeon-holed as “African American versions” but, along with John Grin’s Christmas and Ms Scrooge this tuneful adaptation transcends race and celebrates the universality of the Carol’s message. The musical continues to tour the USA to this very day and a television broadcast of a few scenes and songs from the work aired when I was a teenager and was already obsessed with variations of the story.

Gregory Hines played Scrooge in the original Broadway cast. The Scrooge in this adaptation was an Continue reading →

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