A Christmas Carol (1910)

 

A Christmas Carol (1910) is the second-oldest surviving filmed adaptation of Charles Dickens’ story, and the first example we have of a pretty complete telling of the tale.  The oldest known movie was from 1901, a British film called Scrooge or Marley’s Ghost, and with only a little over three minutes in existence, that movie cuts out most of the story to center on the interaction between Scrooge and Marley.

This post is part of the countdown to Christmas coinciding with the launch of my newest book, Christmas in Classic Films.

The 1910 film is around 13 to 17 minutes, depending on which version you can find, but whisks us through much of the plot efficiently and with simple but evocative special effects requisite to the story.  Snow flies off the hat brims and clings to the shoulders of the men requesting Scrooge to donate to charity.  The ghosts are superimposed in a double exposure of trick photography.  The title cards abbreviate the bullet points in this already well-known story.

The main limitation, which perhaps adds a bit of theatricality to the film’s appearance, is that all the action takes place either Scrooge’s office or in his flat.  The Ghost of Christmas Past, (and Present, and Future) brings the scenes to him.  So Scrooge is not lifted to travel through space and time, but the images from Fezziwig’s ball, to his courtship, to the vision of his lonely death and eerie headstone all play out in corners of his room.

The movie was made by the Edison Company up in the Bronx before Hollywood was ever a gleam in anyone’s eye.  Marc McDermott plays Scrooge, a tall figure who towers over the cowering Bob Cratchit, played by Charles S. Ogle. 

Mr. McDermott, originally from Australia, trod the boards all over the world, joined Mrs. Patrick Campbell’s famous company, and eventually found a spot on Broadway.  It is remarkable that before his death at only 57 in 1929, he actually appeared in some 180 films in a twenty-year period between 1909 and 1929.  Charles Ogle, who was older but whose film career ended a few years earlier in 1926, is credited with having appeared in over 300 films.  We may assume that most of those films are lost to us, but what a telling statistic to indicate how popular movies had become and how quickly the young film industry became a powerful force in pop culture.

The story of Scrooge, with its supernatural events, was a natural for this medium.  How amazed Charles Dickens would have been.

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Come back next Thursday for a comic Christmas murder caper as Deanna Durbin is a Lady on a Train (1945)

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May I take this moment to wish my fellow Americans a very peaceful and pleasant Thanksgiving Day!

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism.  Her latest book is Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

Christmas scene in THE BELLS OF ST. MARY'S (1945)

 

The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945) gives us a version of a child’s telling of the Nativity, this time acted out in the tradition of the awkward parochial school Christmas pageant. 

Bing Crosby as Father O’Malley, and Ingrid Bergman, as Sr. Mary Benedict, the Sister Superior of the school, watch the rehearsal of the youngest class.

This post continues my countdown to Christmas coinciding with the launch of my newest book, Christmas in Classic Films.

Bing first sings “Adeste Fideles” to rehearse an older group of kids for the pageant, a hymn he sang on his Kraft Music Hall radio show for years every Christmas, so he didn’t need any rehearsing.  He is stunned when Sr. Benedict not only tells him to quiet down so the littler kids can rehearse in the next room, but that his services will not be needed: Christmas will go on without Crosby (at least until the advent of television, of course, when a generation grew up with his annual TV Christmas specials).  He is even more gobsmacked by the thespian talents of the children who present the Nativity with dialogue they make up as they go along. 

Bobby Dolan, Jr., is the little boy who “wrote” the script and plays Joseph.  He hoists a taller Mary onto a sawhorse donkey, seemingly without hurting himself though he is a little winded, and they proceed to be rejected by innkeepers through the parted proscenium curtain. 

Somebody’s wandering little brother gets to be Baby Jesus.  It’s a funny skit because it comes off exactly as it’s meant to: unrehearsed and purely a project of make-believe.  Sr. Benedict’s amusement at their theatrical, not to say liturgical, mess is priceless, and her allowing of it makes her a mensch of a nun. 

Little Bobby, clearly a trouper, was the son of film exec, composer and music director for MGM Robert Emmet Dolan.  He also had an uncredited bit part in Going My Way the previous year, which first brought Father O’Malley to us and gave Bing an Oscar.  Bobby had only one more movie before his film career apparently ended.  His Joseph may not have been the authoritative representation, but it clearly had Ingrid Bergman’s imprimatur.

(Come back next week for a look at an early silent version of A Christmas Carol...from 1910!)

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

We're No Angels (1955)

 

We’re No Angels (1955) cheekily teases us about our own Christmas sentimentality with an unabashed romp of black humor and goofy good will toward men.  And a murder.

This is my entry into the Classic Movie Blog Association's "Movies are Murder" blogathon.  Have a look at the site here to see the other great blogs.

This post also serves as my intro to a countdown to Christmas coinciding with the launch of my newest book, Christmas in Classic Films.

It is Christmas Eve, 1895 in French Guiana, where three convicts have escaped from the prison at Devil’s Island.  They are Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov, and Aldo Ray.  They do not shoot it out to escape, but rather employ playful charm and Boy Scout-like helpfulness to hide with the family of a local storekeeper until they can board a ship that will take them away back to France and freedom.  The only real weapon they have is their wits and Adolphe, a poisonous snake.

The storekeeper is Leo G. Carroll, befuddled and incompetent, who allows the convicts to repair his roof, not knowing they have escaped.  Joan Bennett is his flighty wife, and Gloria Talbot is his teenage daughter, who spends much of the movie fainting and being carried around by lecherous Aldo Ray.

Basil Rathbone is the wealthy owner of the store, who arrives with his son to take over the business because it is so badly run and unprofitable.  Rathbone is a delightfully first-rate villain, an obnoxious, arrogant, sneering scene stealer who forbids his son to have anything to do with Gloria Talbot, and breaks up their budding romance, not that the son seems to mind that much.  He knows which side his bread is buttered on.

The convicts step in to help Mr. Carroll’s family—they work as sales clerks, they artfully fix up his ledger, they arrange a magnificent Christmas dinner for the family with little luxuries they have stolen.  It’s not certain if they like Carroll’s family so much or just hate Basil Rathbone with a passion, but they stay to defend the family, even to the point of killing Rathbone and his son.

Well, they don’t actually do it.  Adolphe, the snake, bites them, but the convicts let him.

Some charming moments are finding Bogie completely at home cooking in the kitchen wearing a pink frilly apron as if to dare us to laugh, and the trio singing the hymn, “Three Angels,” which they perform for the family.

The dialogue is fast and witty, and very dark.  They frankly and disarmingly discuss their crimes, display a taste for violence with odd joie de vivre, and the film generally defies not only our usual expectations of Christmas sentiment, but our pedestrian need for logic. Director Michael Curtiz’s last movie before this was the tippity-top of all Christmas movies, White Christmas (1954).  Perhaps his own sense of irony required a palate cleanser.

When the family is safe and the opportunity presents itself for the convicts to catch their boat to freedom, they instead decide to return to prison, because it wasn’t so bad and people on the outside are not very nice.  Except for their new little family, which they decide they can always visit when they break out of prison next Christmas.  They walk away from the camera, and three halos are superimposed above their heads.  And over the little cage Aldo Ray carries that holds Adolphe.

But we know, they’re no angels.  Unless, of course, angels can be temporary manifestations when we need them.

Don't forget to check out the other blogs in CMBA's "Movies are Murder" Blogathon!

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

Christmas in Classic Films -- eBook launch TODAY!

My long-awaited (for me, anyway) launch of Christmas in Classic Films has finally come TODAY!  The eBook version is now available on Amazon exclusively, and for the first two days (today and Friday, November 4th) will be sold for $1.99!  Beginning Saturday, the price will be set to its regular $2.99, so save a buck and buy today or tomorrow.

The print version of the book will be available beginning Sunday, November 6th at its regular price of $11.99.  If you're looking for some paperback stocking stuffers this holiday season, you can't get any more Christmas-y than this.

The book is dedicated with love to the memory of our dear Paddy Nolan-Hall, aka The Caftan Woman.

  Here's where you can pre-order your eBook now!

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.