HOW TH E SCROOGE DICKENS
DID HE GET THAT WAY?
The worldwide legions of Ebenezer Scrooge fans think they know their idol merely as the perennial anti-hero of their favorite holiday classic, Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” He’s that, for sure. But a deeper investigation by this news organization has uncovered raw, revealing data, exposing factoids about Scrooge that will haunt your dreams — or at least make you sound like a giant, jovial nerd at holiday parties.
What we already know: Scrooge is a jerk. He hates Christmas, thinks it’s a big waste of time and money and goes around bah-humbugging it. Until, that is, three ghosts show him how much they scare, forcing an epiphany and turning him into holiday-loving goo like a sticky figgy pudding. The result is more than a century and a half of stage, then screen, productions of his life story and famed one-night turnaround.
Yet anonymous sources like Mister Magoo and Scrooge Mcduck — whoops! — have recently come forward to reveal a more complex, multifaceted and often multi-faced side to the stingy, stuffed shirt, stick-in-themiserly-mud Scrooge and the tale that made him famous.
So here you go. Hold onto your night cap:
AGE REVEALED
He’s 234. Yes, though Dickens created him in 1843, Scrooge’s birthday, according to fandom. com, is Feb. 7, 1786, and there’s no record of his death, making him older than dirt. But, hey, he doesn’t look a day over 233.
IDENTITY THEFT
Dickens describes Scrooge as “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint … secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.” But who is he, really? Theories abound about Dickens’ inspiration for the character. Some say Scrooge might be based on Ebenezer Scroggie, a real-life Edinburgh merchant whose gravestone described him as a “meal man” or corn merchant, but Dickens may have misread it as “mean” man. Or he might have used political economist Thomas Malthus as a model. Malthus was well known for his callous attitude toward the poor and the “surplus population.” Then again, maybe it was John Elwes, a noted British eccentric and miser. Too bad we can’t ask Mr. Dickens, unless he comes back as a ghost on a cold winter night ...
SPEED WRITING
Dickens had such a clear picture of his antagonistic protagonist, he penned the 66-page novella in only six weeks. And just six weeks after its publication, the book was adapted for the London stage, taking off in multiple productions and spreading to New York and beyond.
PSYCHOANALYSIS
One of Scrooge’s modern-day body-doubles recently came clean on some of his character’s inner secrets. Yes, American Conservatory Theater’s James Carpenter, who has played Scrooge in 13 years’ worth of ACT productions, feels he knows him better than most anyone. “Scrooge is very alive to me. A real person,” Carpenter says. “I think he’s become dead inside. He’s closed so many doors in his life, he’s got this huge amount of unaddressed emotional baggage, and it all catches up with him in one night. He has shut out humanity.” Carpenter’s favorite line to utter in the play? “I will see you first in hell!” (spoken by the jerky, pre-epiphany Scrooge, who’d rather die than have Christmas dinner with his nephew). “It’s such a great line,” Carpenter says. “Always gets an ‘ohhhh’ from the audience.”
PANDEMIC? BAH HUMBUG!
In this unusual year — and for the first time in ACT’S 44-year history of the production — “A Christmas Carol” will be an online “radio show,” which will run Dec. 5-31 and make even better use of Dickens’ narration and atmospheric descriptions than the play typically does. “A Christmas Carol: On Air” will feature the delightful music, spooky ghosts and cast that have made it a beloved Bay Area holiday classic — plus there will be an activity book, virtual listening parties and a Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream flavor created just for the show. It’s a creamy, crème fraiche ice cream with a raspberry-jam swirl inside housemade sponge cake. The flavor is named “Victo
ria Sponge.” ( Whew, we thought it might taste like Tiny Tim.)
IN THE BEFORE TIME
In previous years at ACT, the in-person shows have involved 75 pounds of paper snow per run, 337 scenery, lighting and sound changes, and a cast of nearly 50 people, including kids from the Young Conservatory program.
There have been a few mishaps along the way. Carpenter recalls the year the stage trap door caved in on opening night. “The whole trap door — that had Scrooge’s bed on it — just collapsed. They had to run the curtain down and cover (the hole) with plywood.”
SPEAKING OF HUMBUGS
What are they? No, not bugs that hum a catchy tune. According to Merriam-webster, they’re “something designed to deceive and mislead,” “nonsense, drivel” or a British hard candy, usually peppermint-flavored. Regardless, “Bah humbug” is known as Scrooge’s catch phrase. Yet in the book, he says it only twice. Clearly, that was enough.
LIFE — EVEN FICTIONAL — GOES ON
We usually think of Scrooge in his pre-reformation, miserly ways. But the San Francisco musical “Scrooge in Love!” which had its world premiere at 42nd Street Moon in 2015 and has been a smash hit since at San Francisco’s Gateway Theatre, took the story a little further. Set a year after the Dickens tale, a reformed Scrooge searches for his lost love, Belle, as he revisits the past, present and future all over again.
BY ANY OTHER FACE
A sleigh-full of actors — and even a few actresses — have played Scrooge or Scrooge-like characters in myriad stage, movie and TV versions.
The first ever Scrooge movie was titled, “Marley’s Ghost,” a short British film made in 1901 that only lasted a few minutes. In the 1930s, the great Lionel Barrymore brought Scrooge to life on the radio. Then Basil Rathbone took off his Sherlock Holmes hat and Scrooged it up on television in the 1950s.
Who could forget the classic “Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol” in 1962? It was the very first animated holiday program produced for TV with Jim Backus (you
“Scrooge is very alive to me. A real person. I think he’s become dead inside. He’s closed so many doors in his life, he’s got this huge amount of unaddressed emotional baggage, and it all catches up with him in one night. He has shut out humanity.”
American Conservatory Theater’s James Carpenter, who has played Scrooge in 13 years’ worth of ACT productions
know, Mr. Howell from “Gilligan’s Island”) voicing a bumbling, near-sighted version. (James Carpenter’s favorite version, by the way.)
Albert Finney was Scrooge in 1970, and Marcel Marceau in 1973 (was it a silent film?). Henry Winkler was Scrooge-esque as Benedict Slade in “An American Christmas Carol” — think The Fonz in really bad oldage makeup. George C. Scott played one of the best Scrooges in a rich TV version in 1984.
Things started to get a little, um, creative after that, when Bill Murray played a crabby TV executive haunted by three ghosts in 1988’s “Scrooged” (made even weirder with Buddy Hackett as himself, playing Scrooge in a film-within-a-film).
Daytime diva Susan Lucci played cold-hearted department-store magnate Elizabeth “Ebbie” Scrooge in “Ebbie.” Vanessa Williams followed as Ebony Scrooge in “A Diva’s Christmas Carol.”
Michael Caine had a ton of fun, starring alongside Kermit in “The Muppet Christmas Carol.” And in 1999, Patrick Stewart was a wonderful Scrooge, but it was hard not to expect him to tell the ghosts to “engage.”
SURPLUS POPULATION OF ADAPTATIONS?
Many more versions were just plain wacky. There was “Rich Little’s Christmas Carol,” in which comedian Rich Little plays W.C. Fields playing Scrooge. In “Bugs Bunny’s Christmas Carol,” Yosemite Sam took on the role. And of course, Scrooge Mcduck, Donald Duck’s rich, stingy Scottish uncle, stars in “Mickey’s Christmas Carol.”
There’s a “The Jetsons” version, a Scooby-doo “Scroogey Doo” version, a Barbie version and a Smurf version with George Lopez as Grouchy Smurf. Smurfs? Really?
If Scrooge were alive — and real — that would probably kill him.