Is there any Yuletide tale more beloved than Charles Dickens'
A Christmas Carol? The story of miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, who changes his ways after being visited by ghosts on Christmas Eve, has been popular with audiences young and old since its first publication in December 1843. So it should come as no surprise that, as the 20th century dawned, the character of Scrooge would be brought to life through the flickering new medium of film. Short adaptations of
A Christmas Carol were produced in 1901, 1908, and 1910, all running less than 20 minutes. In 1913, the Zenith Film Company of Great Britain brought playwright J.C. Buckstone's stage adaptation of Dickens' novella before their cameras, resulting in a motion picture of approximately feature length for the first time, entitled
Scrooge. Like the stage version, it starred Sir Seymour Hicks (1871-1949). Considered by many the definitive Scrooge, Hicks had been playing the old miser on stage since 1901, eventually racking up thousands of performances in the role. In 1926,
Scrooge was re-edited and re-titled
Old Scrooge for American audiences by the Pathe Film Exchange. Its success surely was the reason why the first feature-length sound version of the story, 1935's
Scrooge, also starred Hicks. Seen today,
Old Scrooge serves as a fascinating record of one of the stage and screen's most popular portrayers of Ebenezer Scrooge at the height of his powers.
BONUS: A Christmas Carol (1929): One of the rarest filmed adaptations of Dickens' story, this version of A Christmas Carol was initially part of the Tense Moments with Great Authors series, produced in England. All made in 1922, these short films (varying 15 to 20 minutes in length) presented abbreviated versions of great works of literature, including Vanity Fair, Les Miserables, and A Tale of Two Cities. In 1929, it was shorn of several minutes to be marketed more easily as a one-reeler in the United States. Scrooge is played by H.V. Esmond, whose daughter, Jill Esmond, starred in Alfred Hitchcock's The Skin Game (1931) and was married (from 1930 to 1940) to Laurence Olivier. Starring H.V. Esmond. Directed by George Wynn.
