[I've been writing the doggone post off and on for over two years now... could never seem to find a time to finish it before the holiday, so I kept holding it over. Finally time to put this one to bed!]
It’s that time of year again - time to me to settle in on cold winter evenings and enjoy one of the many, many holiday movies, cartoons, specials and extravaganzas dedicated to and associated with the Christmas season... with a few exceptions, as noted below.
My Christmas go-to shows have always included the old Rankin-Bass
stop-motion animation specials that I first saw as a kid and still enjoy
to this day - not only the early ones like Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer (a timeless classic) and Frosty The Snowman, but later productions like Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town and The Year Without A Santa Claus (which presented the immortal Heat Miser and Cold Miser) (I'm not a big fan of their '60s special The Little Drummer Boy,
however - probably because the title character in the story is such a
mopey, whiny little bitch...). And of course, A Charlie Brown Christmas
rates high on the holiday "must-see" list.
Lord have mercy. Enough already!
The period films I like during this time of year are things like the original Miracle on 34th Street from 1947 (were you aware that this movie not only was nominated for Best Picture at that year's Academy Awards, but Edmund Gwenn, who played Santa Claus, won Best Supporting Actor?) and the immortal It's A Wonderful Life. And I've recently gotten into another classic Hollywood musical, White Christmas with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye; it's fairly enjoyable, although I still cringe inwardly during the scenes when the duo fondly reminisce in song about the "good ol' minstrel show days"...
But for me, the holiday story that stands the test of time over and over again is Charles Dickens' archetypal yuletide yarn A Christmas Carol. There have been seemingly dozens of versions of this tale committed to film, starring the likes of Reginald Owen, Alastair Sim, Albert Finney, George C. Scott, etc., etc. All of these takes have their proponents, and rightfully so; Dickens' story is so well-written, that it's almost impossible to make a bad movie of it. But if you were to watch just one Christmas Carol this year, which would it
be?
But before we go into the show itself, let's start with a not-so-brief history of the production arm that ended up producing this classic.
United Productions of America (UPA) origins began at the Walt Disney studio in the late 1930s and early 1940s. During that time, as Disney expanded into feature films beginning with Snow White, he rapidly expanded his staff with young art school graduates who were generally more progressive and artistically aware than the older, more established, but generally less academically trained bullpen of Disney animators. This led to a schism between the "anti-art", "we owe Walt for where we are" old-timers and the change-oriented, Depression-era molded newcomers who had fewer stars in their eyes about Walt's influence and importance.
This schism came to a head during the infamous Disney animators' strike in the spring of 1941, a result of Disney's resistance to the progressive employees' attempt to form a union. Walt responded to the strike by firing many of his animators (although he eventually was pressured into reinstating some of them and recognizing the new union, the Screen Cartoonists Guild). Many of these fired employees found new positions with other studios (for instance, Frank Tashlin was given creative control of the Screen Gems studio and hired practically his entire staff off of the Disney picket line) or struck out on their own, doing freelance work (safety filmstrips and the like) for industrial corporations.
Shortly after their voluntary exodus from the studio, two former Disneyites, Zach Schwartz (then at Screen Gems) and David Hilberman (with Graphic Films), began renting a small space in a Los Angeles warehouse where they could paint in their spare time. Another former Disney colleague of theirs, Stephen Bosustow, was working in design at Hughes Aircraft. Bosustow convinced his superiors at Hughes to commission a filmstrip on safety, and he brought the idea to Graphic Films - but Graphic turned the job down. Hilberman then talked his way into doing the job with his partner Schwartz, and the resulting product was well-received by the corporation. The three men then formed a loose partnership, calling themselves Industrial Film & Poster Service, and began seeking other production work.
Around that time, the United Auto Workers (UAW) began considering sponsoring a pro-Roosevelt campaign film in the run-up to the 1944 general election. The union got in touch with the Screen Cartoonists Guild, and members of that organization put together a storyboard and began shopping it around to various studio animation production houses. But due to its political content, no major studio would touch it. As a last resort, the unions approached Schwartz, Bosustow and Hilberman's tiny shop to see if they could handle the job. They were awarded the contract for the film, called Hell Bent For Election, in January 1944, with the caveat that it be completed by that August, just six months away.
Overnight, their little warehouse hideaway became a beehive of activity, as all of the trio's friends and professional colleagues heard about what they were doing and ran to help - some working their regular jobs in animation during the day, then spending all night moonlighting on this exciting project. Most of them worked for free, including director Chuck Jones, musician Earl Robinson and lyricist "Yip" Harburg (of The Wizard Of Oz fame). The resulting film was stylish, modern, and a bold move away from "Disney-style" animation. It was also a great success with the UAW. Here it is:
After Hell Bent For Election, the little studio began receiving steady commissions for work on industrial and government films and slides, and started building a full-time staff of animators (including names revered in cartoon history to this day, including John Hubley, Bobe Cannon and Bill Hurtz). It was also around this time that it was decided that the name of the company should change from Industrial Film & Poster Service to United Productions of America, or UPA for short. The new concern was established as a three-way partnership, with Schwartz, Hilberman and Bosustow all owning equal shares. However, by 1946, the partners had a falling out, resulting in Schwartz and Hilberman selling out their interests in the company, making Bosustow initially the sole, then later (as he parceled out shares to key staff) majority shareholder in UPA.
It was also in the late 1940s that UPA took over Columbia Pictures animation duties out from under Screen Gems; Columbia had been dissatisfied for years with the Screen Gems product and was looking to make a change, provided that UPA continue using the studio's signature characters, the Fox and Crow. The new cartoon studio produced two releases with the characters: 1948's Robin Hoodlum and 1949's The Magic Fluke. Both were well received by Columbia, and both were nominated for Oscars for Best Short Subject (Cartoons) in subsequent years. But UPA wanted to get away from "funny animal" cartoons and begin creating its own characters. In the spring of 1949, they proposed a story that Columbia reluctantly accepted, only because the short had an animal in it, as well as a human character. The cartoon was titled Ragtime Bear, released in September 1949, and the star of the film was the curmudgeonly, near-sighted Mr. Magoo, featuring the voice of character actor Jim Backus:
Mr. Magoo was UPA's first successful series (six more Magoos were rapidly produced in the following year), but the film that made the studio a household word and put them in the forefront of the "animation as art" movement was Gerald McBoing Boing, released in January 1951.
With Gerald McBoing Boing, UPA made a clean break from Disney-style animation, and reviewers and the public noticed and approved. From a Time magazine piece in February 1951:
"Everything about the film is simple but highly stylized: bold line drawings, understated motion, striking color and airy design in the spirit of modern poster art, caricatured movements and backgrounds as well as figures... In his own way, [little Gerald's] 'Boing!' may prove as resounding as the first peep out of Mickey Mouse."
Gerald won similar raves from newspapers, highbrow critics and film trade reporters. And that spring, the cartoon won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Subject, UPA's first Oscar.
The praise and popular success the studio received for Gerald McBoing Boing and the early Magoo cartoons carried through for several years, and kept UPA a dynamic and financially-viable concern. Columbia increased their budget per short by more than 25 percent, to almost $35,000 each, an amount that UPA sorely needed; the firm was run by artists committed to putting a quality product up on screen. Few UPA staff members were budget-oriented; they were film-oriented. As such, the extra money was used to refine and enhance what seemed to outsiders to be "simple" drawings and "limited" animation, but didn't lead to any increased profitability in the company.
However, this approach led to some remarkable releases in the mid-1950s, including a delicate adaptation of Ludwig Bemelmans' popular children's story Madeline (1952); the amazing Rooty Toot Toot (also in 1952; still one of the best-known and remembered UPA cartoons); a faithful reproduction of James Thurber's distinctive drawing style for 1953's A Unicorn In The Garden; and a striking and disturbing version of Edgar Allan Poe's 
The Tell-Tale Heart, also in 1953 (I remember seeing this one in junior high school English class, and it made a deep impression on me at the time). The Magoo series, however, was the studio's bread and butter, and UPA continued to churn out shorts featuring the character (while also toning down/softening much of his cantankerous ways), in the last half of that decade producing six to eight Magoo shorts a year. Despite the increase in volume, these cartoons did not lack for quality; in fact, two Magoo shorts - When Magoo Flew in 1954 and Magoo's Puddle Jumper in 1956 - both won Academy Awards in their respective years.
UPA established a satellite studio in New York in the early 1950s to handle exclusively commercial and nontheatrical work, and initially it was very successful, as businesses were eager to work with an Academy Award-winning company. The commercial studio's biggest triumph was the Bert & Harry Piel beer commercial campaign, featuring the voices of radio greats Bob & Ray. The New York office was so successful, in fact, that much of its profits were siphoned off to keep the theatrical division of UPA afloat (seems that that $35,000 budget increase from Columbia still wasn't covering costs).
However, by the late 1950s, the wheels were starting to come off of at UPA. In 1956, CBS Television commissioned The Gerald
McBoing Boing Show, the very first Saturday morning program made especially for network TV. By agreeing to it, the studio committed to producing much more animation than had ever been put out at any one time, and required an immediate hiring frenzy. The resulting show, a mixture of old UPA cartoons and new bits, came off as disjointed, 'soft' and generally unfunny, but it managed to air for two years before CBS pulled the plug. It was also around this period that the New York office, inundated by competition for commercial work, closed its doors, shortly after an ambitious but poorly-conceived London branch was established and also failed within a year.
1958 was also the year work began on a Magoo feature film. There had been talk regarding an animated feature ever since the early award-winning years at the studio, but Columbia would not commit to financing any of UPA's ideas, which included adaptations of Gilbert & Sullivan's HMS Pinafore, Ben Jonson's Volpone, and/or Cervantes' Don Quixote (all of which, frankly, were probably too highbrow for Columbia executives to understand or grasp). Finally that year, Columbia provided the funds to animate a version of 
The Arabian Nights. Production of 1001 Arabian Nights did not go smoothly - the director quarreled with Bosustow and quit, resulting in a frantic search for a viable replacement (the job went to Disney veteran Jack Kinney). And there were issues with the story - Mr. Magoo's character was sort of shoehorned into the tale of Aladdin, and he comes off as inconsequential and tangential. The film was released in late 1959 to lackluster reviews and tepid box office, and failed to recoup back Columbia's investment.
By the time of the feature film's release, many of the main/founding staff of UPA had by then left the company to create their own studios, including Format Films (future producers of The Alvin Show) and Jay Ward Productions (producers of the hilarious Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons for television). Bosustow saw the handwriting on the wall, and in 1960 he sold his controlling interest in UPA and rights to all characters to producer Henry G. Saperstein.
Saperstein was a longtime cinema owner/operator who had branched out into tie-in/licensed of merchandising of Western TV characters like Wyatt Earp and Roy Rogers, and entertainment personalities such as Rosemary Clooney, The Three Stooges and Elvis Presley. As such, he showed little concern or regard for the artistic pretensions and commitment to perfection of the old UPA; he was just interested in utilizing the remaining staff to churn out as much product as possible, milking the studio's established characters and his animators' talents for all they were worth. Saperstein quickly entered the TV market, producing a Mr. Magoo series for NBC in late 1960 and a syndicated Dick Tracy series in early 1961. The studio cranked out more than 125 episodes of each program over the next two years, destroying the last vestiges of UPA's once renowned reputation for quality - these shows made the contemporary Hanna-Barbera product look lavish by comparison.
But Saperstein and UPA still made one last stab at repairing/retaining their artistic mojo with critics and the public. The studio prepared two major releases for late 1962. 
The first, Gay Purr-ee, a tale of a feline's adventures in Paris in the late 19th century and featuring the voices of Judy Garland and Robert Goulet, was released to theaters on December 17th of that year. The very next day, the second production, Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, made its television debut on NBC. While Gay Purr-ee was critically savaged for both its animation style and story (one magazine's review felt that the film's subject matter was too sophisticated for an
animated film, drily noting that its target audience seemed to be "the
fey four-year-old of recherché taste") and an outright box-office failure, Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol was immediately hailed as a classic, a reputation which has lived on to this day.
The following is excepted from a 2012 New York Times article celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the venerable program:
At the time [of its debut] “Magoo” was a big enough event to warrant extensive and positive media coverage. As soon as it was over Walt Disney telephoned Mr. Orgel [the show's producer] to tell him, “Not only is this generation going to watch it, but your children, your children’s children and your children’s children’s children will watch this show.”...
“It has the quality of a cozy quilt,” said Adam Abraham, author of When Magoo Flew: The Rise and Fall of Animation Studio UPA (Wesleyan University Press). “It’s like figurines of your imagination playing out a very familiar story against a dreamlike Victorian design.”
“Magoo” is hardly definitive Dickens. Much of the original tale, especially the entire subplot of Scrooge’s relationship with his nephew, Fred, was cut to fit the 60-minute running time. For no apparent reason the Ghost of Christmas Present precedes the Ghost of Christmas Past.
“Magoo” also offers a curious framing device whereby the whole story is treated as a Broadway production, with Magoo as an actor portraying Scrooge. The producer, Lee Orgel, feared that audiences wouldn’t accept Magoo being plucked out of his cartoon context and plopped into the 19th century without explanation. In retrospect this concern seems absurd. But the result is still good enough to have lasted 50 years.
Alas, the success of the Magoo special wasn't enough to save UPA. Saperstein gradually wound down animation production during the 1960s, finally shuttering the cartoon studio in 1970, and he also sold off the studio library of films (which shrewdly retaining the rights to Magoo, Gerald McBoing-Boing and other characters). The studio then entered into a partnership with Toho Co., Ltd. of Japan, and for the following decade helped distribute the firm's "Giant Monster" movies in the States. After Saperstein died in 1998, his family sold off what remained of UPA two years later. Thus closed the saga of a once-innovative and ground-breaking studio.
Throughout the 1960s, Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol was a network staple, appearing on NBC every year until 1969. The show then entered syndication, and for the next couple of decades you had to bbe lucky enough to catch it on one of your local stations... That's how I came upon the program - I was browsing the stations as a kid one December, stumbled across it, and was immediately charmed, so much so that for every year afterward, I made an effort to track down when and where the cartoon would be played. The show moved to cable TV in the '90s. However, to mark the program's golden anniversary, NBC presented it in 2012, its first prime-time network appearance in decades.
A lot of the greatness inherent in Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol lies in the excellent songs created for the show by the celebrated Broadway composers and lyricists Jule Styne and Bob Merrill, who between them provided the music for the stage hits Carnival!, Gypsy, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Funny Girl, and penned such classics as "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!", "Everything's Coming Up Roses", "(How Much Is) That Doggie In The Window?" and "If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked A Cake". Again, from the NYT 2012 article:
(For years, it was rumored that the song "People" from the musical Funny Girl, a huge hit for production star Barbra Streisand in 1964, was originally written by Styne and Merrill for inclusion in Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. But both composers denied this in their memoirs.)The magic of “Magoo” begins with rich songs by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill. “Ringle Ringle,” a celebration of money, and “The Lord’s Bright Blessing,” about the true meaning of Christmas, might easily have worked for a live-action staging.
“Styne and Merrill really understood the characters and brought them to the surface,” said Darrell Van Citters, author of “Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol: The Making of the First Animated Christmas Special” (Oxberry Press).
One song in particular underscores this mature sensibility: “Winter Was Warm,” the lament of Scrooge’s former love, Belle, over how he lost her to his pursuit of wealth. Mr. Van Citters calls this number “the story’s emotional core.”
The showstopping number “We’re Despicable,” a grotesque march of the human maggots who plunder the dead Scrooge’s estate, features goofy lyrics like “We’re reprehensible/We’ll steal your pen/And pencible.”
The music in Magoo... is SO superb, in fact, that it's somewhat surprising that no official soundtrack was ever released by any label. These songs by the two honored composers were slated to be lost Christmas classics, appearing only during rare broadcasts of the program. But in 2010, intrepid individuals released bootleg copies of tunes from the show. It wasn't done in a technically sophisticated manner; they basically just copied the overall narrative/soundtrack into audio and separated/sequenced the tracks. Still, it's nice to have this music available.
So here for your holiday listening pleasure is Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, the unofficial soundtrack of the now sisty-two year old(!) program. Enjoy some woofle-berry cake and razzleberry dressing this holiday with your family and friends! And, as always, let me know what you think.
God bless you, every one! Expect more to come here in 2025.
Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:
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