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If Charles Dickens could receive royalties every time someone did a version of A Christmas Carol, he’d be a very rich, albeit dead, man.
The latest comes this weekend, with Robert Zemeckis’ animated version featuring Jim Carrey as Scrooge and about half the other characters. Because of the talent and marketing involved, the movie is bound to outgross every other Christmas Carol ever made.And there have been a lot of them.With this newest one premiering, we decided to look into the history of past Carols, which is not as easy as it sounds, especially if you have a touch of OCD. A simple title search for A Christmas Carol on Internet Movie Database brings up 26 direct hits, as well as 12 indirect ones, and those don’t even include all the things that borrow from Dickens’ tale about a miser who, shown the error of his ways by spirits who visit him one Christmas Eve, turns into a money-throwing (and a bit impish) philanthropist on Christmas morning.Here’s a Christmas Carol pop-culture timeline featuring, but not limited to, past movie versions. Believe it or not, we omitted a lot. December 1843: The original A Christmas Carol is published. The first of five Christmas stories Dickens would write through 1848, it’s by far the most enduring and well-known. Everyman’s Library will publish all five in one book, A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books, due out Nov. 14.1844: Two months after Carol’s original publication, eight stage adaptations are produced, even though by now it’s closer to Valentine’s Day than Christmas. The first production is generally credited to Edward Stirling, who adapted many of Dickens’ works for the theater. According to The Victorian Web, stage adaptations of A Christmas Carol would decline by the end of the decade, with relatively few revivals before the end of the 19th century. But Dickens would stage readings, including some in the United States, in which he acted all the parts.1901:Scrooge, or Marley’s Ghost, a silent film that’s the first known film adaptation of A Christmas Carol, is released. The Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come didn’t foresee YouTube, where you can view the film. The story will be adapted at least five more times in the silent era.1935:Scrooge, featuring Seymour Hicks in the title role, is the first feature "talkie" adaptation. Hicks had been playing the role onstage since 1901 and also starred in a 1913 silent version.1938: Reginald Owen stars as Scrooge in a well-known version. Lionel Barrymore reportedly was the original choice for the role, but when he had to withdraw from the project, he recommended Owen.1939: Orson Welles narrates a Mercury Theatre Group production featuring Barrymore as Scrooge, with music by Bernard Herrmann, who will do the music for Citizen Kane. Barrymore also plays Scrooge in a popular 1954 record-album version.1943: George Lowther directs a version for an experimental TV broadcast. This is the first sign that A Christmas Carol will become a TV staple, turning into a perennial by the 1950s, when many of that decade’s drama anthologies feature versions of the tale.
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