him?
There have been several films of A Christmas Carol, none very
wonderful. And the latest, starring your nice, gentle Michael Caine (and
muppets), only goes to prove that the best-ever Scrooge was in the film
of that title.
The 1951 British film was full of atmosphere and ham actors. There
were all the soapy-mouthed actors you could slip
on a British black-and-white screen.
Mervyn Johns and Jack Warner, and Kathleen Harrison, Hermione Baddley,
George Cole, and the appalling old thespian
Miles Malleson; they were all in it.
It was as if somebody had jouked down to the Marylebone National
Assistance Board and asked for every dramatic unemployee just
to round up nice figures for the then Labour government like.
A 1970 version found Albert Finney and Michael Medwin. The British
film industry had, after all, not changed much in 20 years. But one
thing made the very atmosphere of the '51 rendition: Scrooge was played
by one of the greatest character actors of all time. His name was
Alastair Sim. He was one of us.
He was a Scot and indeed a schoolteacher of a Scot until he was 30.
Who knows what he was like as a dominie but I will bet he was good value
for money in a classroom.
As an actor he was simply the most lugubrious ever. He could make
Claude Rains and Conrad Veidt look like juvenile leads. Sim did women
parts perfectly. Nobody could do a character part like Sim, and Alec
Guinness has played him throughout his career. George Cole had him as
his mentor. For Alastair Sim played Scrooge. It had to be a Scot to play
Scrooge.
Dickens invented Scrooge of course, but he must have met a Scotsman to
dream him up. Ebenezer Balfour was cheery in comparison to Ebenezer
Scrooge. But while Stevenson's staircase had no end to it, Dickens's
did. The end is one of the most unsatisfactory one can think of in
fiction. The happy ending of the Dickens's novella is mere invention and
nobody believes it.
For Scrooge is, in the early chapters, not only real, unlike the
ghosts who visit him in the Victorian author's flight of fancy; he is
packed full of vitality. Not for Scrooge the humbug of
mid-nineteenth-century sentimentality. Scrooge is Mr Gradgrind
with a darker but deeper intelligence.
Sim played him as exactly that. Scrooge's sagacity was the result of
sheer hard work and diligence, a conscious need for order, and the
understanding that poor families get poorer if the business goes bust;
that crippled children don't get to limp in life for long
if the spondulicks are not com-
ing in.
In short, Scrooge was a lot more sensible, really, than Dickens.
Today's Scrooges are many, though there are few with the sheer class
of the Scrooge of Sim. The Getty family were notorious for their
parsimony but that was just badness. They were pretty profligate with
themselves. A real, uncompromising Scrooge has to enjoy poverty for
himself as well as for others.
Norman Lamont is a splendid Scrooge. He wears suits -- despite the
fact that he must get them for nothing -- which Serbs wouldn't touch
with a Kalashnikov. His very utterances have an air of meanness, as
though he wanted Lord Woolton back to give recipes for sentences, let
alone grub.
Outside of John Smith, the entire Shadow Cabinet would do
well as the old miser. Stick sidelocks on to Gordon Brown and he would
have you birling through the true nightmare of thrift.
The Labour Party lost the 1952 election
through being mean. While they wanted to restrict the amount of satins
and silks for women's dresses, the women wanted something a touch more
interesting -- such as the New Look -- than wartime dungarees to put
over their rumps, and the Socialist Experiment failed from that time on.
Socialism has ever since
been concomitant with frugality. Scrooge would have had the lassies in
miniskirts with nae knickers underneath and not for the salaciousness:
just for the reduction in cost.
Some man, Scrooge.
But there are lots of people in public life who are genuine Scrooges
and could play him to the life. What about the current thespians though?
Wee Phil McCall would be ideal because he can do a miser on stage and,
like Sim, cannae do it off. John Grieve, too, would be a grand wee
misery.
The moguls of Hollywood would never think of them, though. They would
probably cast Dustin Hoffman, who whines through his nose in every part,
or Jack Nicholson who always looks coked to the gills in his movies.
If the movies want a wee bit of inspiration, I have an idea for them .
. .
There's no doubt about it that the perfect Scrooge would indeed be
your Urban Voltaire. For a start, I'd work the Christmas Day to get out
of the celebrations. And pawn Tiny Tim's wee crutch for the rent.
' Scrooge's sagacity
was the result of
a conscious need
for order, and the
understanding that
poor families get
poorer if the
business goes bust '
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