The Holiday Fest 2025
Okay, it's time. The other night I popped in my DVD of the holiday gem Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol for my annual viewing, so it's only fitting that today we offer its wonderful songs. (And a joyous addendum soon to follow -- Watch This Space.) The classic show was the first-ever animated holiday special, made in 1962 and for eight years it got repeated annually through 1969. But its simplistic animation finally caught up and alas it went out of the rotation. A shame since it's such a terrific production.
For all its being Mr. Magoo and only 52 minutes long, it's a very nice adaptation of the story. And the score...well, it's Broadway quality and probably the best musical score for an animated TV special, and one of the best for TV, period. The music is by Jule Styne (Gypsy, Bells are Ringing) and the lyrics by Bob Merrill (Carnival, Take Me Along) who -- while writing this -- were, in fact, in the middle of working on Funny Girl.
Though no longer on network TV, for a long time the show could be found every year on syndication. But unfortunately even that has largely faded away, though occasionally it pops up. But on its 50th anniversary in 2012, NBC brought it back to prime time, and happily its DVD release gave the show new life.
By the way, because one can really not have enough of Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, I have a wonderful and joyous addendum to this which I'll be posting soon.
Here are the wonderful songs.
The first, "Ringle Ringle" introduces us to Scrooge and Bob Cratchit.
When Scrooge visits the Crachit house in Christmas Present, the family sings the rousing showstopper, "The Lord's Bright Blessing."
In Christmas Past, Scrooge returns to an almost-empty schoolhouse of his youth and sings a duet of himself as a young boy, "I'm All Alone in the World."
Still in Christmas Past, Scrooge's fiancé Belle breaks up with him for find a new idol to love -- gold, and she sings wistfully about their love lost, the lovely "Winter was Warm."
And in Christmas Future, Scrooge visits a junk shop run by thieves who have ransacked the now-empty house of a man who was died -- which he doesn't realize yet is him -- and they explain with very amusing glee that "We're Despicable."
And now, we have a bonus -- more of an an addendum of sorts to the songs from Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol.
For those who were skeptical of me calling this a Broadway-quality score, It turns out (aside from the reality that it is) that the show did play on Broadway -- sort of. In 2014, the Actors Fund did a benefit concert with a fairly elaborate staged reading of the TV show, with full costumes, limited sets and even some choreography. And this is a 3-1/2 minute montage. And it looks absolutely wonderful. And sounds like they used the original music arrangements.
(At the end of the video are some credits, and it notes being done with DreamWorks Animation and Margaret Styne. I'm going to guess that the former hold the rights to the TV special and the latter may hold some rights since she was the wife of composer Jule Styne.)
Since the show is only about 52 minutes, it's much too short to mount a full production, but I suspect it could be paired with another one-act show or also done in community theaters.
By the way, their adaptation of the thieves' song, "We're Despicable," is scary-good how close they came with the casting and even the animated choreography. Even down to the tiny details, at one point, of the comically-weird, twisty hand movements.
And the Actors Fund repeated this as a fundraiser in 2019. But here are those excerpts from the 2014 production. Curtain up...!
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