Ah, Magoo, You've Done It Again

 Rediscovering A Childhood Favorite

Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol (1962)  – The near-sighted cartoon
character is on Broadway playing Ebenezer Scrooge in this musical
version of the Christmas classic.

Directed by Abe
Levitow

Starring – Jim
Backus, Morey Amsterdam, Jack Cassidy, Royal Dano, Paul Frees, Joan
Gardner

Why I Liked It –
A childhood favorite!

Season favorites
like “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed
Reindeer” are on most people’s watch list this time of year.
Both of them followed in the footsteps of this one, but its been
forgotten to a large degree. That’s unfortunate. My bet is that
for many people in the late Baby Boomer (Jones Generation) group,
this might well be our first experience of the Dickens classic. I
don’t know that I would have watched it at age four in 1962, but it
certainly would have been on the family television in the next couple
years.

As with anything
that you haven’t seen in a long time, there were some Mandala
Effect moments. The biggest one for me was the Ghost of Christmas
Yet to Come. This version was my “scariest” version for many
years. In my memory, the character is in black. It’s red in the
version I saw. I also have no memories that this is set as a stage
production with the oblivious Quincy Magoo as the star. Other than
the opening song, and the closing scene where the director gets
squashed by the scenery collapse caused by his star, it plays no
important role in the rest of the special. I’m wondering if those
bits were edited out at a later date, and I’m remembering the
edited version. There was one song that I realized came from this
special and had integrated deep within my memory. Tiny Tim is
fascinated with something called “razzleberry dressing”, and
that’s a phrase I have used all my life. I had forgotten where it
came from. Honestly, if you’d pressed me on it, I would have said
it was from Dr. Seuss. It sounds like something from “How the
Grinch Stole Christmas”.

As I mentioned
before, this was the first of the network holiday animated specials.
Rudolph arrived two years later, Charlie Brown three years later, and
the Grinch four years later. All of them “stuck” but somehow Mr.
Magoo got left at the wayside. That’s puzzling since it is the
first animated version of the Dickens story, and has been available
on home media for decades. The distribution rights are currently the
property of NBCUniversal Television. There have been versions aired
on a variety of cable channels, but it has never gotten a spot in the
annual holiday rotation.

Here’s a version of the greatest Christmas classic that stays true
to the spirit of the original. Well worth adding to the list.

You can stream
the movie for “free” with a Peacock subscription. It’s
available as a rental on YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Google Play
Movies, and Redbox.

Rating – *****
Highest Recommendation