Details

Release year: 1951

Storyline

Ebenezer Scrooge, a curmudgeonly, miserly businessman, has no time for sentimentality and largely views Christmas as a waste of time. However, this Christmas Eve, he will be visited by three spirits who will show him the error of his ways.

Top credits

Directors

Brian Desmond Hurst

Writers

Cast

Alastair Sim — Ebenezer Scrooge
Jack Warner — Mr. Jorkin
Kathleen Harrison — Mrs. Dilber
Mervyn Johns — Bob Cratchit

See all 46 credits →

Did you know

• Changes to the screenplay from the Charles Dickens book were made, mostly in the Christmas Past sequence. Among these changes are: reversing the birth order of Scrooge and his sister, so as to add that Scrooge's mother died giving birth to him; creating a character named "Mr. Jorkin" and flashbacks of several incidents in Scrooge's past (his sister's death, meeting Jacob Marley, taking over Fezziwig's warehouse, meeting Bob Cratchit, and Marley's death) which do not appear in the book.

• The word "humbug" provides insight into Ebenezer Scrooge's hatred of Christmas, as it describes deceitful efforts to fool people by pretending to a fake loftiness or false sincerity. Therefore, when Scrooge calls Christmas a humbug, he is claiming that people only pretend to be charitable and kind in an effort to delude him, each other, and themselves. In Scrooge's eyes, he is the one man who is honest enough to admit that no one really cares about anyone else, so (to him) every wish for a Merry Christmas is one more deceitful effort to fool him and take advantage of him. This is a man who has turned to profit because he honestly believes everyone else will someday betray him or abandon him the moment he trusts them.

• Sir Michael Hordern was not on-set when the "Marley's Ghost" segment was filmed. He was added later through the use of an optical printer. He only appeared together with Alastair Sim in the two scenes at the end of the "Ghost of Christmas Past" sequence, the latter of the two being the scene where Jacob Marley dies. This was also true of Michael Dolan (Spirit of Christmas Past). He never actually played any scenes on the set with Sim.