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Posted: |
Jul 25, 2012 - 11:50 PM
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By: |
robertmro
(Member)
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I saw it when I was 13 years old and it was only shown once but it had such profound effect on me, that I can remember some scenes like it was yesterday.
I've never met anyone else who has seen it and at times I thought it must have been a dream.
It was thought to be lost, another piece of film/TV history lost in the great void.
Well I received an email yesterday from the UCLA Film and Television Archives (somehow I'm on their mailing list even though I haven't lived in LA for ten years). Low and behold, there it is as part of a Rod Serling retrospective: ROD SERLING: OTHER DIMENSIONS
This Saturday at the Billy Wilder Theater 7:30pm
"A Carol for Another Christmas" (ABC, 12/23/64)
Directed by Joseph Mankiewicz
Produced as one of a series of specials supporting the United Nations, Serling’s updating of "A Christmas Carol," invoking nuclear Armageddon, presents a flint-hearted, politically isolationist tycoon (Hayden) taken on a Dickensian tour by three spirits who enlarge his worldview. A high point is Peter Sellers (Hayden’s co-star in Dr. Strangelove) as a demigod presiding over a Christmas seemingly from hell.
Producer: Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Screenwriter: Rod Serling. Cinematographer: Arthur J. Ornitz. Editor: Nathan Greene, Robert Lawrence. Cast: Sterling Hayden, Eva Marie Saint, Ben Gazzara, Britt Ekland, Pat Hingle, Peter Sellers, Robert Shaw
Music: Henry Mancini
Beta SP, b/w, 84 min.
The spookiest part is that I'm in LA on a rare visit.
I will see it again.
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So that's where "A Carol for Another Christmas" on Mancini's RCA's Christmas album came from. I've always thought that the piece was composed specifically for the album.
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Sure, I saw it, because I'm an old coot and I was around as a young coot in the TWILIGHT ZONE era, and therefor near a TV set at the tail end of the TZ era when ABC, with much ballyhoo, broadcast the world premiere of this prestigious production. I vaguely recall that it was the first film in a projected series of films of a similarly serious-minded nature sponsored by the United Nations or something like that. I wish I could say that my memories of the show are as vivid as yours, but I recall only that I was as disappointed as the reviewer for the New York Herald Tribune who felt that a lot of talent and good intentions had managed to produce an unimpressive film. The only scene I recall is the last , where the Scrooge prototype sits down to Christmas dinner with the family of his negro (as they were called in those days) house servant.
Maybe I was too young (or stupid or callow or something) to appreciate it at the time, and maybe the Herald Tribune and I missed the boat. I'll be very interested to read your report on the UCLA screening. I hope it's going to be as good as you remember it was.
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Thanks!
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I hope they have a better copy than the tape (it looked like a VHS) that The UCLA Television and Film Archives showed.
Good heavens, this is gorgeous! Those who DVRd - good for you. If you're on the west coast, do it. It plays again next Saturday, for those missing it. So far it's pure Serling, not to be missed. back I go!
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The "Christmas Future" portion of this was in many ways a precursor of Patrick McGoohan's "The Prisoner" television series.
So that's where "A Carol for Another Christmas" on Mancini's RCA's Christmas album came from. I've always thought that the piece was composed specifically for the album.
Well my original instincts were, in fact, correct. The track "A Carol for Another Christmas" was composed specifically for Mancini's RCA's Christmas album. Mancini must have simply liked the title. The melody never appeared in the show; Mancini's score was quite a dark score, and I was half expecting the hopeful tune to appear at the end of the film. It didn't, and the main and end titles consisted of nothing but traditional carols. If Mancini composed it for the TV special, it wasn't used.
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I had the same thought. There was one TZ episode, "The Obsolete Man," with Fritz Weaver in it that felt like experimental theater, with stark, simplified settings, stylized crowd behavior -- and of course an IMPORTANT POLITICAL MESSAGE.
I don't think this "update" of the Dickens tale is any threat to any of the others for greatness (let's face it -- it isn't really much about the spirit of Christmas, despite the lip service paid it in some of the dialogue), but as a fascinating TV curio, and a "missing link" in the career chronologies of Serling and Mankiewicz, it's well worth a look.
Peter Sellers turns up in a showy American-southerner-character role, which unites him for the first time with Hayden, whom he'd later encounter again in Kubrick's "Strangelove."
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I hope they have a better copy than the tape (it looked like a VHS) that The UCLA Television and Film Archives showed.
Good heavens, this is gorgeous! Those who DVRd - good for you. If you're on the west coast, do it. It plays again next Saturday, for those missing it. So far it's pure Serling, not to be missed. back I go!
Was it in good video/audio quality?
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Was it in good video/audio quality?
So far I just watched the opening and closing credits, but it looked and sounded just fine.
However, even though Robert Osborne mentioned Mancini in his opening, I didn't see any scoring credit either in the opening credits or at the end, even though the end titles listed several other music-related credits.
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Posted: |
Dec 23, 2012 - 10:47 PM
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By: |
Jim Doherty
(Member)
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I was in a great, bizarre little record/CD/video store in Chicago today (Laurie's Planet of Sound), and right there in their Christmas section, a DVD of A CAROL FOR ANOTHER CHRISTMAS. It's a DVD-R, probably churned out in someone's basement, but hey, it was only about $10.00. An interesting show to say the least.
In response to a couple of earlier posts, I actually found Peter Sellers' acting choices quite riveting, although a tad bizarre (I also found Steve Lawrence's Ghost of Christmas Past to be quite absorbing). And, the print I have has a big "Music by Henry Mancini" credit right in the opening titles, after the cast list and just before Rod Serling's credit.
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