A Carol for Another Christmas

Plot synopsis:
On Christmas Eve, Daniel Grudge (Hayden), a rich American industrialist, sits alone in a dark room of his mansion playing a record of a World War II-era popular song, "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (with Anyone Else but Me)" by The Andrews Sisters. He looks at a framed display of war medals on the wall and seems about to cry. He shuts off the player, but as he leaves the room, he hears the record start to play again of its own accord, although the record player is still shut off. Downstairs, he meets a visitor, his nephew Fred (Gazzara). Grudge caustically notes that Fred always comes to him for help with various causes and asks what cause he is promoting this time. Fred complains that Grudge used his influence to cancel a "cultural exchange" program that Fred's university had planned with a Polish counterpart. In the ensuing argument with Fred, Grudge takes the isolationist position that the United States should stay out of international affairs, and not participate in cultural exchange programs, foreign aid to the needy, or discussions at the United Nations. Grudge distrusts foreign countries, and contends that the U.S. should build up its arsenal, including nuclear weapons, and make sure other countries know the U.S. is willing to use them. Fred disagrees, arguing that the U.S. should help all people in need and foster international communication in order to avoid future wars and nuclear destruction. As Fred leaves, he reminds his uncle that they have one thing in common: their love for Grudge's son Marley, who was killed in WWII twenty years earlier, on Christmas Eve 1944.
After Fred leaves, Grudge once again hears the record playing upstairs, and sees a short vision of the deceased Marley sitting at the dining room table. Suddenly Grudge finds himself aboard a World War I-era troopship, which is carrying many coffins. A soldier on board introduces himself as the Ghost of Christmas Past (Lawrence) and explains that the ship is carrying the dead of all nations and from all past wars, with more war dead arriving even as he speaks. The Ghost suggests that the way to stop the killing is to spend more time talking to resolve conflicts, since when talking stops, fighting starts. He and Grudge revisit a scene from Grudge's past in which Grudge, a Navy commander, accompanied by his WAVE driver (Saint), visited a hospital in devastated Hiroshima and saw Japanese schoolchildren whose faces had been destroyed by the atom bomb.
Grudge walks through a door and meets the Ghost of Christmas Present (Hingle), who is feasting on an excessively large Christmas dinner on Grudge's dining table under Grudge's chandelier. This new Ghost turns on a light and shows Grudge that right next to the dining room is an internment camp full of displaced persons from different nations who are poor, hungry and lacking adequate shelter. These people search through the snow for food as the Ghost eats in front of them. When Grudge criticizes the Ghost for this behavior, the Ghost reminds Grudge of his earlier statement to Fred that refusing donations to the needy would make them less needy and more self-reliant. The Ghost harangues Grudge with statistics and information about needy people in the world and finally in a fit of anger pulls the tablecloth, dumping huge amounts of leftover food on the floor. Grudge cannot stand any more and runs away into the dark.
Grudge emerges into destroyed ruins that he recognizes as having been his local town hall, where he encounters the Ghost of Christmas Future (Shaw). This Ghost explains that the town hall was wrecked in a disastrous nuclear conflict that also annihilated most of the world's people. A handful of survivors enter and prepare for a meeting. Their leader is a demagogue called "Imperial Me" (Sellers) who wears a Pilgrim suit and a cowboy hat cut into a crown. The crowd cheers as Imperial Me is paraded in and gives a speech exhorting each person to act as an individual in his or her own self-interest. Grudge watches his butler, Charles (Rodriguez), try unsuccessfully to convince the crowd that acting collectively for the greater good of all is essential for humanity's survival. Imperial Me and the crowd mock Charles as crazy and beat him. Finally Imperial Me has Charles brought forward and charges him with treason. Charles tries to escape and is shot dead by a little boy in a cowboy outfit. Grudge's cook Ruby (Teer) weeps over Charles' body, while the crowd, led by Imperial Me, enthusiastically prepares to first kill the people across the river who had approached them wanting to talk, and then kill off each other until only one person is left. An agitated Grudge asks the Ghost if this is the world "as it must be, or as it might be". The Ghost doesn't answer and leaves Grudge in the ruins of his own study.
A shaken Grudge awakens back in the real world on Christmas morning, on the floor of his (intact) study with the phone in his hand. His nephew Fred appears and says that Grudge called him at 3 a.m. and asked him to stop by on his way to church. Grudge apologizes to Fred for his statements of the previous evening and, without explaining the reason for his change of heart, indicates cautious support for the United Nations and international diplomacy as a way to prevent future wars. Grudge further shows his new internationalism by enjoying a radio broadcast of the children of UN delegates singing Christmas carols in their native languages. Fred leaves and Grudge, rather than have Charles serve him on a tray as usual, goes into the kitchen to have his Christmas morning coffee with Charles and Ruby.

Tags: anti war

Review:
Part of its financing came from the United Nations and the theme of the film is more about international cooperation than simply being anti-war.Sterling Hayden portrays a wealthy man who served in the Navy during World War II and is now a lonely bitter man upset over his son's death in a war he described as needless, presumably in Korea.
Coming right before the U.S. racheted up its involvement in Vietnam, it is easy to understand why this film didn't get shown again.The visit from the Ghost of Christmas Future (Robert Shaw) is the most frightening part of the film.
I remember there were threats of boycotts and protests against the politics of this work, which really express just basic humanitarianism, with some liberal fear of nuclear destruction.Three memories of this production: James Shigeta, playing a doctor in post-nuclear Hiroshima, answers the Scrooge character's (Sterling Hayden) cliched comment about nuclear-damaged girls (singing, with cloth over their scarred faces).
(I recall a second UN/Xerox special, with Theo Bikel playing a leader of refugees on a ship, but it wasn't nearly as good).Political and marketing restrictions cost us dearly when more efforts like "Carol  for Another Christmas" were not made..
I remember it vividly from its original broadcast: a venal Pat Hingle devouring a huge turkey leg surrounded by starving refugees; the sweet voices coming from little girls scarred by the atomic blast at Hiroshima, their faces covered with gauze; the demented "Imperial Me" Peter Sellars addressing his crazed flock in a burned out cathedral after the nuclear holocaust of the future; Sterling Hayden, a modern Scrooge, his voice changing from booming commands to whimpering as he is led past the succession of proof of man's inhumanity to man.I saw this again at the Museum of Broadcasting in NYC and I was not disappointed.
It is my understanding that Rod Serling's Carol for Another Christmas was only shown once, and the print is now owned by one of the schools of filmmaking.This is a tale of the Cold War.
Rod Serling (writer of the Twilight Zone series) wonders what the Christmas Carol would have been like if Scrooge lived in this world.Even though I was quite young at the time this show played there are scenes that I can remember clearly.
He's the last of the isolationists and wants no foreign involvement anywhere period including humanitarian aid.The error of his ways is told to him by those spirits of Christmas past, present and future.
And if you know the Dickens story and how many in the English speaking world have never heard of it than you pretty much know what the story is.If this had been done in 1944 when Hayden's son was killed, a lot of people invested their hopes and dreams in a new world organization to come, the planning of which was undertaken even while the guns were still blazing in battle.
This is a redoing of the Dickens classic "A Christmas Carol", but this time it is a wealthy industrialist, Mr. Grudge (Sterling Hayden) who is supposed to be the stand-in Mr. Scrooge, in need of a lesson about loving mankind.But it comes out in the first conversation with Grudge's nephew, Fred (Ben Gazzara), that Grudge is a patriot AND an isolationist...even in respect to WWII!
We also learn that "Marley", in this Christmas Carol tale, is Grudge's son who was killed in a war in a foreign land, and is largely the reason for Grudge's isolationism.
In fact he was 48 himself when this was made.The last part, about "Christmas Future", has Peter Sellers doing a bizarre part as some kind of evangelist of selfishness, and the performance itself is worth the price of admission, but in context it just does not make sense.Even though this whole thing is a bit of a mess - including insinuating that we should just trust the Communists in eastern Europe and Russia at the time in spite of their past actions - it is a product of a huge fear of nuclear war in 1964 and that this war might start even accidentally.
The younger Grudge obliges; he still has a heart.Pat Hingle is Ghost Present, an over-sated, uncaring man who feasts while millions of war- displaced people remain starving within barbed wire fencing.
This development would have disgusted the vast majority of Americans in 1964, who would have answered Daniel Grudge's (Sterling Hayden) question to The Ghost of Christmas Future (Robert Shaw) - 'must it be like this?' - in the negative.
However, when you see it today, it comes off as silly, heavy-handed and incredibly naive.Rod Serling used Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" as a starting point for this film.
Made just after the financial disaster of "Cleopatra" -one of the most unfairly underrated movies of all time,at least in its four-hour version-by Mankiewicz.It's an updated Dickens' "a Xmas carol" with a "modern " uncle Scroodge ;one can notice that the "don't be selfish,open up,don't get caught up in the "me" machine was also treated by Frank Capra in his (certainly more palatable) "it's a wonderful life" .This is a movie which concerns today's audience ,in spite of its dated details ;more than ever we must help our fellow men and not hide our heads in the sand even when we feel like letting everything down.When the second ghost talks about the hungry people in the world,he's speaking to all of us;it's not surprising that the only man who rebels against the Imperial Me is a black man (and his wife).There's a stellar cast featuring Sterling Hayden as the lead and Eva Marie-Saint,Robert Shaw,Ben Gazarra as the nephew ,Peter Sellers and more ....
Since this isn't the first film w/ its history to turn out this way, it's becoming evident that believability was less important than rote facts being stated on screen.By the end of the movie, I wanted to take Peter Sellers' "Giant Economy Size" tin can gavel and knock some sense into it.
In 1964 I was excited that it represented the pairing of a noted film director, Joseph Mankiewicz, fresh off his frustrating experience directing the Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton Cleopatra (1963), and Rod Serling, fresh from the CBS TV series, The Twilight Zone (1959-1963), which he had created, wrote for, and hosted.
As the title suggests, it was a modern version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.It had an all-star cast: Sterling Hayden as the Scrooge character called Grudge, Pat Hingle as the Ghost of Christmas Present, Steve Lawrence as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Eva Marie Saint as an nurse from Grudge's past, Robert Shaw as the Ghost of Christmas Future, and Peter Fonda, son of Henry Fonda, as Grudge's nephew.
He would then co-star with Hayden in Dr. Strangelove.The filmmakers even went to the trouble of reuniting the Andrew Sisters to re-record their 1942 hit number "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree," which is only heard in the film when a ghostly record player suddenly starts playing the recording, until Grudge pulls the needle off after a few seconds.On its website, Turner Classic Movies invites you to tell it what little-seen films you would like them to show, and I kept writing in Carol for Another Christmas.
Serling's screenplay for Seven Days in May the same year as Carol also has long stretches of dialog, but it was propelled forward by director John Frankenheimer, who plays with images within images, especially by showing television monitors all around, and a really top-notch cast.Mankiewicz loved to hear his characters talk too, as his screenplays for All About Eve, Letter to Three Wives, and certainly the four-hour Cleopatra show.
And so Serling had to tell the story not only of a man who hated Christmas but of a man whose war experience--and the death of his nephew on Christmas--caused him to become an isolationist and to resist the idea that nations and peoples can come together by talking.
The two different concepts--I hate Christmas because I remember sad Christmases of my past, and I hate Christmas because it reminds me of war and I think our country should just stay to itself--do not really mesh.The film only comes to life at the end in the apocalyptic landscape Serling was familiar with from The Twilight Zone, with Shaw as a well-spoken specter and Sellers as a crazy leader of the survivors of nuclear war.
If you've watched Twilight Zone and Night Gallery (and I've seen them all), you know that when Rod Serling had a point to make, he could be very heavy-handed, obvious, and preachy.
THE REASON WHY I REVIEW THEM IS TO KEEP TRACK OF WHAT I HAVE SEEN!In Rod Serling's update of Charles Dickens, industrial tycoon Daniel Grudge has never recovered from the loss of his 22-year-old son Marley, killed in action during Christmas Eve of 1944.
But then the Ghost of Christmas Past takes him back through time to a World War I troopship.
Carol for Another Christmas presents what the left would like the masses to believe.
To sell them on the idea of interventionism.Other Hollywood movies such as the Green Berets present ideas that the right would like to share with the masses -- selling interventionism couched in warm polished conservative jargon.Carol for Another Christmas shows us that the left and the right are the same and do the same thing: seeking interventionism under a banner with pre-approved sales slogans, while their shared underlying reason for wanting interventionism remains hidden.Setting aside the messages in Carol for Another Christmas, the movie has many familiar actors from the 1960's and it contains the same pace and black & white in-studio visual style that viewers of The Twilight Zone will find easy to watch.Well worth viewing at least one time..
This is an interesting movie to watch in 2018, as it's a defense of the post-WWII order of international cooperation for the common good that Donald Trump has been dismantling.The movie begins with a fairly endless debate between isolationist Sterling Hayden and Internationalist Ben Gazzara over whether America should risk its soldiers in foreign conflicts or build bigger bombs and turn our back on the world.
Gazzara and screenwriter Rod Sterling say the former, the subtly named Daniel Grudge says the latter.Eventually Grudge meets the ghost of war-dead past who argues that our only choice is fight them over there or fight them over here, then has another long debate with a present-day ghost who lectures him on the starving masses.The most interesting sequence is a post-apocalyptic future lorded over by Peter Sellers as the Imperial Me, who leads his followers in raging against those who would want to discuss and reach out rather than decimate their enemies.As a piece of entertainment, Carol for Another Christmas is pretty static.
I believe in International cooperation, but in the present age, having seen the ill effects of attempts to police the world through force, it's hard to embrace Serling's starry-eyed arguments.This film is kind of worth watching just for the oddness of being a UN-sponsored ad for the UN, and certainly it's heart is in the right place.
This is a nontraditional version of Dicken's story, a Xerox special made to promote the United Nations.It features Sterling Hayden, Eva Marie Saint, Ben Gazzara, and many more leading actors of the day.The message of the film is simple: when we stop talking wars begin.
For example, this story has no annoying little Tiny Tim character.In Serling's original script, the main character in 'Carol for Another Christmas' was an embittered industrialist named Barnaby Grudge.
Serling changed the character's name to Daniel Grudge, and Sterling Hayden gives a standout performance in the lead role as Grudge, the surrogate Scrooge.After some surly dialogue with his black servants Charles and Ruby, and an argument with his nephew (Ben Gazzara, giving the worst performance hereabouts), Grudge gets some unwanted advice from a surrogate Marley, and then the story proper begins ...
I also wonder if the title of this script was a pun on the name of Rod Serling's wife: Carol.)Grudge's escort to the past is a World War One doughboy, extremely well-played by Steve Lawrence ...
The fact that those children ARE starving does not particularly disturb him.Next stop, the future: with the flash of an atomic bomb, Grudge finds himself in the darkness and rubble which are all that remains after World War Three.
The character arc of 'Carol for Another Christmas' follows Dickens's novel very closely, so it's no surprise that Grudge/Scrooge ultimately returns to his mansion in the present, where he now sees the error of his ways and he repents.
Like so many other liberals, Serling seems more interested in bringing down the mighty rather than uplifting the lowly.'Carol for Another Christmas' occasionally sinks into knee-jerk liberalism or America-bashing, but this TV movie's good points very much outweigh and outnumber its bad points.
Yes, this special runs like a final episode of "The Twilight Zone."And that is not a bad thing!This remake of "A Christmas Carol" is, by "Zone" standards, edgy.
Granted the acting is heavy handed but with both Sterling Hayden and Sellers in this production , I have to believe that Rod Serling considered that in case people found the message of Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb too subtle (as if), he was going all out here to make it clear.
Sterling Hayden plays our Scrooge-like character, Daniel Grudge, a wealthy man who lost his son, Marley, in World War II.
Truthfully his performance in this special at times is just plain awful, with that vacant expression on his face that leaves us to figure out if he's deep in thought or on the verge of a poo.The Ghost of Christmas Past is played by Steve Lawrence, who plays the role with a casual ease that's enjoyable to watch....at first.
A favorite reply of Serling's in this special is to have someone respond to something Hayden says to them with something akin to "Oh is that so." It happens frequently and is very annoying.The Ghost of Christmas Present is played by Pat Hingle and he does fine in a rather forgettable segment about starving children.
While Rod Serling's "Patterns" in the 1950's on live television is even better than this twist on the Charles Dickens classic done for the UN might even be more topical now than when it first aired.(Patterns is still topical too, a sign of how great a writer Serling was).Serling wrote a great dramatic script here yet again though for those who expect just a Dicken's remake, your in for a major surprise.Sterling Hayden plays Mr. Grudge, a sort of modern Scrooge ever since he lost his son in World War 2 on 12/24/1944.
Serlings themes here are brilliant and Eva Marie Saint, Britt Ekland, Sellers, and more help Sterling Haydens great performance in this television movie made just a year before some of these folks would be working with Kubrick in Dr Strangelove.I am glad to have caught it this holiday season on TCM as I had never seen it before now..
Although it spends its running time preaching an anti-war, global- unity message, Serling's 60s-contemporary Christmas Carol variation has its heart in the right place, even if many might consider the pulpit sermon and bong sounding a bit wearisome.
This cast is top to bottom with incredible talent, which might explain how important the United Nations Special meant to those involved.Sterling Hayden as the heart-hardened military powerhouse, Daniel Drudge, a lonely, bitter man who lost a son to WWII and is against his nephew's (Cassavetes' vet, Ben Gazzara) UN peace efforts; Steve Lawrence as Ghost of Christmas Past, a phantom representing all the soldiers, from every nation, taking Drudge to the battlefield; Eva Marie Saint as a Naval officer in the past who accompanied Drudge to a particular bombed area of Japan where they encounter a tent housing burned-face children for which anguished her; passionate Pat Hingle as Ghost of Christmas Present, at a dinner table covered in food and the finest trimmings, reveals barbwire fences and captives singing carols, certainly confronting Drudge about the plentiful times he's enjoyed the finer things while many others starve; Robert Shaw as Ghost of Christmas Future, in robe and speaking with righteous indignation, presenting an America wrought in rubble and madness; a masterful Peter Sellers as a rabble-rousing, messianic madman instigating a remnant of human deviants out of the Holocaust of the future to embrace selfish doctrine and hold close to Imperial Me instead of unifying to salvage what is left of mankind; Percy Rodrigues as both Drudge's butler/manservant and a rational, peace-minded man of conscience trying to appeal to Sellers' followers in a future fallen to ruin; pre- stardom Britt Ekland as a knitting Imperial Me follower.This one doesn't have Hayden returning from his visits in time with the phantoms a spiritually rejuvenated man ready to make the world a bright and shiny place.
Serling instead realistically ends it with Hayden and Gazzara agreeing that they need to help do something that makes a difference in the world they live.
Daniel Grudge (Sterling Hayden) is visited on Christmas Eve by his nephew, Fred (Ben Gazzara).
She guilt-trips Grudge about the bombing (as if he's personally responsible) even though, he points out, it likely saved 500,000 American and 2,000,000 Japanese lives.Grudge is then directed to a sound-stage where he meets The-Ghost-of-Christmas-Present (Pat Hingle).
God bless us, every one!The ghosts in "A Christmas Carol" taught Scrooge the error of his ways by SHOWING him scenes from his past, present, and possible future.
The performances are good (particularly Lawrence, Hingle, Shaw, Sellers, and Rodrigues) but, for the love of God, STFU already!In "A Christmas Carol" Scrooge's actions only affect the lives of himself and those closest to him but in "CFAC" Grudge's actions affect the whole world?