Cast: Henry Winkler, David Wayne, Dorian Harewood, Michael Wincott
Credits: Director: Eric Till; ABC, 1979
The problem with redoing Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, no matter how good the leading actor’s portrayal of Scrooge may be or how good the dialogue continues to be, is simply this: The story has been told and retold so many times that audiences become bored. Thus, in 1979 a rethinking of the traditional Dickens classic melded into An American Christmas Carol, a made-for-TV movie that while not successful in all areas, at least attempted to create a variation to the traditional Christmas story. The immensely popular TV star, Henry Winkler, Fonzie on Happy Days, attempted to stretch his creative muscles by portraying the American version of Scrooge, Benedict Slade, as both an elderly man and as he appeared in middle age. And just as A Christmas Carol taught a moral lesson to its readers, so does An American Christmas Carol attempt to do the same to its viewers.
The story opens in a small town in New Hampshire, December 24, 1933, during the Depression. The Alden Granite Corporation, the quarry that economically supports the community, providing jobs for most citizens, has been closed for several years now, and the workers elect Mr. Thatcher (R.H. Thomson), a man who works for Slade, to speak to his boss about using his resources to reopen the company: “Mr. Thatcher, it means life or death to us!”
Meanwhile, back at Slade’s place of business (he sells furniture and home appliances “on time” and becomes the repo man if people cannot keep up the payments), the children from the local orphanage are collecting money. Instead of offering much-needed cash, he offers a personal present he had printed at his own expense: a card bearing the message “You Can Do It!” Telling the children that he and his late partner were self-made men who never asked for anything, Slade encourages the children to work hard and to pay their bills on time. “He really believes he’s doing us a favor,” one orphan not
es, “let’s show appreciation to him.”
Bob Thatcher and Benedict Slade make their Christmas Eve rounds with their truck, stopping off and repossessing furniture and the stove from the Reeves, black farmers who ask for an extension— “I think we could make the payment!” Shouting “You think,” Slade reads aloud the repossession court order and has Thatcher begin to carry out the furniture and stove.
Next, returning to The Children’s Shelter, the county orphanage where Slade lived for one year as a child, he repossesses their new piano, purchased because after 42 years the old one fell apart. Stopping next at the University Book Shop, Slade begins to throw books into a pile, ripping out the binding and stating at least he will be able to sell scrap paper for a penny a pound. Telling the proprietor Merrivale (David Wayne) that a University shop should be selling sweaters and bow ties, the owner states he used the loan given him by Slade to purchase wisdom—the books. Merrivale only asks that Slade doesn’t take a very special book, an original edition of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens handed down by his father. But Slade takes that book as well.
At the end of their Christmas Eve journeys, Thatcher does speak to Slade about reopening the quarry, giving the community a second lease on life. Thatcher speaks of “hope for the future” and tells Slade, “These men have nothing left... everyone would benefit,” including Slade. Slade thinks that Thatcher must hate him and tells him, “A man who is as soft as an old shoe is generally of little worth,” and Slade fires Thatcher on the spot.
Slade returns all the books to his dark and forbidding warehouse where he reads aloud a section of A Christmas Carol, then starts to rip out its pages, calling it “claptrap.” The lights out go and a thunderstorm rages outside (on Christmas Eve in New Hampshire?). Soon Slade’s late partner returns to warn Slade of his present course in life, but Slade thinks that six pounds of powder and paint can make somebody look like his old partner, drawing an analogy to the Frankenstein monster. But this ghost knows intimate secrets of Slade’s business dealings: “Like telling Reverend Williams his antique deacon desk was only a cheap reproduction so you could snatch it up as collateral and make a profit... should I go on?” Slade is convinced. “Hell is not what you think it is... it’s worse... living in your past all the time, forever,” the partner warns. Slade reminds him that he was simply a good businessman, that he never did anything evil. But his partner adds, “Evil is not just what you do, it’s what you don’t do!” He tells Slade that every day man has a thousand new opportunities but “they’re missed forever when you’re put in the ground.”
Going to bed, Slade fiddles with his radio; and he hears broadcasts from 1927, the past, when Merrivale appears before him, the so-called Spirit of Christmas Past. Back at the orphanage, Slade is again a child, his two parents having died and the boy passed around from uncles and aunts, but Slade is an outcast, a troublesome child who remains isolated from the other children. Enter one kindly businessman, Mr. Brewster, looking for a young apprentice. He picks Slade because he’d “rather do something for somebody who needs rather than wants.” Taking Slade to the Brewster Furniture Company, the father-figure tells the boy he will sweep and clean up, clean the machinery, and most importantly, watch the craftsman do their job and learn. Brewster tells Slade he sympathizes with him, that it has been rough being jostled around from one family to another, but “you never have to leave here, until you want!” Brewster hands the boy a stick of wood, asking him what it is. Slade just stares at the useless wood, but Brewster tells him it can be whatever you want it to be, and the elder hands the apprentice a knife and shows him how to whittle wood.
Slade grows up with and falls in love with Brewster’s daughter Helen (Susan Hogan), but Slade won’t marry her until he is established in life. He warns of the new technology in making furniture on the assembly line (not as well made but cheaper) and even though he tells Brewster of the changes to come, the proud craftsman won’t change his methods. “When the day of quality ends in this country, we’ll all be in trouble,” Brewster declares. Slade does love this man and tells him, “When you came into the orphanage, you saved my life... I will never forget that!” However, sensing the future, Slade accepts a job with Brewster’s rival, a man who manufactures assembly- line furniture, and Slade establishes himself in business, leaving Helen behind.
Several years pass, and Helen and Slade meet each other again. She is now selling war bonds. Slade has established his own company, having left Stapleton because only relatives could advance. His latest gimmick is selling furniture “on time,” allowing people to pay 10 percent down of the purchase price, but charging interest. Thus, Slade and his partner can collect as much as 150-200 percent of the purchase price when the object is finally paid in full. And if the customer cannot pay, they can repossess the article and resell it to someone else.
Brewster’s furniture factory accidentally burns down; and, in declining health after a series of heart attacks, the old man soon dies.
Next, the current-day orphans appear to Slade, the children becoming the Spirit of Christmas Present. They smile and tell Slade, “You can’t block out the Christmas spirit, it’s everywhere!” Slade visits the home of former love Helen, who celebrates her Christmas with a grown daughter, having lived a happily married life. Slade sadly notes, “I could have had a child like that.” Then Slade goes to the home of Thatcher and sees the distress he caused by firing his most dedicated worker during the holidays, as the family was secretly saving up money to send their child who is lame to a special medical clinic in Australia.
Finally, the black farmer, now a disco-dude dressed in the best late-1970s pimp outfit, becomes the Spirit of Christmas Future. Slade finds his personal articles being sold off and his furniture being burned. An oil portrait of his is sold for $100 and then gleefully burned as well. He finds that Thatcher’s young son Jonathan has died, and finally he confronts his own tombstone.
Of course, waking in his own bed in his own time, Slade, like Scrooge, has been granted a second lease on life. Driving first to Thatcher’s house, he drops off food, presents and pre-paid tickets for Jonathan to travel to Australia to be treated and hopefully cured. Since the holiday bird will cook for four hours, he asks Thatcher to accompany him as he returns all the repossessed goods to the same people he visited yesterday. He is even paying to have all the books rebound and restored to mint condition, including the original Dickens volume.
However, the last stop is the orphanage, where the children cheer as Slade returns the piano. As the children gather and sing Christmas carols, Slade sees a boy in back, Harry, who reminds him of himself when Mr. Brewster made Slade his apprentice. “I understand that boy,” Slade says, and offers to take the boy for a ride, to the burned-out Brewster Furniture Company, telling the boy he wants to get this place humming again, and he can if Harry will become his apprentice. Slade picks up a burned piece of wood and throws it to the boy while asking him, “Do you know what this is?” Harry just stares at the wood, but Slade tells him it could be so many things: a baseball bat, the spoke of a ship’s wheel. Then offering the boy a wrapped Christmas present, a knife, both the boy and Slade begin to whittle, the elder telling Harry he will be very much like a foster son to him, the potential of the future being limitless.
An American Christmas Carol succeeds mostly in the first third, through the detailed account of the past life of Slade, Helen and Mr. Brewster told via the Spirit of Christmas Past. The tender scene where Brewster asks Slade to be his apprentice, giving him the piece of wood to mold into anything he can dream is touching. And themovie’s end, when Slade offers a similar piece of wood to another potential apprentice in the ruins of the very same factory, decades later, is very emotional and such parallel sequences flow together nicely. However, when the movie veers too closely to the Dickens story, it suffers by comparison. Thatcher is no Bob Cratchit, and Jonathan is no Tiny Tim, and the plight of the family here never seems as desperate nor as touching as the similar worries of the Cratchit family of the original. The uses of the spirits seem overtly gimmicky, especially the dated disco-dude Spirit of Christmas Future. He is downright embarrassing, and the futuristic visions of moviemakers back in 1979 were absolutely short-sighted and silly.
Henry Winkler, mostly working under age makeup created by Greg Cannom, always seems like a young man portraying old age. Even though Winkler’s performance contains low-key subtlety never to be found in the Fonz, his supposed joy after his transformation is never played as joy, for Winkler is almost the same person, playedat one tone, one level, from beginning to end. Winkler acts mean in the beginning and acts nice at the end, but he never changes that inner soul of his character that is so essential when portraying Scrooge/Slade.
Credit must be given to the screenplay by Jerome Coopersmith, who faced the creative challenge of both updating the time and place of Dickens’ classic, but it must also be noted that only half a great story was developed. Instead of trying to redo the same old Dickens dialogue, at least director Eric Till attempted to make Dickens palpable to a modern TV audience and redefine the classic for the then current generation. While not quite the success it might have been, An American Christmas Carol certainly deserves a look-see.
Angel of Pennsylvania Avenue
Cast: Robert Urich, Diana Scarwid, Tegan Moss, Thomas PeacockeCredits: Director: Robert Ellis Miller; Writers: Rider McDowell, Michael De Guzman; TV, 1996
Three children travel from Detroit to Washington D.C. hoping to enlist the help of President Hoover in getting their father released from prison for a crime he did not commit.
Annabelle’s Wish
Cast: (voices) Clancy Brown, Jim Varney, Randy Travis, Cloris Leachman, Jerry Van Dyke
Credits: Producer: Barbara Dunn-Leonard; Writer: Dan Henderson; Ralph Edwards Films; 1997
This charming holiday animated film follows the adventures of Annabelle the cow and the little boy whose tragic past inspires Annabelle to give him the greatest gift she can give. This simple story of love brings a tear to the eye and will delight the entire family. Randy Travis and Alison Krauss sing original songs written for the film.
The Apartment
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston
Credits: Producer/Director: Billy Wilder; Writers: Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond; UA; 1960
The Apartment, winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture (1960), is a classic adult comedy conceived and executed by the exceptional Billy Wilder (director and co-writer, with I.A.L. Diamond). Ushering in what became known as the swinging 1960s, The Apartment has the look of a hip 1950s comedy with 1960s sensibilities and mores. Surprisingly, most audiences forget that at least 50 percent of the movie occurs during the Christmas holidays, specifically on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. And while The Apartment is not Christmas-oriented in either sentiment or attitude, the holiday still plays a pivotal part in the story’s development.
The movie begins on November 1, 1959, in New York City, on the 19th floor, desk 861, of the Consolidated Life Insurance Company, where chief focus C.C. “Bud” Baxter (Jack Lemmon) works for $94.70 week. However, the three-year-employed rising star often stays an hour or so working overtime at the office, not because he is dedicated, but because he “loans” out his apartment to his “higher-ups” since he finds it difficult to say no, and maybe, just maybe, these types of favors may lead to promotion at the firm. Baxter is specific that Mr. Kirkeby (David Lewis, III) and switchboard operator Sylvia (Joan Shawlee) must be out of his place by 8, but at 8:45 Kirkeby is just pulling up her dress zipper, trying to push her along. Asking whose apartment this is, Kirkeby states, “Some schnook who works in the office.” Getting Sylvia outside, Kirkeby offers to drive her to the subway, but she snaps back, “Like hell you will, you will buy me a cab!” Asked if he brings other girls up here, he says, “Certainly not. I’m a happily married man!”
The neighbors in the apartment house, especially next-door snoops Doctor Dreyfuss (Jack Kruschen) and wife (Naomi Stevens), think Baxter is a playboy with an insatiable appetite for sex. “From what I hear through the walls, you got something going for you every night—and sometimes there’s a twilight double-header... Slow down, kid,” the Doc advises, enviously.
Turning in for the night, taking a sleeping pill, after a quick TV dinner and a flip of the television dial, Baxter is again disturbed by another office superior Mr. Dobisch (Ray Walston) who, phones to say he just got lucky with a Marilyn Monroe look-alike in a joint on 61st Street, and he needs to use the apartment for about 45 minutes. After he pauses his phone conversation to say a few words with the buxom sexpot, he yells back into the phone, “Make that 30 minutes!” He says his monthly efficiency-rating report puts Baxter into the top 10, and that could mean a promotion. Baxter dresses quickly and exits the apartment, falling asleep on a nearby park bench. Doc comes home, hears commotion in Baxter’s apartment, and yells to the wife, “Mildred, he’s at it again!”
However, the next day at work Baxter has a cold, having been locked out of his apartment because Dobisch forgot to place the right key under the front door mat, causing Baxter to awaken his landlord at 4 a.m. after staying outside for most of the night. As he flirts with attractive elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) whom Baxter has an eye for, she advises, “You should have stayed in bed this morning.” While he counters with, “I should have stayed in bed last night.”
Baxter, expecting his hoped-for raise, is summoned to come up to the 27th floor to meet with Director of Personnel, J.D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray). Very excited and energized, Baxter asks elevator operator Fran if he looks okay, and she compliments him, putting a carnation in his lapel. Going into Sheldrake’s office turns out to be a different experience than anticipated. “What makes you so popular... look, I’m not stupid!?” Sheldrake inquires, recounting a story of a former office employee as popular as Baxter who was found out to be doing a bookie operation and was immediately fired. Baxter smiles and tries to play this off. “There’s a certain key to a certain apartment—do you know who this key belongs to—loyal, resourceful, cooperative C.C. Baxter!” Volunteering to explain how his “loaning” out of his apartment originally begun, Baxter states that over a year ago, when he was attending night school, one of the employees was attending a banquet and needed a place to change into a tux. Pretty soon, Baxter recounts, everyone was attending banquets, and he couldn’t say yes to one without saying yes to everyone. “The whole thing got out of hand,” but Baxter sputters, “Never again, I can promise you that!” Sheldrake, over the phone, tells his wife he won’t be home until late, that the branch manager from Kansas City is in town, and he is taking him out to see the latest hot play, The Music Man. However, smiling after the phone conversation, Sheldrake offers Baxter two tickets as a swap in order for him to use the apartment tonight, keeping all this hush-hush, of course. “I see a shift in personnel next month; I see you as executive material.”
Hoping to share his good fortune with another, Baxter goes to Fran and asks her to join him tonight to see The Music Man but she states she has to meet a man tonight, but that she will meet him in the theater lobby by 8:30. Surprisingly, when Fran journeys to the bar to meet her man, it turns out to be Mr. Sheldrake himself, the man with whom she is having an extra-marital affair. It seems last summer, when his wife and kids were away, Fran and Sheldrake had a fling which lost momentum when the family returned. It’s been a month since they last met, and Fran is anxious to end the relationship. “It’s over,” she pleads, but Sheldrake says, “I never said good-bye.” Sheldrake confesses he spoke to his lawyer, but Fran cuts in, “Jeff, I never asked you to leave your wife, if you just tell me you love me.” Immediately he responds, “You know I do.” Turning on the charm, Sheldrake convinces Fran to continue things and to forget about her date tonight and take a cab with him. Leaving as a new crowd of people enter, Sheldrake is unaware that his secretary sees the two of them together. Lingering and lonely outside the theater, Baxter waits for the date that never arrives, unaware that she is with his boss in Baxter’s own apartment.
The next day, Baxter gets a new office and a promotion and Sheldrake comes in to congratulate him and thank him for the use of the apartment. Baxter returns a compact with a broken mirror that Sheldrake’s lady friend left at his place, Sheldrake laughing that she threw it at him. “You see a girl a couple times a week, just for laughs, and right away they think you’re gonna divorce your wife... is that fair!” Sheldrake explains.
But what does all of this have to do with Christmas, you ask!
All the switchboard operators are wishing customers “Merry Christmas” as a Christmas party is in full swing on the 19th floor with workers singing “Jingle Bells,” dancing on desk-tops, making out in side offices, drinking and eating. Baxter offers Fran a seat. She notes that Baxter has been avoiding her elevator. He tells her he was very much hurt when she stood him up on their theater date. He says she is tops decency wise, but she counters that just because she wears a uniform doesn’t make her a Girl Scout. Soon Miss Olson, Sheldrake’s secretary, takes Fran aside and tells her she was Sheldrake’s “ring-a-ding-ding” four years ago, and she lists the women who came both before and after her. Baxter soon escorts Fran into his new office, asks her if she likes his new junior executive derby hat—which she does—and asks her out for a date. But Fran tells him she’s having a bad day, and Baxter understands that the Christmas holiday means family, but perhaps some other time. Opening her compact to show him how he looks in his derby, Baxter notices the cracked mirror and instantly realizes who Sheldrake’s date was, although he never lets on he knows anything; but he appears confused and hurt. Referring to the cracked mirror, Fran says, “It makes me look how I feel.”
As Baxter, feeling pretty low, leaves the office party, now featuring a young lady stripping on an office desk, he goes to a crowded bar, alone in his thoughts, as a fairly drunk and rugged Santa rings his bell, disrupting Baxter’s mood. Soon a party-girl looking for a wild time approaches Baxter. She tells him that her husband Mickey, a jockey, is being held prisoner in Castro’s Cuba, and she is depressed and wants to celebrate to forget. “No action, dullsville,” Margie MacDougall (Hope Holiday) complains. Suggesting sexual companionship, she states a night like this spooks you when you walk into an empty apartment. Baxter counters, “I said I had no family. I didn’t say I had an empty apartment.”
Meanwhile, Sheldrake and Fran are back at Baxter’s apartment. She tells him what Olson told her, and he tells her that after 12 years of marriage it is difficult to ask his wife for a divorce, that she must be patient. “It’s Christmas Eve. Let’s not fight,” Sheldrake implores her. Instead of giving her a present, he reaches into his wallet and hands her $100, telling her to get something she wants. Then he reminds himself, it’s quarter to seven, time to go home and decorate the Christmas tree with the family. Slipping her coat back on, she frowns and says, “Okay, I just thought as long as it was paid for,” referring to the cash offered and his leaving without having sex. “Don’t make yourself out to be cheap,” Sheldrake admonishes. Wishing her a Merry Christmas, he pops out the door. She puts on a record, washes her face in the bathroom, and finds a bottle of sleeping pills, which she stares at longingly.
Back at the bar, everyone has gone home, but Baxter and his floozy are still dancing, until the manager kicks them and Santa Claus out. “Your place or mine,” Mrs. MacDougall asks. Baxter decides on his, since everyone else goes there. Once there MacDougall and Baxter get drinks, start to dance, but when Baxter finds Fran unconscious on his bed with the bottle of pills nearby, he throws MacDougall out and gets the doctor, who knows how to treat such overdose victims. “If you came home half an hour later, you would have had quite a Christmas present,” the doctor reveals. However, the crisis passes after they force her to throw up, drink coffee and walk. The doctor tells Baxter to allow Fran to sleep for the next 24 hours or so. Baxter phones Sheldrake to tell him about the suicide attempt, but Sheldrake is with his family and could not care less about Fran, telling Baxter to take care of things himself. When she wakes up Christmas morning, Baxter tells her, “It’s always nice to have company for Christmas,” rattling off a string of dull, lonely Christmases of the past. Confessing she still loves Sheldrake, she just wants Baxter to return his $100 to him, telling Baxter, “I think I’m going to give it all up... why do people have to love each other anyway?” She bemoans her talent for falling in love with the wrong guys. She wonders aloud why she can’t fall in love with somebody nice like Baxter. He wonders the same thing.
Soon Fran begins to understand that there are two types of people, the “takers” and “those being took” and those being took cannot help it. She says that Sheldrake is a taker, realizing this after she speaks to him on the phone when he brushes off her life-threatening pill overdose. Baxter states he once bought a pistol to kill himself over a girl, accidentally shooting himself in the knee instead. He confesses he couldn’t bend the knee for a year, but “I forgot the girl in three weeks.”
Back at the office the day after Christmas, Sheldrake fires the loose-mouthed Miss Olson, but she goes right to Sheldrake’s wife and spills the beans. The wife immediately leaves Sheldrake. However, he tells Fran he left his wife for her. Fran, being tentative and cautious, tells him that nothing can happen until after his six-week quickie Reno divorce. Sheldrake approaches Baxter about using his apartment with Fran for New Year’s Eve, but he flat out refuses: “Sorry, you’re not going to bring anyone to my apartment, especially Miss Kubelik.” In anger, Sheldrake tells Baxter that he could be on the street again in 30 seconds, and Baxter hands him his newly earned executive washroom key, saying, “I’m all washed up around here,” quitting his position, going home and packing.
Dressed up and partying with Sheldrake on New Year’s Eve, Fran hears the story about Baxter and his loyalty to her, and she disappears from his table moments after the clock strikes midnight. Running at full speed down the street with a smile on her face, Fran runs up to Baxter’s apartment, but seconds from knocking on his door, she hears a loud bang, as if a pistol discharged. As she knocks frantically on the door, Baxter opens it holding a fresh bottle of champagne. Telling Fran that he absolutely adores her, she smiles and tells him to shut up and deal the cards.
Christmas, occupying about half of The Apartment’s running time, becomes pivotal for contrasting the new-founded morality of the 1960s (unemotional sex, extra-marital affairs, prostituting oneself to get ahead in business or a career, lonely singles living without the comfort of families) to the traditional morality which the Christmas season embraces (love and commitment, the family, love before career, the importance of self-esteem). Pivotal movements in this movie involve the Christmas season. When Sheldrake gives Fran $100 in cash as a Christmas present, this pay-off makes Fran feel dirty, and she sees herself as Sheldrake sees her, as a night of cheap diversion. Meanwhile, Baxter, alone and drinking in a bar on Christmas Eve, accepts the drunken comfort of Mrs. MacDougall more out of loneliness and the fear of being alone on Christmas than because he needs or wants the cheap sex. In fact, the relationship between Fran Kubelik and C.C. Baxter matures and grows over Christmas Eve night and Christmas Day, after Baxter first saves her life and then gets to really know her from their quiet little chats and card-playing episodes. The Christmas spirit shakes both of these singles out of their stagnated, morally depressing modern existence and reminds them of the relationship that might be if only they take the chance.