ALL SCI-FI

[Pow]

Stumbled across this interesting made-for-TV movie on Youtube.

A Carol for Another Christmas premiered on ABC television on December 28, 1964. It was written by Rod Serling and commissioned by the United Nations.

Xerox contributed $4,000,000 to help underwrite the costs of the production and broadcast time. This allowed the TV-movie to be aired originally without commercial interruption.

The actors waived their normal fees due to the nature and importance of the program.

This would be film director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's only time he directed a television show. He was glad to have this opportunity because of the criticisms he had been receiving for his film Cleopatra.

After this TV-movie was aired in 1964 it wasn't seen again for 48 years until Turner Classic Movies aired it on December 16, 2012.

This is Rod's modernization of Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. The theme of the movie is for global cooperation among nations.

It has a wonderful cast including: Sterling Hayden, Steve Lawrence, Pat Hingle, Ben Gazzara, Robert Shaw, Peter Sellers, Eva Marie Saint, and James Shigeta.

Synopsis: Wealthy & powerful Mr. Grudge (Sterling Hayden) is alone on Christmas Eve in his mansion. He mourns the death of his only son who died in war. He is a hawk who believes that the only way to survive for America is to continually build up the military to face other nations he deeply mistrusts.

Three ghosts appear at different times to him over the course of the evening to show him where this continued hatred between nations could ultimately lead the world.

I found this to be quite interesting if your a fan, as I am, of Rod Serling. Like all his work, this one has a profound message. Sometimes it can be preachy but even then Rod's words can hit home.

It plays much like an elongated episode of his iconic Twilight Zone TV show as we see Grudge escorted by ghosts through history and into a possible future of the planet.

Steve Lawrence, who was best known as a singer, does a terrific job acting as the ghost of Christmas past.

It is on Youtube, and although it isn't a great copy, it is till very intriguing. And the message resonates today just as it did back in 1964.

[Bud Brewster]

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I'm going to download this rare treasure and watch it next Christmas! Thanks, Mike!

Below is one of the intros by Ben Mankiewicz which TCM included with two separate airings of this rare special program, followed by the program itself, and then the outro for that same airing.

Then, below those three videos, I included the Ben Mankiewicz intro for a 2014 airing of the program — just for the viewing pleasure of All Sci-Fi's members.

TCM Christmas Carols — A Carol for Another Christmas (Intro)


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___________A Carol for Another Christmas (1964)


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TCM Christmas Carols — A Carol for Another Christmas (Outro)


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Here's an All Sci-Fi Bonus Feature!

It's the intro for a TCM airing from a different Christmas season than the one above.

TCM Christmas Classics 2014 — A Carol for Another Christmas


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)