User Reviews

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. Not extravagant or extraordinary but just something instead of nothing. The Serling-ian dialogue is cerebral, thought-provoking, confrontational, long- winded, and heavily political. It asks not only Hayden but us how we will help make a difference. Nothing much has changed since 1964, which many might say this film is as relevant today as ever before. But it uses Christmas Carol as a platform for change and might be a nuisance to those not quite beholden to the message it wishes for us to accept and be influenced into action by. If anything this film just wants us to listen.

A dated film with a sledge hammer of a message yet it still has a resonant touch here and there. The images of the barbed wire camps bring to mind the camps of current refuges fleeing Syria; and Peter Sellers as the Imperial Me strikes a chord with the current culture of self-esteem enjoying its moment, not to mention the easy comparison to our current President- elect (2016). 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. Might be time for an update, but I believe the current "Conservative" political climate is too charged to be able to pull it off.

Turner Classic Movies blindsided me tonight when they decided to run this rarity, a special that ran on Monday, 28 December 1964 on ABC. 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. First, Joseph Mankewicz directs this, his only television project. The cast is first-rate, from Sterling Holloway to Peter Sellers and Steve Lawrence. Unlike the original CBS series, this was filmed in New York City.

This special makes me wonder whether or not "The Twilight Zone" might have lasted longer, had it aired on The Alphabet Network. In the 1960s, that network was far edgier than CBS, the original host for Rod Serling's series.

Many people may find Rod Serling's writing shrill. OK, my views are very similar to his, and my family knew him personally. But in this day and age, this special is like a badly needed slap in the face. If his writing is difficult, the actors overcome this.

And as for the ending: Remember, this is late 1964, when television was still a fairly timid medium, reliant on advertising. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had just been passed, and the march on Selma, Alabama was in the future. For the script's stiff qualities, I give this 9/10, but for overall effort and intention, I give this 100,000,000/10.

PS: And given how, even in late 1964, animosity against the Japanese existed, seeing this special is refreshing.

'Carol for Another Christmas' features a teleplay by Rod Serling at his most dead-earnest. As often happened with this controversial writer, Serling's script ran afoul of network censors who insisted on major changes ... inevitably making the material much more innocuous. Astonishingly, 'Carol for Another Christmas' manages to be an entertaining drama anyway, well-directed (by old pro Joe Mankiewicz) with a first-rate cast.

The story is a blatant reworking of Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol', modernised and addressing the concerns of Americans in the 1960s: a fairly original idea when Serling did it. But in the years from 1964 to the present there have been dozens of rip-offs of Dickens's tale (such as the wretched movie 'Scrooged') ... so, from a 21st-century viewpoint, 'Carol for Another Christmas' suffers because it's now one of many, many, MANY reworkings of Dickens's source material. Fortunately, Serling manages sporadically to improve upon the original. 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. This is clearly a Dickensian pun, but Serling also meant it as a pun on 'B. Grudge'... because Grudge begrudges charity to people less fortunate than himself. Television executives insisted that Serling must change this character's name; they were certain that 'Barnaby Grudge' would be perceived as a thinly-disguised attack on Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater (same initials). 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 ... with Grudge getting a look at the state of humanity in Christmases past, present and future. (Rod Serling's birthday was 25th December, and he had a traumatic experience on Christmas Day during his wartime hitch as a paratrooper ... I wonder if either of those facts helped inspire this story. 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 ... yes, the singer who married Eydie Gorme. Steve Lawrence was a very talented actor who seldom got material worthy of his talents: he gives a fine performance here, with some of the best dialogue Rod Serling ever wrote. (I'm a Serling fan, but plausible dialogue was always thin on the ground in Rod Serling's universe.) Lawrence brings Grudge to Japan on Christmas Day 1945, where a Japanese doctor and a U.S. WAVE are trying to help Japanese children who were caught in an American bombing raid. (There does seem to be an unfortunate 'blame America' tone here.)

The Ghost of Christmas Present is well-played by the excellent Pat Hingle, an actor who never achieved the stardom he deserved. Grudge finds the stocky Hingle gorging himself on food at a banquet table, while nearby Third World children starve behind a fence. Hingle invites Grudge to join him: Grudge is willing to eat, but not with those starving children watching him. 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. These are (intentionally) the most disturbing scenes in the drama. What sort of war was this, Grudge wonders? 'A dandy', replies Robert Shaw in a lacklustre performance as the Ghost of Christmas Future. Civilisation was destroyed in the nuclear war, but now one man is trying to inspire the survivors to rebuild the world ... namely, as a dictatorship with himself as the leader. Peter Sellers gives a fascinating performance (with an American accent, better than the one he used in 'Dr Strangelove') as a dictator named Imperial Me. Unfortunately, Sellers seems to be acting in a completely different movie from everyone else. (Which sums up much of his life and career.)

SPOILERS NOW. 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. But I found the last scene very annoying and simplistic. As proof that Grudge has reformed, we see him humbling himself by eating breakfast in the kitchen with his black servants. Surely it would be more honest and more ennobling to show Grudge inviting his servants to join him for breakfast in his posh dining room. And the three of them could do the washing-up together. 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. I'll rate this story 10 points out of 10. God bless us, every one.

Originally televised on ABC on December 28, 1964 and was the first in a planned series of television specials developed to promote the United Nations and educate viewers about its mission - Who Has Seen the Wind?, Once Upon a Tractor and The Poppy Is Also a Flower are the others.

It sure has a great pedigree, as it was written by Rod Serling and is the only TV work by director Joseph L. Mankiewicz. It also marked the return to acting after Peter Sellers' heart attack and has his wife at the time, Britt Eklund, in the cast.

On Christmas Eve, rich industrialist Daniel Grudge (Sterling Hayden) is alone in a dark room listening to "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (with Anyone Else but Me)" by The Andrews Sisters. His nephew Fred (Ben Gazzara) comes to ask for help with a United Nations program at his college, but Daniel remarks that he's tired of the U. S. being the world's policeman. After all, his son Marley died twenty years ago to the day and he's never gotten past it.

As you can imagine, three ghosts - Past (Steve Lawrence), Present (Pat Hingle) and Future (Robert Shaw) - take him through the world of isolationism and also introduces the despotic Imperial Me (Sellers) who demands that everyone left on the planet after a nuclear war kill one another until no one is left.

Serling biographer Gordon F. Sander wrote that this movie is unlike a lot of the author's social change stories, as it ends on a down note. That may be because of the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the war in Vietnam taking more American lives. This film is very heavy handed - it also led to a right wing boycott, which yes was already happening in 1964 - and didn't play again until nealry fifty years after it first aired.

Rod Serling will always go down as televisions greatest writer a man who dared not only to entertain us but to make us think as well exploring serious social isssues right out of the newspaper. Serling was truly a man ahead of his time, I remember reading that a Twilight Zone episode he wrote about racism was so raw and shocking that it was shelved for almost fifty years after its first broadcast. A veteran of World War II who never stopped having nightmares about his service as a paratrooper, Serling wrote many episodes about the horror of war and this is one of them. Sterling Hayden is a modern day Scrooge who doesn't really seem to have it in for Christmas but for being involved in foriegn affairs. He has lost his son in World War II and is a dyed in the wool isolationist which he makes abundantly clean in an argument with his nephew played by Ben Gazzara. However, that night Hayden's character is visited by three spirits who show him the nightmare of war and how it is everyones business to keep the peace. Robert Shaw is a terrifying ghost of the future showing him a nuclear apocolypse and Peter Sellers in a rare dramatic role plays a fanatical leader who preaches the joy of selfishness. This has got to be one of the strangest variations on A Christmas Carol I have ever seen. I don't know whether to admire it or just shake my head.