The Stingiest Man In Town

Let’s watch Rankin Bass’ Christmas Carol that lasted more than a few seconds at the end of Santa Claus Comin’ To Town. This is The Stingiest Man In Town. 

Though I couldn’t find a complete video online and can’t get the DVD at this time, but just like Wind in the Willow, I know the story and little videos can sum them up.

The narrator is B.A.H. the Humbug, voiced by Tom Bosley (who is as small as his later role of Dave the Gnome.) The story is pretty much as we know as A Christmas Carol in musical form.

Ebenezer Scrooge (voiced by Walter Landau) hates Christmas, treats Bob Crotchet poorly, and is distant from his cousin Fred (voiced by Parson Brown’s Dennis Day.)

Scrooge gets a visit from Jacob Marley to warn him that he’ll be visited by 3 ghosts to hopefully repent him; the 3 ghosts being Past, Present, and Future.   

Let’s talk about the best that stands out from this version. The animation was done by Topcraft, as it feels different for an animated Rankin Bass Christmas. I wish they did more than one of these, but they’re reserved for none holiday specials. I love Belle’s design and voice, as she’s beautiful. While in the subject that was seen in the Past scene, the young Scrooge is voiced by Robert Moorse. It’s less sad when you see Scrooge and Belle split up, but is depressing when you see them both ages in a split screen.

The worst is the Humbug, as he’s probably one of the pointless narrators of the Rankin Bas film. Most of the narrations are from the book, while Humbug usually adds nothing. There’s a scene where ghost of Christmas Present uses his flames to shrink Scrooge down for a joyless yet padding musical number of “Christmas Spirit”. This is strange when Robert Zemeckis this too with the Ghost of Christmas Future, which is even more unnecessary because 3D!

This is what Stingiest Man In Town can do much they can do under 30 minutes, as it was based on the play of the same name. I grew up watching A Christmas Carols Musical with Scrooge with one of the Scrooge played by Tim Curry (the second or third time than the animated Dic version.) The stage musical would later be adapted into a TV special by Hallmark and first aired on NBC. There’s two other better version I know that took advantage of the small runtime, and it’s not Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol. One is the Chuck Jones version that’s animated by Richard Williams and the other is I hate to admit is the Disney’s Mickey’s Christmas Carol as they took every minute to have one party scene than to have two.

The only Christmas Carol that suffered with the limited time is the Looney Tunes’ Christmas Carol; it’s under 7 minutes and only used one ghost.

It’s a standard Christmas Carol. If you want the best Christmas Carol, there’s the film version with Scrooge played by George C. Scott. The best spoof of it is The Blackadder Christmas Carol. If you want the worst Christmas Carol, there’s A Christmas Carol: Scrooge’s Ghostly Tale in 2006 with Scrooge as a terrible CGI skunk, and there’s a dull 2001 animated version with Nicolas Cage as Jacob Marley. It's best to see the Making of Christmas Carol with The Man Who Created Christmas, with Dan Steven playing Charles Dickens. The best Dan Steven film than him playing a lifeless beast. Please take this version for what it’s worth. Now we’ll move on to another Robert Morse film as things will get cold as ice.