Christmas Classics at Rooftop Cinema Club
Up on the rooftop, Manchester Grand, comes a trio of holiday TV classics to beat the band! If there is a finer small- or big-screen adaptation of a Dr. Seuss children’s book than Chuck Jones’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966), please point me in its general direction. It wasn’t the first time Jones had teamed with Ted Geisel; the two had worked on Warner’s Private Snafu propaganda shorts. The good Doctor was dissatisfied (to say the least) with the results of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953), his first and only stab at a feature, and this was to be gun-shy Geisel’s first project in over a decade. Fearing that it might scare the wits out of younger viewers, Geisel was originally reluctant to cast Boris Karloff as the voice of the Grinch. (Thurl Ravenscroft, who sang the theme song, makes for a frightening baritone.) But with his mellifluous lisp, Boris Karloff brings more cunning to the animated meany than can be found in all of Jim Carrey’s rubber-faced muscle spasms combined. Next up, Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin, Jr.’s seldom-revived, bully-free The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974), an hour-long special featuring the voices of Shirley Booth, Mickey Rooney, and Dick Shawn. The doctor orders Santa to take a Christmas vacation instead of delivering toys. How do you think that’s gonna work out? Lastly, there’s the first (and finest) animated Peanuts special, A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965). — Scott Marks