Western Animation / Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol

"We'll have the Lord's bright blessing
And knowing we're together
Knowing we're together heart and hand
We'll make the whitest Christmas
The very brightest Christmas
A Christmas far more glorious than grand"

— "The Lord's Bright Blessing"

Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol is a 1962 cartoon made by UPA Productions and directed by Abe Levitow. It was one of UPA's notable successes in its last years as an animation studio following its acquisition by Henry G. Saperstein.

This is not just a Christmas Special. It's the original Christmas special. To be more specific, it's the very first animated Christmas special to be produced expressly for television. It originally aired on NBC on December 18, 1962.

The story is mainly a straightforward adaptation of that one classic story everyone knows about by now, albeit with Quincy Magoo (Jim Backus) in the role of Ebenezer Scrooge. It's actually a Show Within a Show in which Mr. Magoo headlines a musical adaptation of the Dickens novel, featuring original songs with music by Jule Styne (best known for Funny Girl and Gypsy) and lyrics by Bob Merrill (who also wrote the lyrics to Funny Girl).

UPA and NBC followed up the success of this special with the weekly 1964–65 series The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo, in which Magoo portrayed other literary characters, although it lasted for only one season due to UPA's inability to mass-produce cartoons for television.

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Tropes:

• Adaptational Early Appearance: For some reason, this retelling switches the order of the spirits, so the Ghost of Christmas Present is the first to arrive.
• Adaptational Late Appearance: Christmas Past appears after Christmas Present, instead of the other way around.
• Adapted Out:
  • No nephew Fred in this version.
  • Scrooge's sister Fan never appears on screen, but during "I'm All Alone in the World" Scrooge draws his family on a blackboard, and it includes "Sis".
  • The Cratchits have just four children (three boys and one girl) instead of the six (three boys and three girls) they have in the book.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: The ghosts who visit Scrooge are blue (Jacob Marley), pink (Christmas Present), gold (Christmas Past), and brown (Christmas Yet to Come). The villainous group who sing "We're Despicable" are various shades of green, save the non-colorful Old Joe. Jacob Marley himself may have also been green during or at some point in his lifetime, if the menacing-looking portrait of him◊ in Scrooge's office is anything to go by.
• Ambiguous Gender: As with the source, the Ghost of Christmas Past—though they're voiced by a girl, their design could pass for either a girl or a young, long-haired boy.
• Award-Bait Song: "Winter Was Warm", the song sung by Belle. It is also heard in the opening and closing credits, as well as during transitions.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Reeling from what becomes of Tiny Tim in the future, Scrooge asks to see his future self. Christmas Yet to Come takes him to graveyard and points towards a headstone.
• Big Applesauce: The special is set in Broadway, which is located in New York City.
• Big "NO!": Scrooge when shown his own grave.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Internally: During the Ghost of Christmas Future scene, a mouse in Old Joe's shop can see Scrooge and the Ghost.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • The theater director suffers repeated injuries, due to accidents caused by Magoo.
  • During "We're Despicable", the short charwoman is laughed at for only getting the deceased's bedsheets and is often smashed with a hammer by the undertaker. During much of the song, she has difficulty getting her hat off.
• The Cameo: Tiny Tim is played in-universe by Gerald McBoing-Boing.
• Card-Carrying Villain: The criminals who sing "We're Despicable".
• Catchphrase: Saved for the curtain call (and the inadvertent destruction caused therein): "Oh, Magoo! You've done it again!"
• Christmas Special: This special is historically notable for being the very first Christmas TV special of any kind, whether it be animated or live action. It, along with the successful trifecta of A Charlie Brown Christmas, the Rankin/Bass adaptation of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Chuck Jones adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, kicked off the very idea of regularly doing Christmas specials for TV.
• Cuckoo Finger Twirl: As Scrooge drones on about the holiday, the boy in the street does this.
• Curtain Call: The cast of the play take their bows at the conclusion. Magoo gets turned around a bit, as well as tries to give the battered director his due (only for more injuries to befall the poor guy).
• Dark Reprise: When the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come leaves Magoo-as-Scrooge alone in the graveyard, he sings a sad reprise of "Alone in the World".
• Dramatic Timpani: The Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come's actions are occasionally punctuated by a pounding on the timpani.
• Drives Like Crazy: The opening song "It's Great to Be Back on Broadway" has Magoo driving his car the wrong way on a one-way street and accidentally (and comically) crashing his car into a lamppost due to his nearsightedness. Magoo emerges from the wreck no worse for wear.
• Framing Device: The story is portrayed via an in-universe Broadway musical that Magoo is taking part in.
• Genre Shift: While the special is not without the kind of comedy you'd expect from Magoo, it's restricted to the Framing Device. The play is portrayed as a serious, dramatic tale, and Magoo is consistently in character when on stage.
• Have We Met?: Scrooge's reaction when he bumps into the charity collectors on the street. When one says they were in his office the day before, Scrooge happily gives them a large donation.
• Hear Me the Money: Scrooge sings "Ringle, Ringle" when counting his money at the office and later reprises it at the end when he has his Heel–Face Turn:
  Scrooge: Ringle, ringle, coins when they jingle, make such a lovely sound. Give them away and nobody can rob you.
• Hidden Depths: Turns out that the nearsighted, comical Quincy Magoo is an extremely talented dramatic actor.
• In-Scene Title Text: The opening credits are portrayed via neon lit billboards as opposed to standard opening credits.
• Leitmotif: The "We're just blankety, blank-blank, no good" line of "We're Despicable", sung to the tune of "Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits."
• Lightning Reveal: This is how Magoo-as-Scrooge discovers his future grave site, when a flash of lightning accompanied by Dramatic Thunder reveals Ebenezer Scrooge's name on the gravestone.
• Limited Animation: Being a TV production, the animation is not as fluid as in the Magoo theatrical shorts.
• Little "No": The director right before getting crushed by the toppled over set.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Only Bob Cratchit and a handful of minor characters have British accents, while everyone else sounds American despite the London setting. Justified by the Broadway Show Within a Show framing device.
• Outliving One's Offspring: In the future, the Cratchit family is still reeling from Tiny Tim's death. Bob tries to put up a brave front while talking about visiting the grave and how he'll do so often, while his wife is on the verge of tears.
  Mrs. Cratchit: Sleep peacefully, my little one.
• Please, Don't Leave Me:
  • Magoo (as Ebenezer Scrooge) to the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come, when the latter abandons him in a cemetery.
  • He also does this during Belle leaving him in the Christmas Past sequence, begging her to stay as his younger self sits crying silently.
• Riddle for the Ages: There's no explained reason for why the Ghost of Christmas Present and the Ghost of Christmas Past were switched around.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Taking his final bow, Mr. Magoo boasts that he's brought down the house. Unfortunately (especially for the director), he's saying this after causing the set to topple over, so he literally brought down the house.
• Show Within a Show: Magoo is playing the part of Scrooge on stage. Tellingly, Scrooge has perfect eyesight.
• Snow Globe of Innocence: When Belle is about to break her engagement with Scrooge, she gazes into a snowglobe, reminiscing about the snowy day he asked her to marry him as she sings "Winter was Warm".
• Soup of Poverty: The family of Bob Cratchit are so poor that the only thing they're shown eating on Christmas Eve is thin broth. This happens while the kids begin to lament their poverty and sing about how much they want expensive, filling meals (and presents).
• Stealth Pun: During past!Scrooge's sad number, the present Scrooge joins in and empathetically pats his shoulder. Scrooge is literally feeling sorry for himself.
• Suddenly Speaking: In a rarity for the character, Gerald McBoing-Boing gets actual dialogue as Tiny Tim instead of his usual sound effects.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Even people who barely remember this special mainly remember the "razzleberry dressing" lyrics from "The Lord's Bright Blessing". It's Tiny Tim's favorite Christmas treat.
• Triumphant Reprise: The finale is made up of more upbeat versions of "Ringle Ringle" and "The Lord's Bright Blessing".
• Truer to the Text: This is one of the very few adaptations of Dickens' story to actually depict the Ghost of Christmas Past as an androgynous person of ambiguous gender. In this case, the Ghost is reimagined as somewhat resembling Peter Pan. The only thing that is not book accurate is that the Ghost of Christmas Past, for some reason, comes after the Ghost of Christmas Present. It isn't even that clear whether the performer is a young man or young woman as we never see the person out of character.
• Villain Song: "We're Despicable".
• Visual Pun: At the end of the special, Magoo proudly declares that he's "brought down the house"—as the sets and props literally collapse around him.
• Written-In Infirmity: Averted, in-universe. While Magoo remains his usual nearsighted self during the Framing Device, Scrooge has functional eyesight, although a few lines allude to him possibly needing spectacles and being too cheap to buy them. A few typical Magoo jokes do take place post-Spirits, though, which fit there better than they would elsewhere due to the lighter tone of the finale. In the space of a couple of minutes, Scrooge mistakes a portrait and bust of himself as his reflection, and pokes the poulterer's belly thinking he's poking at the turkey.
• Yet Another Christmas Carol: Though notably, this was one of the first attempts (if not the first) to adapt Dickens' classic tale into animation. The credits make clear this was "freely adapted" from the original Dickens story, as while it uses a lot of the original Dickens dialogue, some elements were adapted out to fit the 52-minute time frame.

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