This 25-minute TV short seems to be a quickie that was made just for showing on Christmas day of 1949. That was its release date, but there's no information on a network or TV stations that ran it. So, a good guess might be that it ran on some local TV stations in New York and maybe a few other cities.
Remember - this was December 1949, just before the explosion of Television in America -- in the market, in homes, and on the air. In 1946, the first year after the end of World War II, there were only about 8,000 TV sets owned in the U. S., and only six TV stations in the entire country. Three were in New York City, and one each was in Chicago, Philadelphia and Schenectady, NY. Growth was gradual but slow the first three years after the war. Many TV stations first went on the air in 1949, and TV sales began to pick up rapidly. Still, there were just 98 TV stations in the whole country in 1950 and by the end of that year, people owned five million TV sets in the U. S.
There hadn't been a movie made of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" since 1938. So, the enterprising Jerry Fairbanks probably saw the possibility for a short film for TV. Fairbanks got his start as a cameraman in silent films, but soon began producing specialty shorts for Hollywood studios. He became interested in TV very early, and wound up producing many shorts, feature films and TV programs over a career that spanned several decades. He won two Academy Awards for shorts, and was nominated seven times.
Perhaps the novelty of this film was having a well-known actor of the time, Vincent Price, as a narrator. He had little more than the opening lines. He first quotes Gilbert K. (G. K.) Chesterton, who wrote, "In everybody there is a thing that loves children, fears death, and like sunlight. And this thing enjoys Charles Dickens."
Price then reads most of what Dickens himself wrote in the preface to his story: "I have endeavored in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humor with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly."
As a short and for its one-year release, this film is passable, but hardly a fitting portrayal of the story or its characters. It necessarily cuts much out, and but for one brief scene of Marley's appearance and retreat through the door to Scrooge's bedroom, there are no great effects to heighten the film - which all of the feature films have. So, Taylor Holmes can't be blamed for playing a mushy Scrooge. To have acted the full character for this brief story would surely have come across as over-acting.
And one shouldn't be too stern in assaying this short for its time and purpose. For the sparse TV audiences of the day, it was something they at least were able to watch on Christmas that related to the season. And it probably sparked some interest in people who would want to read the Dickens story, or look for the original movie to be shown the next year. Indeed, two years later, the British film company, George Minter Productions, would make a feature film that starred Alastair Sim as Scrooge with a wonderful supporting cast. It was released to theaters in the U. K. and the US in early December.
Since that time, TV networks and stations around the world have run one or more of the films of Dickens' Christmas classic. May it go on forever.
