The Stingiest Man in Town

In my senior year of high school (1974), we produced this musical. Ummm, yours truly played Scrooge. I had the LP of the original cast recording, but I'm too young to have seen the B&W original live action production on TV (I agree with the other posters who state that the animated version was disappointing compared to the live action production.

Please let me know when and how a DVD or download of the original B&W live action production of "The Stingiest Man in Town" becomes available.

Thank you, Steve Marcus semarcus1@yahoo.com

I have hoped all my adult life that this music would be released as this was a part of every Christmas while growing up. I remember watching this on the Alcoa Hour and then being with my mother as she bought the record. It was always the first Christmas music we would play each year - and played many times at that! I still have that record but it is now so scratched and worn that listening to it is difficult at best. I even taped it onto audiotapes in order to preserve the memories but continue to look for a release of the music and even the play itself. What a great thing that would be!! I have all the words memorized to all the songs, but there's something stirring about hearing the music in the voices that were originally part of this cast. It's always amazed me that when a retrospective of Basil Rathbone's work is done this show is not ever mentioned!

I bought the recording in 1956 and have been playing it every Christmas since. I still get goose bumps when I hear the wonderful duet "It Might Have Been" and the song with the lyric "every man shall be my brother" Unfortunately my copy is getting a bit worn and I would like to secure another copy. If only they could show it again or provide a video of this program, but Alcoa has refused to do so. The music is so festive and cheerful that it makes me feel happy over the holiday season. I would like to correspond with others who appreciate this program. Basil Rathborn was magnificent as well as Patrice Muncel. The Four Lads were also outstanding.

Only one other musical version of A Christmas Carol comes close and that's Muppet Christmas Carol. With the exceptions of Vic Damone's very wooden(but well-sung) Young Scrooge and the intrusive and overlong(if cleverly danced) Devil's Ballet, for such a very early live TV broadcast 1956's The Stingiest Man in Town is truly impressive. Even if there are technical and musical faults here and there they can be forgiven considering that it was one of the first, and those faults don't make the production look too cheap and don't hurt the production very much(or at least to me they didn't). The production isn't lavish visually but there was clear effort made and for very early live broadcast TV musicals it does look pretty good, the use of kinescope effective. The sound engineering is remarkably good and clear, suiting the acoustics well and with good attention to orchestral balance.

The staging is always entertaining, though the stage does look cramped on occasions, and with several heartfelt moments(Mankind Should Be My Business is especially good in this regard). The story is very easy to follow and captures the spirit of A Christmas Carol and Christmas beautifully, the ending was very moving. For a musical to work you have to have good songs, and you certainly have those in A Stingiest Man in Town as well as a musical score that has whimsy and energy. Sure, Golden Dreams does go on forever(still a lovely song though), but faring best were One Little Boy and Mankind Should Be My Business. Not only because they were the ones that stuck out as the most memorable but also they were the ones that sounded like they came straight from the heart the most. The orchestra play wonderfully, just loved the warm-sounded, soaring violins in An Old Fashioned Christmas and Tutti Camarata shows signs of a sympathetic conductor with a great ear for acoustics and textures.

The always-present Carollers played by the Four Lads move the story forward rather than distracting thankfully, the group's harmonies are tight and they blend very well. Apart from Damone, the performances are solid though only one's outstanding. Fred has more screen-time than most other Freds in Christmas Carol adaptations, and Johnny Desmond plays him with warm humour and joviality that he is a likable character, he has a good amount to sing and he does the songs justice. Martyn Green is suitably humble as Bob Cratchit, you really feel sympathy(you do wish considering his calibre as a singer that he had more to do) and Robert Weede is a chillingly effective Marley despite him looking ridiculous(Marley looking like he'd dressed up as a nun for a party was definitely not something that Dickens had in mind). Dennis Kohler's Tiny Tim is most sweet and moving and the three spirits are imposingly played(particularly Robert Wright as Ghost of Christmas Present, maybe there is a little bias as Present was always my favourite of the three spirits).

Outstanding though is Basil Rathbone in the title role, he relishes the miserable miser side of Scrooge's character- his experience in villainous roles being an advantage- but the reformed/changed side of the character is very touchingly portrayed as well. Also surprising was his singing, not only does his voice have a nice sound, speaking as a singer here, but he also sings with feeling, which is every bit as important and perhaps even more so. All in all, very, very impressive indeed, one of the best musical versions of A Christmas Carol and compares well with live musical broadcasts. 8.5/10 Bethany Cox

My daughter found the DVD of this wonderful original version of The Stingiest Man in Town and I watched it Christmas Eve. I was 10 when it was first telecast and, if I saw it then, I was probably nowhere near as impressed as I was to see it revived for the 21st century. The only drawback is the lack of color, and that because it was a rare color telecast back in 1956. It was also done live (videotape was a few years away), so all we have now is a restored black and white kinescope (that means it was shot on film off a TV tube during the live broadcast.) Unlike a lot of kines, this one comes off very well. You can see some scratches and other signs of filmic age, but the production shines through it all, and it is a great version of The Christmas Carol! Mr. Rathbone, who never claimed to be a singer, holds his own against Johnny Desmond, Vic Damone and the (now somewhat forgotten) Patrice Munsel - they were all pop music stars at that time.

Now that I'm an old codger myself, I miss the extravaganza network productions of 50s TV. Junk like American Idle (whoops! did I spell that wrong on purpose?) and Dancing with the Hasbeen Wannabes just don't hold a candle to the true variety and "special" productions that used to grace the tube in its early days.

If you're looking for the real thing, see if you can find this one! (And thanks to my kid for a nice Christmas Eve :o)>