Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, The Making of the First Animated Christmas Particular

Within the winter of 1962, a time of three gargantuan broadcast networks and a power-wielding block of nationwide advertisers, a comparatively tiny decoration known as Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol would herald a household vacation TV custom that has all however slipped into obscurity within the wake of the quite a few Christmas specials that it impressed.

Now animation director Darrell Van Citters, in a meticulously researched and delightfully partaking story-told with dozens of manufacturing artwork pictures and infrequently seen photographs-has captured that golden period of TV animation on this richly illustrated guide. It is a detailed retelling-in the voices of most of the artists who created it-of the painstaking and sometimes irritating efforts to translate Charles Dickens’ timeless vacation story right into a Broadway-style musical for the small screen-the first ever of its form.

It took a tremendous, quirky confluence of unlikely occasions to carry Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol to life, the primary (and one of the beloved) of all animated tv Christmas specials. Advertising and marketing whiz Henry Saperstein’s buy and revival of the as soon as revolutionary however foundering UPA studios; visionary UPA producer Lee Orgel’s lightning flash of an thought to forged the comical character Mr. Magoo in a severe position as Scrooge; Orgel’s enlistment of veteran director Abe Levitow (concurrently directing the a lot increased profile characteristic Homosexual Purr-ee); and the hiring of Broadway composers Jule Styne and Bob Merrill, whose struggles to get Humorous Woman into manufacturing left them time to put in writing songs for an unlikely (and really nearsighted) Scrooge.

This affectionate, usually suspenseful narrative in phrases and pictures is a must have for followers of the particular in addition to animation and Broadway aficionados. Relive an period of pioneering TV programming, the delivery of long-form animated storytelling on tv, and rediscover this gem of a Christmas traditional that set the stage for all that adopted it-welcome to the story of Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol!