Carol for Another Christmas

Since i was 8 the only time it aired I doubt i watched it surely had no idea what the purpose was. It is amazing to think that Peter Fonda was the son killed in WWII and his first name was "Marley".. YOu should look at Serling's Wikipedia entry to see his service in the Pacific in 1045..Purple Heart, Bronze Star, Phillipine Lib Medal and incredible stories. Sterling Hayden was Mr Grudge- and was a WWI (not II) veteran..in 1964 WWI vets were only in their mid 60's. That was past, along with a creepy Hiroshima sequence. Present was a hedonistic free world letting everyone starve..and the Future was after WWIII(with a madman ruler). Certainly would baffle anyone today but moderately effective. Go to Wikipedia and see that Hayden was in the OSS and paratrooped into Yugoslavia..where he befriended Tito which led to his blacklisting. Hayden and Serling certainly had life experiences. A somewhat clumsy/contrived movie but worth seeing to understand how those who grew up in the 30' and 40's lived and what they experienced

If Ayn Rand had watched this film when it was first broadcast on American television, she no doubt would have had palpitations. Carol for Another Christmas not only revels in bleeding heart humanism, it also drives a stake through the heart of the Randian philosophy of objectivism. That must have been galling for acolytes of Rand in 1964, but here we are in 2013, and after forty or fifty years of relentless anti-humanist propaganda we now live in a world where the quaint liberalism of Rod Serling has been displaced by - you guessed it - the selfish anti-communitarianism of Ms. Rand. This development would have disgusted the vast majority of Americans in 1964, who would have answered Daniel Grudge's (Sterling Hayden) question to The Ghost of Christmas Future (Robert Shaw) - 'must it be like this?' - in the negative. The ghost, however, doesn't respond - and now, sadly, we know the answer.

Warning: This is not a Christmas themed film, only in name. Mob mentality at its very worse with this another version of Charles Dickens film classic A Christmas Carol. The film is heavily laden with film stars such as Peter Sellers, Ben Gazzara, Sterling Hayden, Eva Marie Saint, Robert Shaw, Britt Ekland, and Steve Lawrence to name a few.

The underlying message that author Charles Dickens was attempting to communicate was for us as humanity to act in the spirit of kindness and forgiveness. In this film version of a single man's influence by the spirits of Christmas Eve, past, present, in the time or world wars provides us the viewer that we all have a responsibility to take care of one another and not look at the world in isolation from what troubles the world is experiencing as a whole.

Since the film was released in 1964, there are some scenes which would not be acceptable to today's society in terms of equality and country centric economic superiority, but the message is well received if only we open our eyes, hearts and mind.

I give the film a decent enough 7 out of 10 IMDb rating.

This has to be one of the greatest one-time only dramas ever presented on TV. I remember it vividly from its original broadcast: a venal Pat Hingle devouring a huge turkey leg surrounded by starving refugees; the sweet voices coming from little girls scarred by the atomic blast at Hiroshima, their faces covered with gauze; the demented "Imperial Me" Peter Sellars addressing his crazed flock in a burned out cathedral after the nuclear holocaust of the future; Sterling Hayden, a modern Scrooge, his voice changing from booming commands to whimpering as he is led past the succession of proof of man's inhumanity to man.

I saw this again at the Museum of Broadcasting in NYC and I was not disappointed. This is the lost world of thoughtful, creative TV drama, and what a loss it is to us all.

It is my understanding that Rod Serling's Carol for Another Christmas was only shown once, and the print is now owned by one of the schools of filmmaking.

This is a tale of the Cold War. In 1964 the Cuban Missile Crisis was still fresh. My neighbor in west Texas dug out his back yard to install a bomb shelter. Duck and cover drills were practiced by school children so they would be prepared for a nuclear blast. Rod Serling (writer of the Twilight Zone series) wonders what the Christmas Carol would have been like if Scrooge lived in this world.

Even though I was quite young at the time this show played there are scenes that I can remember clearly. The Scrooge character has been shown the devastation of the world of the future. He suffers great fear and wants to escape. He tries to climb a stylized wire fence But there is nowhere to go. The only things around are sparse, sterile ruins of a destroyed civilization. I wish I remembered how he resolved his conflict.