Carol for Another Christmas

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.

Carol For Christmas is about 20 years behind the time when it was presented on TV in 1964. It would have had far more appeal had television been available in 1944.

Industrial tycoon Sterling Hayden is bitter at the world because his son Marley died in World War II. He's the last of the isolationists and wants no foreign involvement anywhere period including humanitarian aid.

The error of his ways is told to him by those spirits of Christmas past, present and future. And if you know the Dickens story and how many in the English speaking world have never heard of it than you pretty much know what the story is.

If this had been done in 1944 when Hayden's son was killed, a lot of people invested their hopes and dreams in a new world organization to come, the planning of which was undertaken even while the guns were still blazing in battle. The story would have resonated well with World War II audiences.

As it is coming out in 1964 before the troop escalation in Vietnam the film came out under the wire. Five years later, ten years later, it would have met with derision from Vietnam era audiences. The message still has problems today with the issues surrounding globalization.

However one portion of it rings very true for what has been determined to be the 'Me' generation. How prescient were the writers in creating Peter Sellers's character of 'Me' the symbol of the ugly American who believes in selfishness and divisiveness. Just grab what you can, whenever you can and if some in the world don't have as much, too bad. Not to mention if they protest, kill them. This part of Carol For Christmas was as prophetic as Network in its way.

I caught this over the Christmas holiday, make sure if you haven't seen it, catch it next year if TCM runs it again.

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.

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

The Museum of Television and Radio owns a copy of this film written by Rod Serling and only shown once on television. Part of its financing came from the United Nations and the theme of the film is more about international cooperation than simply being anti-war.

Sterling Hayden portrays a wealthy man who served in the Navy during World War II and is now a lonely bitter man upset over his son's death in a war he described as needless, presumably in Korea. Hayden is now an isolationist.

The three ghosts think their job is to make Hayden's character more of an internationalist and more willing to accept U.S. involvement in organizations like the United Nations. Coming right before the U.S. racheted up its involvement in Vietnam, it is easy to understand why this film didn't get shown again.

The visit from the Ghost of Christmas Future (Robert Shaw) is the most frightening part of the film. He shows Hayden a post nuclear apoclaypse world run by a weird character called the Imperial Me (Peter Sellers). Sellers is quite effective.

It's an interesting film, but you have to take it in its context. If you are a big Rod Serling fan, it is worth seeing. If you are not, you might find the themes in the film delivered in a rather heavy-handed manner.