Ebenezer Scrooge

"Ebenezer?" I thought I was being clever, but Hal Landon Jr.'s muted reaction suggested he probably had heard it a time or two. This is, after all, his 27th year playing Ebenezer Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol" at South Coast Repertory. Besides, it was only 90 minutes before Thursday night's performance, and surely the guy must be nervous. Every performer gets the butterflies, don't they? This is no time for me to be cracking wise.

Ebenezer Scrooge took only one night to change his tune from "Bah! Humbug!" to "God bless us, every one!" Ambrose Bierce was made of sterner stuff. He reviled the holiday (and just about everything else) to the day he was last heard from, south of the border, on Dec. 26, 1913. Perhaps the greatest wit in American literature, and certainly its greatest cynic, Bierce defined Christmas in his satirical 1911 lexicon "The Devil's Dictionary" as "a day set apart and consecrated to gluttony, drunkenness, maudlin sentiment, gift-taking, public dullness and domestic misbehavior.

Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" embodies the true spirit of the holidays with its indelible characters: miser Ebenezer Scrooge, who learns the meaning of the yuletide when he's visited by three spirits during Christmas Eve; his earnest employee Bob Cratchit; and Cratchit's youngest son, Tiny Tim. The story also has captured the imagination of filmmakers over the last century, with some of the most accomplished -- and often unusual -- actors...

Bernadine held her breath as Ms. Stickler announced the cast of "A Christmas Carol. " Every year, the fourth-grade class at Franklin Elementary performed the Charles Dickens classic. This year, however, would be unlike any other. This year, Bernadine intended to be the very first girl to play Ebenezer Scrooge in the history of the school. Maybe even the world. She had made it known to her teacher that she'd been practicing her lines since September. She owned that role. "Please, oh please, oh please," she whispered into her fists as Ms. Stickler read the names.

Amazing, the compassionate wisdom shown by the Senate Armed Services Committee in adding a bit of "class" to our armed forces by canceling a $3.5-million appropriation (out of the $267-billion defense bill) for aid to the homeless near military facilities as "unaffordable" and "harmful to the national defense" (June 18)! Not to worry; if our affluent citizens can get away with saying "not in our backyard," why should not our defenders be required to follow suit? As that fine, upstanding citizen Ebenezer Scrooge said, "Are there not workhouses and orphanages?"

Just wanted to let you know that John Horn's article ["Studio War," Nov. 16] is probably the best succinct explanation of the controversy over "Watchmen" that I've read anywhere. Great job boiling down a very complicated story into something that's easily understandable. Patrick Casey Warwick, R.I. :: My bet is, (if it's ever released) "Watchmen" flops. I'm just an ordinary guy who knows all about Spider-Man, Superman and Batman and never heard of these Watchmen comics. Let's hope Warner Bros.

What a marvelously effective con game is being played on the American people! First, we are goaded by appeals to our prejudice and selfishness into supporting cuts in "entitlements" that the "undeserving" poor, sick and elderly are getting at the expense of us "hard-working taxpayers." Then our jobs are downsized, out-sourced to cheaper offshore labor and automated out of existence, and more and more of those very same "hard-working taxpayers" find themselves being shaken off the ladder of economic "opportunity" to fall into the ranks of the "undeserving" who they have so vehemently denigrated and deemed unworthy of "entitle- ments."

I was at the point of mistakenly accusing President Bush of harboring do-goodish notions of true compassion for the suffering Somalians. Fortunately, your article ("The Oil Factor in Somalia," Jan. 18) helps preserve my mental image of Bush as a true spiritual heir of the pre-dream Ebenezer Scrooge, albeit one with a rudimentary sense of PR. If, in the course of protecting the already-entrenched interests of Conoco, et al., in Somalia, starving Somalians can be fed and something approaching a state of tranquillity can be established, wonderful!

Ebenezer Scrooge, Ebenezer Scrooge. . . . That plaintive call of a Dickens spirit of Christmas might get a lot of responses from people who have been buying and selling homes in this unseasonably warm real estate market. The complaints are enough to turn even the meek into miserly misanthropes. Take the real estate broker who underestimated closing costs. The buyer would say, "You take the broker."

'Tis the season for giving, so a city housing authority worker in Boston raised nearly $100 for two boys who received what he considered a Scrooge-like reward of $1 for returning a lost wallet containing $2,000. "I wanted to put the screws to Ebenezer Scrooge," said John Bartolo, 35, who read about the incident in the Boston Herald. Bartolo enlisted some friends who went through bars, restaurants and a market to raise a more generous reward.

Pretty much the only version of Charles Dickens' classic tale of greed and redemption, "A Christmas Carol," onstage in London this season is at the Arts Theatre, where comic actor Gareth Hale is playing the recovering miser Ebenezer Scrooge. Seasonal family entertainment there tends toward pantomime -- slapstick musicals about Mother Goose, Cinderella and other characters from children's fables. But in Southern California, the theater community is more entranced with Victorians than their descendants are. All sorts of "Carol" adaptations and interpretations of Scrooge have been playing this month, from South Coast Repertory's production for purists with Hal Landon Jr. in his 30th season as Scrooge, to a newer tradition -- Jason Moyer's "Gay Apparel: A Christmas Carol," at the Lyric Hyperion Theatre Café in Silver Lake, featuring John Downey playing Scrooge as the bitter overlord of a fashion empire.

Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" embodies the true spirit of the holidays with its indelible characters: miser Ebenezer Scrooge, who learns the meaning of the yuletide when he's visited by three spirits during Christmas Eve; his earnest employee Bob Cratchit; and Cratchit's youngest son, Tiny Tim. The story also has captured the imagination of filmmakers over the last century, with some of the most accomplished -- and often unusual -- actors...

Have you ever wanted to strangle a ghost? You may well feel the urge after seeing "A Christmas Carol," Robert Zemeckis' exasperating re-imagining of the Dickens classic as a 3-D action-thriller zooming through Victorian London and the fever dreams of that most miserly of men, Ebenezer Scrooge. The "it's better to give than receive" moral to this story is almost lost under the snowdrifts of special effects. Then there is the blizzard of Jim Carrey's theatrics to weather. The actor voices eight characters, including Scrooge at all ages as well as the three ghosts who haunt him -- you can just see him in the recording studio pingponging manically around during one of the Scrooge-ghost tête-à-têtes.

Charles Dickens' most popular creation, Ebenezer Scrooge, usually takes on the tenor of the times, so it's not surprising that Robert Zemeckis' new performance-capture animation version of "A Christmas Carol" has its star, Jim Carrey, musing about where his Scrooge fits in today. "I was thinking about it this morning, how this story ties into everything we're going through," says Carrey, who, thanks to the technology, plays Scrooge as well as the three ghosts haunting him. "Every construct we've built in American life is falling apart.

Just wanted to let you know that John Horn's article ["Studio War," Nov. 16] is probably the best succinct explanation of the controversy over "Watchmen" that I've read anywhere. Great job boiling down a very complicated story into something that's easily understandable. Patrick Casey Warwick, R.I. :: My bet is, (if it's ever released) "Watchmen" flops. I'm just an ordinary guy who knows all about Spider-Man, Superman and Batman and never heard of these Watchmen comics. Let's hope Warner Bros.

"Ebenezer?" I thought I was being clever, but Hal Landon Jr.'s muted reaction suggested he probably had heard it a time or two. This is, after all, his 27th year playing Ebenezer Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol" at South Coast Repertory. Besides, it was only 90 minutes before Thursday night's performance, and surely the guy must be nervous. Every performer gets the butterflies, don't they? This is no time for me to be cracking wise.

Charles Dickens' most popular creation, Ebenezer Scrooge, usually takes on the tenor of the times, so it's not surprising that Robert Zemeckis' new performance-capture animation version of "A Christmas Carol" has its star, Jim Carrey, musing about where his Scrooge fits in today. "I was thinking about it this morning, how this story ties into everything we're going through," says Carrey, who, thanks to the technology, plays Scrooge as well as the three ghosts haunting him. "Every construct we've built in American life is falling apart.

Undeterred by the carols in the streets or the good cheer in the air, the card sharp sets about fleecing a homesteader on Christmas Eve. Black hat swooping low over his eyes, the bad guy growls, "Christmas, hogwash." Jack Palance plays the tough-talking, hard-drinking, fist-fighting title character in "Ebenezer," the Wild West retelling of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" that debuts tonight on the TNT cable channel.

The Santa Susana Repertory Company will return Friday to the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza to present its 11th annual production of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." The holiday favorite stars Walter Koenig--Ensign Pavel Chekov of "Star Trek"--as Ebenezer Scrooge, and Lane Davies as the Ghost of Christmas Present. The play was adapted by James Egan and features original music by the show's producer, Rick Rhodes. * "A Christmas Carol," Friday-Saturday, 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, 2:30 p.m.; Dec.

Undeterred by the carols in the streets or the good cheer in the air, the card sharp sets about fleecing a homesteader on Christmas Eve. Black hat swooping low over his eyes, the bad guy growls, "Christmas, hogwash." Jack Palance plays the tough-talking, hard-drinking, fist-fighting title character in "Ebenezer," the Wild West retelling of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" that debuts tonight on the TNT cable channel.