The Grinch should have quit after stealing Christmas the first time
None of the Grinch followups boast the magic of the initial 1966 production
Aux Features Grinch
In 1957, Theodor Seuss Geisel was on a bit of a streak. The prolific children’s author known as Dr. Seuss had followed hits like Horton Hears A Who! with two books now considered necessary volumes in any child’s library: The Cat In The Hat and How The Grinch Stole Christmas!, starring two main characters who would become his most famous.
The Cat and the Grinch, though, as the world would soon discover, were fairly different, even though both aspired to cause mayhem in the lives of those around them. The Cat appeared mischievous but well-meaning, while the Grinch was merely grumpily determined to bring all the Whos down to his own miserable level.
The success of both books meant that they were destined for TV-special status, though the Grinch, being holiday-related, had the greater momentum. How The Grinch Stole Christmas! followed a few specials that were becoming their own type of holiday blockbuster: Rankin/Bass Productions had a mega-hit with Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1964, and A Charlie Brown Christmas arrived the next year. It looked like the Grinch would be the 1966 entry into the Christmas special canon. Still, Geisel was not immediately on board.
The author was possibly less-than-enthusiastic about his previous adaptations: the bizarre live-action film The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr. T in 1953 and The Gerald McBoing Boing Show in the mid-’50s. Seuss had such an indicative style in both language and artwork that transferring those creations into another medium proved arduous at first.
The Grinch special, however, had a secret weapon that all but ensured the success of the project. Animation director Chuck Jones and Geisel had worked together during World War II on Warner Bros.’ Private Snafu training cartoons. By 1966, Jones was well-established as the genius behind some of the greatest cartoons ever created, featuring characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, the Road Runner, and Tom and Jerry. With Jones’ involvement, Geisel eventually signed on, and his Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas! debuted 50 years ago this week, on December 18, 1966.
Compared to the special, the book seems like primitive source material: minimal color; simplistic drawings; Max the dog, ostensibly the star of the show, barely appears. In fact, the special had to add a recurring song (“You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch”) and elaborate on Who noisiness to even reach its 25 minutes. Jones fortunately made the Grinch green, while adding many of the touches he was already famous for: the deadpan look to the camera, piano plinks to indicate blinking, playing up the inherent cuteness of Max and Cindy Lou Who to contrast against the Grinch’s seediness.
Watching it again, it’s amazing how much the Grinch appears to be not much more than an actual horror story until the final five minutes, featuring an anti-Santa who breaks into houses and steals all Christmas-related items. He even shows up at the bedsides of children to take their candy canes, slithering among the presents. Jones doesn’t sugarcoat anything, not even the Grinch’s gnarly teeth or the way his face unfolds when he gets a “wonderful, awful idea.” The benign Whos seem like the furthest thing from a match for him, which is why he can easily ransack their entire town in only a few hours.
The amazingly memorable Boris Karloff
Alongside the excellence of Jones and Geisel was another ringer: Boris Karloff. The man who personified Frankenstein in film had done vocal work for years, specializing in radio horror shows like Suspense and Lights Out! His was the perfect voice to both narrate and voice the Grinch, even though Geisel balked at first, fearing that Karloff would make the Grinch too scary. The expert Karloff managed to convey undeniable disdain for the main character even as he brought his voice to life. Singing that now-classic song was Thurl Ravenscroft, the voice of Kellogg’s Tony The Tiger, even though he wasn’t credited on the original special: Geisel himself called newspapers across the country in an attempt to correct this oversight (many thought Karloff was performing the song as well). Even Rocky The Flying Squirrel showed up: That’s an uncredited June Foray voicing the few lines of Cindy Lou Who.
The special resulted in an amazing kind of alchemy, even as initial reviews were somewhat tepid; one critic cited it as “probably as good as most of the other holiday cartoons.” But the Grinch’s legacy has expanded exponentially over time. The nonsensical Who setting helps, as this cartoon will never appear dated. But the Grinch has a redemption story like no other, made even more dramatic in the special than the book, thanks to the addition of a suspense-building soundtrack and Jones’ stellar work in action animation (just picture Tom the cat or Wile E. Coyote grabbing onto that sled).
As our own Zack Handlen has pointed out, redemption stories are huge at Christmas (A Christmas Carol’s Scrooge being the most well-known example), but the Grinch’s 180-degree turnaround is spurred on not by guilt or fear, but by an actually effective “spirit of Christmas.” A Charlie Brown Christmas snuck poetically effective biblical verse into its special. The Grinch mostly stays secular, as the unity of the now material-less Whos creates an unidentified Christmas star, which has the effect of growing the Grinch’s heart three sizes and even turning his eyes a benevolent blue. The Grinch steals all material things but discovers that they don’t really matter: “Maybe Christmas didn’t come from a store / Maybe Christmas, he thought, meant a little bit more.” The Whos are so forgiving that the Grinch who wiped them out becomes the guest of honor at their holiday dinner, while Karloff reminds us all that “Christmas Day is in our grasp, as long as we have hands to clasp.”
It’s a perfect special, getting away from materialism while only hinting at spiritualism, focusing instead on unity. Before we even get to that resonating ending, thanks to Jones, we have moments of out-and-out hilarity, again not able to be featured in the book: Max’s inept attempts to steer the sleigh down from the Grinch’s lair, for example. The special’s annual appearance on CBS soon helped to build its ultimate legacy: TV Guide named it No. 1 on its 10 Best Family Holiday Specials list in a 2004 volume.
You’d think the Grinch would have a great Halloween special, but no
Once such excellence has been attained, it can be hard not to want to return to that particular well, especially for a writer as prolific as Geisel, who had already penned a Cat sequel, The Cat In The Hat Comes Back, in 1958. His 1971 Cat In The Hat special was nearly as successful as the Grinch’s, leading the author to consider another sequel, 11 years after the original.
Halloween Is Grinch Night seems like a natural, but it pales considerably against the earlier special. The story involves a Grinch-like wind that invades Whoville and a young boy named Euchariah who gets lost and winds up facing the Grinch himself. As Karloff had died a few years earlier, the Grinch is voiced by Hans Conried, who played the title character in The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr. T, and, like Karloff, was a radio and vocal legend. The scenes when the Grinch shows his mettle to Euchariah are trippily scary, appropriate for the season, but the rest, not so much. The low point is the song “What Am I Doing Here?” sung by both Euchariah and Max the dog, whose interior pondering is voiced by Henry Gibson (portrayer of the Illinois Nazi leader from The Blues Brothers). Eventually the wind goes away, taking the Grinch with it, but Max stays with Euchariah. Ostensibly the story is a prequel to the Christmas incident, but if so, how does Max wind up back with the Grinch? Despite its inability to hold up to the original, Grinch Night received the Emmy for Outstanding Children’s Special.
The third and final Grinch effort, 1982’s The Grinch Grinches The Cat In The Hat, also won an Emmy (two, in fact, this time for Outstanding Animated Program and Outstanding Individual Achievement In Animation). Again, maybe it’s the lack of Jones’ artwork, but it just seems odd to see the Grinch tooling around in a car, even one that spouts green smoke. After a ridiculous traffic altercation, the Cat and the Grinch go head to head, until the Cat makes the surprising turn of entering the Grinch’s psyche—as with the psychedelic Halloween moments in the previous special, this is the best part—to discover that the Grinch’s problems start where, as Freud would say, all of ours start: with his mother. A newly psychoanalyzed Grinch is now determined to be less Grinch-like, to the relief of Max. It’s certainly watchable for Seuss fans, but again, a far cry from the onscreen debuts of the two iconic characters.
(PBS Kids eventually found an effective way to wrangle the Cat into an engaging series starting in 2010, aided by the energetic vocals of Martin Short. In The Cat In the Hat Knows A Lot About That!, the Cat and Sally and Nick from his original special, as well as the beloved Thing One, Thing Two, and the goldfish, investigate a different topic each episode, like dinosaurs or outer space.)
The unmitigated horror of the 2000 Ron Howard film
Understandably, both the Grinch and the Cat fared the worst in attempts to bring them into live-action movies. Mike Myers’ The Cat In The Hat has a 10-percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and Jim Carrey’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas doesn’t fare much better, especially since it comes from the usually reliable director Ron Howard. To fill the two hours, a long backstory is added: A puppet Grinch baby is shown to hate Santa almost from the start, but it’s the Whos’ cruelty that turns him against the formerly benign village, retconning the entire premise of the source material. As Nathan Rabin said in his A.V. Club review: “Given the simple, elegant, anti-materialist message of Seuss’ book, there’s cruel irony as Grinch becomes just another piece of mercenary, opportunistic Christmas product to be consumed mindlessly and forgotten instantly.”
The 2000 movie was the worst of the lot, but all of the Grinch follow-up efforts were primarily unfortunate. Even the 2018 Benedict Cumberbatch movie failed to make much of an impact. Granted, these productions had a lot to compete with. The combination of Seuss, Jones, and Karloff was so magical that it could never have been recaptured. Even if the Grinch never appeared on our screens again, that 1966 half-hour based on his source material alone was enough to make him an iconic character for the ages, instead of getting muddied by later, lesser versions. Fortunately, that’s still the version we most remember, even after 50-plus years.
354 Comments
Seriously, the entire “let’s give the Grinch a harsh backstory” thing was so bad for the movie. That and just letting Cary go into ultra-mugging mode nonstop.Of course the worst part is how it paved the way for the even worse Cat in the Hat film….
“You know what the Cat In The Hat needs? 90 minutes of crotch-grabbing and non-stop sleazy innuendos!” -Mike MeyersThe only GOOD thing about that movie is the role it played in ending Mike Meyers’ career.
I genuinely liked the Wayne’s World movies — I wish he had stuck with that rather than getting into the innuendo genre with Austin Powers and other later stuff like Cat in the Hat. That sort of thing can be funny when subtle, but Myers doesn’t *do* subtle.
I love Wayne’s World too, but didn’t that have its fair share of innuendo?I believe I requested the hand job.
I’d like to order the cream of sum yung guy
Good point. I guess I didn’t mind that as much as the Austin Powers stuff because it seemed like the typical juvenile stuff that the characters would realistically say, along the lines of the “it certainly does suck” mock praise of the vacuum hair cutting device.
I got a turtle head pokin’ out!
Wayne’s World was about two slackers hosting a local access talk show. It would have been weird if they DIDN’T include a good amount of innuendo.
In Wayne’s World I always felt those jokes were presented as the kind of realistic dumb jokes Wayne and Garth would make, and the joke was somewhat on them as well. In the latter Austin Powers movies, it’s revealed that Mike Myers legitimately thought butt jokes were ground-breaking comedy.
I don’t think Mike Myers thought they were ground-breaking comedy, but I think he spent weeks on end writing those jokes and worrying about whether they were comedy.
In Wayne’s World I always felt those jokes were presented as the kind of realistic dumb jokes Wayne and Garth would make, and the joke was somewhat on them as well. In the latter Austin Powers movies, it’s revealed that Mike Myers legitimately thought butt jokes were ground-breaking comedy.Exactly this. In Wayne’s World the joke wasn’t “cream of sum yung gai,” the joke was that these idiots thought such juvenile innuendo was funny and subversive.
And when he does, he does it with a pointless Scottish accent.
The first Austin Powers is really good, and it’s the last thing he did that’s worth a damn. It killed Myers’ career because he’s been trying to replicate it ever since. It happens to a lot of artists.
The first Austin Powers was fun. The rest were utter garbage.
Also reading the backstage stories about that mess of a movie is hilarious.
There’s a really good story in here: http://www.avclub.com/artic…
Mike Myers seems like a big poopy butthole.
wrong, because everybody loves Mr. Poopy Butthole and nobody loves Myers any more
At least we can all agree that The Love Guru is an underrated masterpiece
Sadly there’s also Love Guru. Even he admits that was a poor decision
The highlight of Mike Meyers’ career was making Adam Sandler look like a fabulous actor.
Somebody mugged Cary Elwes? Are the police working on this?
They won’t touch it. The only hope is the Dread Pirate Roberts.
Wesley!
Maybe a camera operator with a revenge fantasy, PTSD can’t be out of the question.
prob’ly the best he’s going to get at this point.
Not after he embarrassed their brethren in Nottingham.
that was Rottingham!
I actually found all his ranting (likely involving a lot of ad libbing) by far the best part of the movie. “Solve world hunger, tell no one!”
Yeah, I found the Grinch movie lightly enjoyable, mostly because of Carrey in fact (I was really into his films at the time), but there’s a lot of fat on the script. And unfortunately, because it was a really big hit — we all seem/want to forget it was the highest-grossing film of 2000 — it just encouraged similarly silly, unnecessary rethinks of beloved childrens’ stories and/or characters. Tim Burton’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is a good film, but the ridiculous Willy Wonka backstory derails it from the greatness it could have achieved.
I like the Burton version better than the older version, but that third-act backstory is just dead weight. It’s kind of unbelievable that the biggest departure from the book would be a pile of insipid backstory for Willy Wonka.
I dunno—the backstory had Christopher Lee in it, so it wasn’t a total loss.
I was chatting with someone recently, and they tossed off a reference to the Jim Carrey Grinch movie, which they promptly had to explain. Apparently the movie was a staple for their kids when it came out. Those poor, poor kids.
Those were lean times for kid movies and kid TV. Pixar wasn’t quite a brand yet, Disney musicals were hitting a low point, and Saturday morning TV had been usurped by Saved by the Bell and its knockoffs.
Though to be fair it DID help pave the way for Michael Myers’s irrelevancy as an actor and comedian. He has NOT been missed in theaters.
And, on some level, it seems even he knows that.
I’ve always wondered how it would turn out if Howard’s Grinch movie was edited down to fit the soundtrack of Jones’s Grinch cartoon
It’s especially bad that the whole backstory leads to the conclusion that the Grinch just needs to get laid to be an okay guy.
The Grinch is a pure asshole in the original film, so I understand why they felt compelled to give him a more sympathetic back story.
It didn’t work, but I get it.
Ugh. I cannot stand either of the movies. I know someone who referred to the Cat movie as “Asshole in Fur” and probably still does. But the animated first Grinch is a well-deserved classic, and I still get misty when the Grinch tries to save the sled and panics, leading to his change – and growth – of heart.
To be fair, the Cat in the Hat is an asshole in the books, too.
It took having a kid and revisiting a lot of the books to realize how many assholes are in Dr. Seuss books in general.
It’s an important life lesson for children… how to deal with assholes.
Stink, stank, STUNK!
The 3 words that describe this article are as followed, and I quote.Just kidding, I actually enjoyed it.
Think, thank, THUNK!
Given the choice between the two of you, I’d take the, uh, erm… seasick crocodile!(the pause and the hemming is important, so many covers omit that and it ruins the joke)
There’s something about the Grinch song that really evokes “angry letter we wrote at 1am which we don’t fully intend to ever mail.”
Drink, drank, DRUNK!Ah, Monday mornings.
You’re a three-decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich … WITH ARSENIC SAUCE!
Shit, Shat, Shart
Thinking back on it, the live-action Grinch may be the first movie I ever realized was terrible. Like, I had been bored by movies before, and there were movies that I didn’t like or that upset me. But I very clearly remember being ten years old, sitting in the theater during that awful original song Cindy Lou Who sang, thinking “Oh my God, why are they doing this?”
This sounds like a real growing moment.”My god… Movies can just… Suck?”
Seriously, it was formative. Like Bruce Wayne’s parents getting murdered, but instead of becoming Batman I dedicated my life to mocking things on the internet.
AV Club inventory idea?
That would be a fantastic read.
Feels more like an AV Q&A weekend content to me.
You either die a hero, or live long enough to get banned on Facebook.
But do you do it in a black stretchie?
That was Robin Williams’ Toys for me.I do think most kids have a moment where they learn to separate general experience from specific content. For me Toys was when I realized I could enjoy going to the movies and getting popcorn and soda and sitting in a dark room with a big screen but there would be times I did not enjoy the specific movie I was seeing.
That was the first movie I walked out on.
Like when I watched North.
A real passage to adulthood.
Mine was the instantly forgotten “Heidi’s Song” in the early 80s. I remember thinking that the songs were long and really boring. Also that the most exciting part of the movie was that she ran, once.
The title itself – “Heidi’s Song” – sounds like it could be a mashup between the “Heidi Game” and “Brian’s Song.” Making NFL fans cry for at least two different reasons.
I had the same experience with Superman 3. I had seen movies I didn’t like, but it was still something to do, and there was candy. I suspect that S3 might have been the first movie I paid to see with my own money, money that would have better spent on Asteroids.
I’m far too old to have had that experience with it, but I saw it for the first time a couple of years ago. At the family Christmas gathering my mother unwittingly bought a copy for my sister’s kids to watch on Christmas Eve. I wasn’t even fully paying attention to it, but it was actively poisoning Christmas. The horrible colors, the way the villagers mostly seemed to be awful people as well.It was just impossible to feel even the slightest bit of holiday spirit with that movie playing in the background.
The awful Whos are the most egregious and sanctimonious subversion of the story’s original theme — advancing the idea that the Grinch’s scheme somehow “taught them a valuable lesson”. Seuss’s Whos are legitimately joyful in the first place. They love their toys and their families, friends, and neighbors. It’s the Grinch who projects his own bitterness onto them, coming to his heart-growing, strength-enhancing epiphany when he realizes how wrong he was.
The pompous mayor was a truly idiotic invention. And the Grinch is the way he is because he was brutally bullied as a child by the Whos for being green? Holy shit.
I accidentally saw ‘Christmas with the Kranks’ a few years ago, while it was playing in the background at a friend’s house and felt the same way. The entire movie with an awful premise about awful, saccharine people. It did the opposite of it’s intent – it made me want to forget Christmas exists at the time.
I was ten years old when I realized movies could suck too! I’m older though, so mine was Batman Forever in theaters I loved the previous two movies, the comic, and the animated series, and I was so hyped to see Forever. It gave me a headache.
I’m a lil’ younger, so my first was Revenge of the Sith. Imagine my shock when i realised i was more interested in playing Jedi than watching Jedi after about twenty minutes.
Well, one major thing that got me about that movie was Georgie decided to show us that it wasn’t any fun being a Jedi. After years of imagining how cool a “real” Jedi would be. “So, the Jedi actually live like a bunch of monks, and you’re not allowed to get any girls, and they take you away from your parents.” Fun.
If they lived like monks that’d be one thing, but finding out they were prissy little bureaucrats really took all the fun out of it.
I imagine the Sith entice wayward kids who have Jedi midichlorians with a way better life.
Those prequels were so awful. So damn awful.
And still the worst Batman was yet to come…
Yeah, The Dark Knight Rises was still 15 years away.
I’m slow, so I was like 19 or 20 when I finally had THE REALIZATION. I was watching Van Helsing, with Hugh Jackman. Literally the first movie I chose not to finish watching. I haven’t been the same since. I think it single-handedly turned me off to CGI. It’s been more than 10 years since i watched it, so I don’t remember much beyond its awfulness and the feelings of hate and loathing it filled me with.
I was slightly younger when I saw Batman Forever, and I remember my dad disliking it. I asked him what was wrong with it, and he said he preferred movies with better plots. The notion of evaluating a movie based on its plot was foreign to me at the time, so I asked him for an example of a movie with a good plot, and he replied Hunt for Red October. So in an odd sort of way that acted as my introduction to less kid-oriented movies.
Yeah, I think that’s about the age when it becomes possible to develop something approximating critical discernment. I saw Krull in the theaters for my 10th birthday, hyped to within an inch of my life. I walked out having learned a hard lesson about reading reviews first.
Growing up Chicago, I really appreciated Roger Ebert, even as a kid.
The only good thing about Forever was Nicole Kidman. Other than that…Keaton had the right idea bailing when he did.
My first bad movie was “All Dogs Go to Heaven”. I hadn’t wanted to see it anyway — I was 11 at the time and hot to see “The Little Mermaid”, which hit theaters at the same time — but beyond my sheer annoyance at being forced to see it, it didn’t take long to realize that it had a rather unlikable protagonist (even given that this is a redemption story) and a lot of cutesy plot elements/characters I’d already seen a lot of or had outgrown. I was pretty vocal afterwards about not enjoying myself, and my folks actually picked on me for being a killjoy. I forced myself to watch it again about 2 years later, but I just couldn’t get into it.
All Dogs Go To Heaven actually has a lot of less cutesy compared to AMT or TLBT, that being said it probably has the more nonsensical scenes in it as well, particularly the infamous “big-lipped alligator moment”.
I like All Dogs Go to Heaven. I won’t pretend it isn’t flawed, but even a sub-par Don Bluth movie has a magic to it that appeals to me more than many better-constructed movies.
Even A Troll In Central Park?
I haven’t seen that one. In fact I didn’t realize it was by Bluth. I take it it’s pretty dire? If it has even a few moments of that atmosphere Bluth is seemingly able to create at will, I’m sure I wouldn’t consider it a total waste.
Yeah. That movie suuuuuucked. I had completely forgotten it existed.
Get off my lawn!
Mine was “Pete’s Dragon”. I remember sitting in the theatre with my mom and thinking how horrible it must be for her to have to take me to see crap like that. My daughter’s awakening came with “Chicken Little”. Her response to the movie: “Why did you take me to that? You’re ruining me.” She was four.
Things went even more downhill for her after I pointed out the sin of expository dialogue. “Thanks mom. Now I can’t enjoy anything.”
I don’t remember the first movie I really disliked (I didn’t have discriminating tastes, but my dislike for certain movies, like Charlotte’s Web, goes back a long way).I do remember seeing “The Hours” my freshman year of college and realizing that a movie could appeal to pretty much all my sensibilities as a 19-year-old in the liberal arts (Philip Glass! Virginia Woolf! Nicole Kidman! Nonlinear storytelling! Feminism!) and still be boring and forgettable.
I don’t remember the first movie I hated, but my dad used to take us to the Studio Theatre in San Bernardino, a run-down movie palace that had a double, sometimes triple bill. He always show up 45 minutes into the feature. “It’s OK, son, you can watch the start of it after the next movie is over.” And he’d do that, and we’d leave midway through. Even at 8 years old, I thought that this is an insane way to watch a movie. then again, he was just unhappy and insane, so this kind of fit. PS I am not a crank.
Mine was Super Mario Brothers.”But…why is everything covered in fungus? King Koopa is just a guy with a dumb haircut? Why is everything so dark? Why…why don’t I like this?”
I tried it again recently and ended up liking it.
For me, it happened during a screening of Mac & Me.I’m old.
Baby Geniuses. It was a free screning, and I still felt bad that my parents took us to see it.
The Pirate Movie starring Kristie McNichol and Chris Atkins was like a master class for my grade-school self in how badly movies could suck, how tired humor could be, how unappealing a film’s leads could be, and how even a measly $2 ticket could feel like a complete robbery.
“The Pirate Movie starring Kristie McNichol and Chris Atkins was like a master class for my grade-school self in how badly movies could suck, how tired humor could be, how unappealing a film’s leads could be, and how even a measly $2 ticket could feel like a complete robbery.”Yeah, but this flick still had its moments. The live action Grinch and Cat movies had you actively wanting it to end.
I’m trying to remember, but I think the first Power Rangers movie was the first time I actually felt guilty about making my mother sit through something. It also didn’t help that our car was in the shop at the time and so we had to walk a really long way to get there. I was 8 or 9 at the time and I finally realized that my mother put up with a lot of crap just to make me happy.
Parents are great that way. My pops took me to all the original Star Wars and then ate some popcorn and fell asleep. He was fine with it cuz he knew I loved it.
That song was so awful and I hate how it won’t go away. Even Chr*stmas Sh*es has somewhat faded from existence
Even the porn parody is awful.er, So I’ve heard….
The Cat in the Hat might be the worst movie I’ve ever paid full price to see. Just terrible on every level and actually pretty inappropriate for a kids movie.
Singing that now-classic song was Thurl Ravenscroft, the voice of Kellogg’s Tony The Tiger, even though he wasn’t credited on the original special: Geisel himself called newspapers across the country in an attempt to correct this oversight (many thought Karloff was performing the song as well).That’s really interesting. I’ve actually read at least a couple of scholarly sources that state that Karloff performed it, probably just passing on the misconception many shared at the time. Now that I have the right frame of reference, I can definitely hear the similarities between Ravenscroft’s Tony the Tiger and his performance of the song. I’m glad I read this.
I identified Ravenscroft as the singer many years ago, probably by the late 1960s (when I was six or seven), because he was the main voice actor/singer on a Disney record I had at the time, All About Dragons, and as soon as I heard him on the record I knew he had to be the same man who sang “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch”.
I had a crapton of those Disney records also! My most memorable Ravenscroft was from the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, where he sang “The Headless Horseman”- which legit scared me as a 5 year old in 19-dickety-six. I can still hear that bass note from “you can’t reason…. with a heeeeeeeaaaadless maaaaaan” in my brain.
Ravenscroft had a fairly extensive singing career, with a number of Christmas carols to his credit that I quite enjoy having in my holiday mix.
He was probably most notably one of Disney’s Mellomen, singing on all manner of film, television, and theme park projects. Prominently, that’s him singing “Grim Grinning Ghosts” as one of the Haunted Mansion’s busts.
And old-time radio fans also know he did a stint as part of the Sportsmen Quartet on Jack Benny’s radio program (IIRC, leaving the Sportsmen when he was called up for WWII).
Didn’t know that, and I am a huge JB fan. Thank you!
He’s also the voice of one of the parrots from “The Enchanted Tiki Room”, which is as close as you’ll ever get to “The Grinch Goes Hawaiian”.
Yeah, it’s also his face projected on the broken bust over on the left side.
The one I used to think was Walt Disney (back when I was a dumb kid and not a stupid adult).
During the ’90s The Grinch’s airings were all followed by a behind the scenes special hosted by Phil Hartman, which actually included an interview with Ravenscroft (and seriously, the dude had the greatest name ever).
With a name like Thurl Ravenscroft you’re either becoming a Bond super-villain or an actor, there are no other choices
I think “practitioner of the Dark Arts” should be included in that list as well.
3rd option: lich king
Sure there are: Frontman in a Norwegian black metal band, or actual goddamn viking!
It’s on the DVD/Bluray too. There are several nice extras on them, in fact.
Was going to bring that up. At the time, I thought the clips where they re dub Karloff’s voice with Hartman’s was the funniest thing ever.
Sounds like typical un-researched internet “journalism” that passes on incorrect details as fact. Not to sound pissy, but I’m pretty sure even the credits of the movie say who sang it. (And I’m not insulting you, but the people who got that wrong.)
No, as stated in the article, he was not credited and Ted Geisel actually called stations, and IIRC from the extras on the Bluray, took out newspaper ads to make sure Ravenscroft did get credited.
In fairness, he DOES sound exactly like Karloff. I didn’t know it wasn’t Boris until a couple of years ago.
His performance was grrrrrrreat!
I thought it was Karloff singing the song for years (I also thought the actors were singing the theme songs on Norman Lear sitcoms, probably because of Carrol O’Connor and Jean Stapleton singing “Those Were The Days”).
I always thought it had to have been sung by Howard Keel, because it sounds exactly like Howard Keel. Now I’m just disappointed.
The little x-ray frame for the “heart grew three sizes that day” I think is my favorite animated thing ever.
For me, it might just be the slow-spreading, hair-curling smile as the Grinch thinks up his wonderful, awful idea. It’s just so perfect in every frame and is perfectly paced. Even reading about in the article I couldn’t help but crack a smile.
the only time I’ve seen that moment reproduced effectively by a live action person—and its been attempted a number of times by various sitcoms in the past…on Just Shoot Me—they did a straight up retelling of it with David Spade in The Grinch part (naturally) and he did a really solid hair-curling smile when he also decided to steal everyone’s presents. He did well with the part. (Certainly better than Jim Carrey would a year or two later)
Tim Curry did a pretty good one in Home Alone 2.
It’s not the slow curl smile, but I immediately thought of Jon Luvitz:https://www.youtube.com/wat…
I think that’s just David Spade’s natural smile.
I’m so glad someone else remembered that episode! In a sea of “Christmas Carol” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” knockoffs, that JSM episode was a real standout.Oh, and Kelsey Grammer did a great job as the narrator.
Like you, I love how the the tuft of hair on his head parts down the middle and curls in sync with the smile.
It’s always Max’s wave from the back of the sled for me. No matter how many times I see it, it still makes me laugh.
so that’s the the reason max is such a popular dog name, right?http://67.media.tumblr.com/…
Oh man, do we have to choose which is best. So many moments from the special occupy that place on my list based whichever one I’m seeing at the moment.
That said, I’ll add the deadpan spike to the camera the Grinch gives after Max- stupidly innocent tongue flapping about- jumps onto the sled thinking he’s actually riding it not pulling it.
YES! YES! So good.
The Grinch whistles for Max. He jumps on the sleigh like, ‘Oh boy! Oh boy! We’re going for a ride!’. Cut back to the Grinch with a wonderful Chuck Jones deadpan. Love that moment.ETA: Probably should’ve scrolled down.
Leave it to Chuck Jones to somehow make the TV special more Dr. Suess-esque than the original Dr. Suess book.
I refuse to watch the movie but the original animated Christmas special is a holiday tradition in our house. I think I drove my elder siblings crazy when I was little insisting on being read the Grinch and Yertle the Turtle constantly at bedtime.
The spirit of Christmas combined with a vicious critique of fascism. That’s some interesting bedtime programming.
To be fair, I can easily picture Hitler staring down from Mt. Crumpet, hating the Whos.
Probably led alot to my favorable inclination to leftist politics at a later age.
Possibly the best book written on the subject of turtle stacking.
Slightly off the subject, but I will not permit even low-level dissing of The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T to pass unremarked. The film definitely has the visual look of Dr. Seuss, and it’s not an “adaptation” — Dr. Seuss himself is credited with the screenplay. And while it’s undoubtedly weird (and was undoubtedly ahead of its time in that respect — it would be nearly two decades until Willy Wonka went back to the “weird children’s musical” well), that doesn’t make it any less wonderful, if only because Hans Conried is so clearly having the time of his life playing Dr. T.And without Dr. Seuss’s Bart vs. Dr. Terwilliker, Bart vs. Sideshow Bob would definitely have been much different.
I like the film too, but the good Dr. apparently hated it.
Conried’s pretty excellent in anything (one of his radio credits was the “Chicken Heart” episode of Lights Out, memories of which Bill Cosby built a famous stand-up routine around).I always imagine the maniacal and snarky lich villain Xykon in the Order of the Stick webcomic as having Conried’s voice.
My parents had that Bill Cosby record! I had no idea the chicken heart story was based on a real episode:
Enjoy:
http://thethunderchild.com/…
Holy crap I JUST got that!!!
I had completely forgotten that Bart (or Bartholomew) was the kid’s name in that movie!!! Good pull!the younger of my two nephews just started learning piano and I think i’d be a little scared of showing him that movie just yet, but in a year or two, it should work really well.
Weird: The kid from the movie is the dad of infamous dead punk Darby Crash
I know who killed Darby Crash.
i like that movie too, try to catch it on TCM whenever it’s on. but i always get a creepy non-kid-friendly vibe when watching it: the mom wears these really sexy gowns and looks kind of like a dominatrix.
I don’t understand why there’s a “but” in your sentence.
Yes! Trania all around!I put off watching 5000 Fingers….(1953) for so long, and could kick myself. It would be an interesting double bill with Invaders from Mars (1953)…they’ve both got that Eisenhower-era sensibility and Googie design. Though 5000 Fingers… subvert it left and right. I particularly like Hans’ redition of “Dress Me”:https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Huh, I didn’t know that Sideshow Bob tidbit. Neat!
Is it atomic?
It’s very atomic!
It’s been a few years since I watched it, but I remember The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T dealing a lot with the aftermath and fallout (so to speak) of WWII. I think Bart’s mom was a war widow, and the friendly plumber, Mr. Zabladowski (who bore a strong resemblance to the rural mail carrier we had when I was a kid) seemed to have been sort of traumatized by the war. I believe he drove a surplus army jeep and wore an old army coat. And then you have the important “Is it Atomic?” question. There is even a deleted verse to the elevator operator’s song that dealt with gas chambers that was deemed too disturbing for the days so close to the war. Here is a version with the audio to the missing verse restored.
Actually, Bob Terwilliger’s name comes from a street in Portland, OR, as do many other Simpsons surnames.
I didn’t even know about the Halloween special.
it turned up on VHS in my parents’ house and my boys made it required viewing, for a couple of years, anyway. I can still hear the “Grinch is gonna get ya” song.Weirdly, I didn’t remember it, but I did remember seeing the Grinch vs. Cat in the Hat one when I was a kid.
I like to imagine it as being like a proto celebrity deathmatch. Nobody correct me.
It’s like a lesser version of the Peanuts specials that pad the Charlie Brown Christmas DVD. “What the heck is this??”
“Happy Arbor Day, Charlie Brown!”
For some reason for decades cartoons needed to be in threes and the middle part is always filler. Not that US Acres or Dial M for Monkey was awful, but it wasn’t necessary either.
I saw it on Cartoon Network back in the day, and even then I found it strange, since it was another Grinch special, and I assumed the character had only one of those.
I had seen a few minutes of the Grinch/Cat in the Hat crossover, so I knew there was more than one, but I didn’t know they had another holiday. Also, its baffling that the Grinch/Cat special won Emmys, it must have been a poor year for animation because that special sucks ass. Its only worth watching if for some reason you needed an example of how important Chuck Jones’ direction was in making the original great.
Eh, I think it’s pretty good personally. At least I enjoy how bizarre it actually gets.
I’ll admit I gave up after a few minutes because I thought it was ugly and boring, so I don’t know how weird it gets.
The animation is not very good, and it’s very limited, but there are some creative sequences, like The Cat and The Grinch basically feuding with each other. It could be a lot better, but there are aspects of it I admire.
The Halloween one gets a pass from me just for “I need to go to the euphemism,” a line that helped me fall for an ex of mine when she quoted it when excusing herself to go to the bathroom, because I was sure nobody else had seen/remembered the thing.
That’s a great line. That is definitely the kind of thing that would have stuck in my mind and become part of my vocabulary as a kid.
It’s on my Blu ray copy I bought so my toddler could watch the special. I had seen it before. But it’s not bad. It’s not nearly as good as Christmas, but it’s a solid holiday special. You can definitely tell the 60s are over and we’re now in the 1970s.
I don’t know if I saw How the Grinch Stole Christmas when it first aired in1966 – I was just short of three years old at the time – but it’s a part of every Christmas I can remember as a kid. I have the soundtrack – which has the entire show (with extra verses for some of the songs that were cut for TV), along with just the songs. I’ve listened to it so much over the years, and know the TV version so well, that when I began reading Grinch to my son when he was very young, I realised I was basically doing it as Boris Karloff.It – along with Rudolph, Charlie Brown Christmas, and Frosty the Snowman – is practically perfect in every way.
*gets off @avclub-d7fb64ed0ec4132d35ff565f432ad3cf:disqus’s lawn*
You can go ahead and get off mine too, while you’re at it – I would have been 5.
I could do without Frosty on that list and replace with “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town.” Just for Burgermeister Meisterburger alone. Almost as good a name as Thurl Ravesncroft.
“Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” has shown up on TV a few times this year, and I’m inevitably disappointed to realize that the one I’m thinking of when switching to it is actually “The Year Without a Santa Claus,” and there’ll be no Heatmiser/Coldmiser song for me today.
Just re-watched Frosty last night for the first time in years so my daughter could see it. I never realized how terrible it was. The stop-motion Rankin and Bass specials have a lot of charm and intentional weirdness. But the (traditional) animation in Frosty is cheap garbage. And the story’s just dumb and terrlble. My daughter loved it because the concept of a snowman is very exciting to her though.
The animation in Frosty never quite landed with me, either, which was a shame since I always loved the stop-motion specials (and I think the stop-motion itself, and the character design, added to the time-capsule feeling I loved from the stop-motion specials).Plus the traffic cop swallowing his whistle always bothered me. I had one of those tiny four-note harmonicas when I was a kid and one of my parents told me to be careful I didn’t swallow it, and I thought of that poor cop and his whistle and it would give young me just a little touch of fear.
I guess I have a soft spot for it because I literally grew up with it; I was five when it first aired in 1969, and I remember one year shortly after that when we were watching it as a family (yes, families used to do that kind of thing), when Karen said she’d go with Frosty and then added ‘But I have to be home for dinner,’ my mom looked at me and said ‘That’s exactly what you’d say.’Plus Billy de Wolfe as Professor Hinkle is wonderful. ‘Naughty, naughty, naughty!’
The animation may be poor, but the art it’s built upon is by Paul Coker Jr., longtime MAD Magazine great.
As good as Chuck Jones is, I really liked the Dr. Seuss cartoons done by DePatie-Freleng. The Cat in the Hat, The Lorax and Green Eggs and Ham were directed by Hawley Pratt, who did the Pink Panther shorts and was an animator for Friz Freleng’s WB cartoons.
The Lorax gets major points for noting that there’s no simple answer to the problem, as closing the factory would mean putting a ton of people out of work.
The Grinch has two moments of terror for me. The first is obviously his wonderful, awful idea face. I await that moment each year with excitement and horror.The second terror is the “Roast Beast.” The joy of the final scene was always for me tempered by the sight of a dead animal! The Whos seemed like gentle little beings who lived on marshmallows and gingerbread and who would never think of hurting another living creature. But yet there is blood in the fresh snow of Whoville! To this day that dead “Beast” disturbs me, even as a turkey cooks in my own oven.(And the scene is just that much more unsettling in that the creature killed by the Whos is called only a “Beast.” There is something unholy about slaughtering a “Beast” at Winter Solstice!)
To this day roast beef is referred to in our house as “roast beast.”
Same. and then when we go to Arby’s…
https://frinkiac.com/meme/S…
“I’m so hungry, I could eat at Arby’s.”
The A.V. ClubI’m so hungry, I could eat at Arby’s
Our house, too. Although whatever the Grinch is carving is clearly some type of fowl, not cow.
Yup. Ours too.
Oh man, the part that always gets me is when he gets stuck in the chimney. Just the way his body starts to get ahead of his feet and he gets all bunched up…. I still gotta leave the room when I know that bit is coming
I shudder a bit every time it happens.
Who are you, Morrissey?
This Charming Max
If you watch the show carefully, you’ll find that there is one fewer Who in the final scene than is present at the opening. True story.
Completely forgot about the existence of The Grinch Grinches The Cat In the Hat—when I was a kid I remember seeing a screening of it somewhere and being obsessed with the idea that the characters from the books could cross over the way they did. I would’ve been really young too like maybe 5? That’s funny given how prominent a shared cinematic universe has become but its something I hadn’t thought of in a long, long time, but your mentioning of it brings me back to when I first saw it, and my reaction to it at the time. A Dr. Seuss-I-verse.(I wonder where Seussical The Musical would fall into the Dr. Seuss scale)
Yeah, the crossover wrinkled my brain. I assumed that the Grinch lived on Horton’s dust speck along with the Whos, so it was fucked up to think that the Cat, along with those human kids, their mother and the fish must therefore also live on the dust speck. Worlds within worlds.
A LOT of acid was dropped that day
TRUE SHOWBIZ TALES #28: Pittsburgh has a wonderful multi-hyphenate performer called Tim Hartman- he’s actually a semi-recognizable movie character actor because so many movies shoot in Pittsburgh and need a very tall, silver-haired man with a deep voice. He does a lot of theatre, and is famous/infamous for loving to improvise and riff on the script.I personally can’t stand Seussical much, but when he played the Cat, he threw out much of the Cat’s dialogue and rhyming couplets bridging songs, and went into extended, anarchic comedy routines. (Before the Jojo’s Bath/McElligot’s Pool scene, he performed a five-minute riff on the recent NBC Live “The Sound of Music,” and the audience was in stitches.)The one thing I remember the most is that after Jojo seemingly dies in the war and the Cat reveals that he isn’t dead at all, Hartman broke character completely and ranted about that plotline. “What the heck is this? There’s no violence in Dr. Seuss! It’s not One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Dead Fish!”While his ad libs and liberties with the script may have been technically verboten, the original plan for the show was to have a “clown” in the role of Cat in the Hat and allowed to improvise and play, which was dropped by the time the show made it to Broadway. So I like to think he was honoring Eric Idle’s initial conception of the show.
“(I wonder where Seussical The Musical would fall into the Dr. Seuss scale)”Probably somewhere near the end, considering that special was made decades after the Dr. had died.
I have memories of liking the Halloween special because it was the Grinch before he reformed. Not sure why I liked that, though.
Yea, verily doth Grinch perform the miracle of feeding the multitudes with endless slices of roast beast.
The Grinch told the crowd to sit at the long crooked table. And then he took the roast beast, and when he had given thanks,
he carved it and gave them to the Whos. They all ate and were satisfied. The number of those who ate was four thousand men, besides women and children.
Man that “Euchariah Euchariah Euchariah!” song from Halloween is Grinch Night scared the fuck out of me when I was a kid. I got a weird chill when I heard it just now.
The day after the Halloween special aired, I remember all the kids in school were singing the Euchariah song… “Grinch is gonna getcha!”
NIT-ZEN-DIFF-AH-LAH! YAH!
They offered me ‘The Grinch’ but I turned it down.”
“Uh . . . What, Bela?”
“They offered me ‘The Grinch’ but I turned it down”
“Uh . . . Bela, we got a lot of Work to do . . . “
“That limey bastard is not talented enough to smell my shit”
The greatest line by Bela Lugosi never uttered by Bela Lugosi.
Let’s shoot this fucker!
Perfect!
I haven’t watched that movie in at least a year. I’ll have to remedy that.
Thurl Ravencroft is a badass name.
I bet he can shred
It’s Grrrrrreeaaaatt!
I really like Chuck Jones’s cartoon. But even though the interval with the sled slipping toward the abyss filled out the time, I feel it wasn’t a purely good invention. In the book, the realization of the True Spirit of Christmas directly precedes the Grinch’s heart growing three sizes, and cause and effect are closer together. And ever since then, creators of children’s entertainment seem to have felt compelled to put the last minute dilemma into their plots, weakening them.
persistent bugger, isn’t he?
Over the years, it’s become part of the Moleman family Christmas tradition to set the DVR to record “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”, gather around the TV, and then realize we accidentally recorded the goddamn Jim Carrey version.
“The expert Karloff managed to mix both disdain for the main character even as he brought his voice to life.”
Did we lose a few words there somewhere along the way?
Probably some punctuation.
he was *very* good at Karloff
Lugosi was great as Karloff’s sidekick.
SIDEKICK?!?!?!?!
fixed, thank you!
Even if the live action film’s attempt to recreate “Who” faces on its characters wasn’t horrifying to behold, the complete upending of the original premise would still be there. The Whos don’t know the true meaning of Christmas either? I’m not always completely against an adaptation of something adding more story to reach feature length. But not when that material completely changes the entire point of the original!
Even better were the big box movie tie-in ads that subverted the whole message. There was one (Target?) that literally used the “Maybe Christmas doesn’t come from a store” line, then >record scratch< "BUT JUST IN CASE, HURRY OUT TO OUR BLACK FRIDAY SALE!"That may even outdo Charlie Brown Christmas trinkets.
That’s up there with the movie version of The Lorax (the book version of which had a pretty strong anti-air pollution message) being sponsored by some car, which was referred to as “truffula-approved” in its ads.
It seems like a perverse exercise in nihilism. “The Grinch is evil because of the Whos’ cruelty, and his only path to redemption is by inflicting cruelty on them.” Like the first two acts of a Peckinpah movie with songs and a happy ending grafted on.
The Grinch and Horton must exist in the same ‘Who world’. Which means that the Grinch is microscopic, which blew my mind when I realized it. (I’ve spent countless hours reading the Grinch and Horton Hears a Who to my kids.)
I never considered the “Dr. Seuss shared universe” to be that canonical from story to story.
The live action Grinch places Whoville inside of a snowflake.Which always gave the whole thing this weird undercurrent of existential dread in my mind. Like, I sure hope time is accelerated in there too.
To keep on down this path, Horton must exist in the Grinch’s future, as we see no Who scientists with the technology to detect their world’s destruction, or to contact the “macroworld.”
You don’t realize until a little later in life just how much of “How The Grinch…” is filled with padding to get to the 30 minute mark. But Jones is such a masterful director that it’s okay.All the classic 1960s animated specials could run about 10 minutes or so shorter by removing unnecessary songs or comedy bits and it wouldn’t hurt the story in the least.
No amount of Chuck Jones’ physical comedy can be construed as “padding”.
“Safety Last!” would have been a much tighter narrative if it weren’t padded with all that footage of Harold Lloyd hanging from stuff.
Amazing that it didn’t premiere until 12/18 in 1966. By now, it’s probably been shown at least a dozen times on various channels.
Incidentally, if you haven’t seen it in a couple of years, be sure to track it down. They did a full restoration last year and it looks absolutely spectacular. Clean and vibrant.
Two things:a) That brief bit in the special where the Grinch whistles for Max and he jumps in the sleigh like, ‘Oh, boy! We’re going for a ride!’ and it cuts back to the Grinch with that deadpan look will never not be funny.b) Hot take – though they all pale in comparison to the original specials and books, I like the live-action adaptations of Grinch and Cat far more than the CGI animated movies of Horton Hears a Who and The Lorax.
That IS a hot take: I really liked Horton for the voicework of Will Arnett and Carol Burnett, especially. For the Lorax, like you said, I’m pretty sure the book surpasses the movie.
I liked Horton Hears a Who but haven’t heard a good word about The Lorax.
I have loved the Lorax (book) since birth. But I have also loved Zac Efron since 2006 and I am so sad about this movie being awful.
Upvoted for a) not b).
Thurl Ravenscroft…great name? Or greatest name?
It’s no Throatwobbler Mangrove.
The 2016 Name of the Year winner was Pope McCorkle III.
Just a little correction on Karloff’s radio career. He only appeared on “Suspense” twice. He was far more important to “Inner Sanctum Mysteries,” and was that New York-based show’s guest star of choice when he was doing “Arsenic and Old Lace” on Broadway. Karloff appeared over a dozen times on “Inner Sanctum.” Sadly, most of those Karloff shows no longer exist.
Raverscroft is also one of the singing tombstones in the Haunted Mansion ride. And he sang “No Dogs Allowed” whenever Snoopy read those words in one of the Peanuts specials.
http://allthingsthurl.com/m…
I unabashedly love the 2000 movie and I will let everyone know that it is the best.
You are everything that is wrong with America.
Well, besides the racism, and the greed, and the war mongering, and the stupid idiotic doomsday religions, and the right wing militia movement, and the state of Indiana, and the nostalgia for terrible television shows like Saved by the Bell, and perhaps Madonna too. She is literally the worst. Oh, and that creepy Peter Thiel. He is a vampire.
My heart is always warmed by the lack of racism everywhere else in the world.
Next time you have vacation, why not try Mauritania?
Shut up. I am Native American and I want you to say this to my face!!!
But American ideals include the concept of ‘All Men are Created Equal’ which other countries don’t.So racism is unAmerican – it’s not unFrench or unSomalian.
I think it goes against the principles of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. Take that, commenter from 5 years ago.
I do have a soft spot for it (certainly compared to most people), but it is emphatically not the best.
I enjoy mostly it out of nostalgia myself, but I recognize it’s not great.
The Halloween special scared the hell out of me as a kid. The cheap animation does it no favors in retrospect, but the build up for the Grinch’s arrival is suitably creepy and the fact that he just happens to have a carriage full of abstract horrors always upset me.If you were to ask me which of these I would attempt remaking, it’s definitely that one.
Illumination (Horton hears a who) is doing The Grinch next.
Only the original for Mrs. Funkhouser and me. The rest Stink,Stank, Stunk.
I decided to show my 4-year-old daughter this classic yesterday for the first time, even though I haven’t seen it in years. I had no idea until reading this article that yesterday was the exact 50-year anniversary of this special, a coincidence I’m sure Seuss himself would love. As for my daughter’s verdict of the actual show: “That Grinch was mean, but he saved the day in the end.” Yes, he did.
Classic family memory: my son in potty training, plucking individual sheet of paper off the roll like poinsettia petals and singing “Stink….stank…stunk!”
Two people who definitely made the world a better place: Theodor S. Geisel and Charles M. Jones.
Couldn’t agree more
My daughter went through a phase in which she absolutely loved “The Cat In the Hat” movie, so it was on a lot. If you forget that it’s supposed to be an adaptation of “The Cat in the Hat”, it has some funny bits (Employees Must Wash Hands Constantly). There is plenty of it that is really not particularly appropriate for kids, which I always found kind of strange. Same thing with the Jim Carrey Grinch movie (key parties? really?). Who were they targeting these movies to?
Children are the biggest swingers out there!
They love to fuck around.
It’s the “fun for adults and children” model where they exploit children’s naive tolerance for insipid garbage and then lob some double entendres (or single-entendres) over the kids’ heads so their parents can chuckle because they know more than their kids.As opposed to the “fun for adults and children” model where you try to tell a simple story in a visually interesting way and trust that children and adults will engage with it in different, meaningful ways.
Seussian works are difficult to adapt to film and television. They just don’t have sufficient length to support 30 or, god forbid, 90 minutes.Here’s some trivia for ya: Karloff won a Grammy for Grinch. It would be the only award he ever won for creative pursuits.
I really like that MGM-era Chuck Jones animated style. You can see it in his Tom and Jerry shorts, as well as in the Phantom Tollbooth and The Bear That Wasn’t There. Of course, his best MGM-era animated special (outside of the Grinch) has to be the Dot and the Line. No argument.
For me it’s Tex Avery-that guy was a motherfucking genius
Pity Tex never got a feature-length production.
It can be both!
Things my generation need to stop pretending are good just because they grew up with them: bands like Fall Out Boy, Pokemon, and the Jim Carrey Grinch Who Stole Christmas.
You must be between 20 and 25 years old? I’m a few years older, so my list is just Saved by the Bell and Full House, over and over, in increasingly erratic handwriting.
You know, I hated both of those shows, but darned if I haven’t seen every episode at least twice. How’d they do that?
Get off my lawn!
Ooh, can we put Space Jam on there too?
Ugh, Space Jam. I can’t believe nostalgia for a 90-minute show commercial with no good jokes, a terrible lead performance, and a fuckdoll rabbit.Only good thing about that movie is that it’s canon with Barkley: Shut up and Jam Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley Saga.
Pokemon the game(s) is still good. The anime got old pretty fast. I’d also add the Star Wars prequels to thing that aren’t good. Like, it’s fine to enjoy but it’s not some deep epic.
I’d love for another adaptation of “The Sneetches,” which is such a nice allegory for crass consumerism and the way people have to one up one another through fashion and spending in order to feel superior.
There are a handful of jokes in the Ron Howard Grinch film that I absolutely adore.The best gag come during the festival, when the Grinch is judging the pudding contest. Everyone’s shoving pudding into his mouth and a “mad scientist” type who shoves a glowing green substance in his mouth while saying, “This is not pudding.”
I never liked the Grinch cartoon. I always felt so sorry for Max.
Thurl Ravenscroft is the most made-up name that is not made up. God bless that guy. He should have been a mega star with that voice and that name. Everybody should name their D and D character after him.
Just think… someone was holding a newborn baby and thought, “This one looks like a Thurl.”
I like The 5000 Fingers of Doctor T!
The 1966 Grinch is just so goddamn good – I always lose it when he snakes through the room, and of course that slow smile.
I love that look he gives when he’s bemused about his goofy dog. As he looks at the camera, the peak of his cap flops. Just so funny.
Chuck Jones was a master of comedic timing.
AVClub where’s my in-depth look at The Hoober-Bloob Highway and Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You?
Best thing I’ve ever seen during Christmas. I was at my mom’s stepdaughter’s house for Christmas one year, and the stepdaughter is fairly materialistic and has the kind of kids you can imagine. Anyway, we were watching the Grinch and when we got to the scene in which the Whos wake up without any presents, her kid wailed at the TV:”WHY?! Why are the singing?! The Grinch RUINED Christmas! They don’t have any presents!”
Mmmm… must be pretty materialistic if you couldn’t call her your “step-sister”.
My mom married her husband when I was 25. Our families have never really bonded, as we didn’t ever live under the same roof. Or the same city, for that matter.
My 6 year old daughter did a glee presentation of the “You’re A Mean One”, and it was pretty goddamn adorable.
Psh, you’re just saying that because she’s your daughter! You won’t know if she was really adorable until a bunch of strangers on the internet tell you so.
I just woke her up and apologized for lying to her, that daddy’s description of her performance being “awesome and adorable” were completely subjective, and I couldn’t, in good conscious, allow her to continue living life under the mistake belief that my review was to be taken seriously. I informed her that my views and opinions on the performance have been clouded by the fog of nepotism and the desire to be a supportive and loving father, and that if I was truly a loving and supportive father, I’d be as objective as possible…with that, I gave her a scathing, brutal review, suggesting that perhaps her and her co-stars could perhaps be served by actually taking the material seriously, instead of shamelessly relying on their diminutive frames and crappy “props” to distract from the fact that they obviously didn’t bother to learn the choreography well enough; that the cast was-by and large-quite unattractive (several of the girls were missing teeth, for Christ’s sake!); and that-in what was probably the biggest misstep-allowing my daughter to have any sort of spotlight in the song was a colossal mistake, as her shrill über-soprano and lisp couldn’t be in more stark-and awful-contrast to the original.
She cried, but I assured her that what I was doing was for the best. Thank you, I appreciate you taking the time to provide another angle with which to view my daughter’s admittedly awful performance 🙂
Well geez, you could’ve just submitted a video of it to A.A. Dowd!
What’s weird is that she’s 20 now, lives at college, and really wondered what was going on…
I always thought that the Jim Carrey Grinch movie is one the ugliest big budget movies I have ever seen. There is a weird foggy haze to the visuals and Howard, who was never more then visually pedistrian, uses dutch angles in almost every shot. At the very least the live action movie needed someone who could produce stunning visuals.
Cat in the hat is uglier.
I would have loved to see a Grinch adaptation directed by late eighties-early nineties Tim Burton.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas is the only Christmas special I will watch. And I have often been referred to as a grinch at Christmas, which I take as a compliment.
I’ve never even heard of the two animated Grinch sequels, and have even less desire to see them then I have for the live-action version. How the Grinch Stole Christmas is hands-down the best holiday mainstay, and it stands perfectly, beautifully, untouchably all on its own.
Don’t discount the Halloween one. It has nothing to do with the holiday at all and is just a very seussical parable about facing your fears with a trippy scary sequence that is fantastic.
I saw the newer animated ones, but thanks to lockdown and the fact that my fiancee had never seen the original(?!?!?!?), we watched the newer ones available on Netflix and Amazon. Then she saw the original and noted it was MUCH better.
Just watched the first couple minutes of the Grinch/Cat mashup (might stream it for the kiddo later, didn’t seem terrible) and I swear it’s narrated by the “with a name like Smucker’s it has to be good” guy.
“The expert Karloff managed to convey undeniable disdain for the main character even as he brought his voice to life.”To this day, I think of the disdain in his voice when he says “the old liar” whenever I encounter someone that I know is lying.
I refuse to acknowledge a world that exists with these two Mike Myers movies as well as the Godfather III. I like it better that way.
This has always been my favorite Christmas movie. I’ve seen it every year since I was 6 and it never fails to make me burst into tears. As Gwen put it, it is a perfect story of redemption. And a great lesson for the end of the year; we can all make amends for the things we’ve done wrong, the people we’ve hurt. As long as we’re breathing, there’s hope.
Well put. I always watch this and Charlie Brown.
It has that Chuck Jones animated magic that makes it so enjoyable too.
“It’s a great night for eyebrows. . .”
“Get the paraphernalia wagon”
How great is “You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch?” It’s so scathing and proper at the same time. Like the song is about to challenge the Grinch to a duel.
Thurl Ravenscroft, basso profundo! Whose voice in this song I try (in vain) to imitate every December when we get out the Grinch CD… and now my kids are trying it, too.
He’s Grrrrreat!
There is something about basso profundo that I find really fascinating (and why James Earl Jones was perfect for Darth Vader’s voice), that the human voice can go to such depths. The Russian Oktavist Choir has been historically known for the vocal depths of its singers, with notable oktavist Mikhail Zlatopolsky’s range going as deep as E♭1.
Yeah, music brings out the geek in me.
Best Insult Song Ever
Is “Thurl Ravenscroft” the most badass name ever, especially when paired with that voice? Just might be.He also sang the goblin/orc songs in the animated Hobbit and Return of The King, and those songs are by far my favorite part of both. (Google “Down to Goblintown” and “Where There’s A Whip”)
” Henry Gibson (portrayer of the Illinois Nazi leader from The Blues Brothers)” and, goddamnit (aside from Laugh-In) he played Dr. Verringer in The Long Goodbye, and convincingly slapped the towering Sterling Hayden into submission. Sterling goddamn Hayden.
Henry Gibson was a badass.
I never saw The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat because it fucks with my worldview: The Grinch, as we know from Horton Hears a Who, lives on a dust speck with the rest of the Whos. The Cat, and Sally and her brother and their fish and their mother’s leg, are in the regular-sized world.
Aren’t they????! Or were Pym particles involved?
Or are they in that goddamn Westphal snow globe?
Easy. The Cat is sort of a magical trickster being, so he should have no trouble traversing between the Whoville World and the regular-sized world. Case closed!
A wizard did it.
The only thing I remember about the live action Grinch is that back then, at the dawn of DVDs, the three DVDs my parents owned were that, “Dude, Where’s My Car?” and “Cast Away”. I think later they got “American Pie 2”. I remember nothing about the actual movie though.
I clearly remember the Mayor of Whoville kissing a dog’s ass.
Now this I’ve GOTTA see!
The Grinch is a classic but The Hoober-Bloob Highway is an even better Seuss special.
Best thing about the Grinch Grinches is that the worse animation style makes the Grinch fit right into Bob’s Burgers.
It’s a wonderful night for eyebrows!
There’s a Channel 2?
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I remember him most as Kirby The Vacuum cleaner in The Brave Little Toaster.
Who made the later Grinch specials? I know there were a bunch of Dr. Seuss specials made the former WB director Friz Freleng in the 70’s. Did they come from that studio?
I don’t know if the original Grinch is a ‘masterpiece’, but after rewatching it with my four year old there’s no denying that it has the following elements going for it:
– Boris Karloff
– Chuck Jones
– The song
– The 26 minute running time
I didn’t hate the 2000 version, but I was 13 and loved Jim Carrey. I’ve avoided it since
Ron Howard infamously whined about not getting an erection when he was auditioning actresses for “Splash.” Dude’s a creep from way back, so I should not have been as shocked as I was sitting in a movie theater in Lima, Peru, watching the Spanish language version, when up pops a looooong key party scene. Who the fuck puts a key party in a Grinch movie? Ron fucking Howard, obvs. I guess that was cut in the US release, but there it was for all of these Peruvian moms to try to explain to their kids. It was heinous.
Every year I buy a “Grump” tree at Trader Joe’s (every year it dies, but that’s a story for another day). First time I saw it, Iimmediately thought of the original Grinch cartoon. But then when watching the cartoon, I barely see the tree in that form. So WTF is my memory doing to me????
The original is excellent both in story (top tier Dr. Suess), music (not just the main toon, but the incidental music and the Who’s song), and animation.The Jim Carry live-action is excessive and excrement. Nothing more needs to be said.I’m quite fond of the Benedict Cumberbatch CGI version of a few years. Part of it is because I watched it with my enthralled child. But it also has a lot of heart, some catch tunes, and it provides some more character for the Grinch. It’s not Pixar level good, but it’s sweet and watchable.
They’re not going to stop until there are 10 sequels…plus two!
5000 Fingers of Dr. T has already been defended, but the original UPA Gerald McBoing Boing short was an award winning, maybe even in its way groundbreaking short, that helped put UPA on the map. Hardly something to dismiss. (The Warner Bros Merrie Melody 1942 short of Horton Hatches the Egg, from Bob Clampett is pretty good too, though filled with tonally wrong WB humour including a suicide joke)
I kinda love the Grinch Halloween special and wish it was still regularly shown…
I didn’t see The 2000 Grinch until roughly 10 years later, when we were going to watch it with the kids. Luckily, they were pre-school and toddler so we gave it the obligatory pre-watch (and chose something else).I have never hated a movie more that that one. The gag where they make you realize The Whos are having a key party makes my skin crawl just thinking about it to this day. The rest wasn’t much better, especially any scene involving the, you know, Grinch. Drek.
The first and best Grinch film is the shortest one, and that is not a coincidence. The story is a fable, and in a fable, the motivations and backstories of the characters not only don’t matter, they’re active hinderances.
We don’t need to know the name of the town that the Boy Who Cried Wolf lived in, or what drove him to need attention so badly, or the history of wolf attacks that has plagued the town, including the tragic loss of the Boy’s Father’s oldest son, the Boy’s brother, to a wolf attack, which is why he’s so willing to belive the cry of “Wolf!” every time. And we don’t need to know a damn thing about the Whos or the Grinch other than that they love Christmas a lot, and he does not.
It took major balls to attempt that movie, but major-major balls to make it about the distastefulness of crassly marketing Christmas.
Nice repeat/update of a five-year-old article.The old comments tipped me off.Anywho, you missed “One Froggy Evening” with Michigan J Frog as one of Jones’ best cartoons ever. I probably noted this five years ago, though.
Since we clearly saw his heel/face turn in Stoles Christmas, that means that everything else where the Grinch is a baddie is a prequel, and everyone knows that prequels suck.
Cumberbatch’s Grinch movie is a pretty pleasant watch and manages to nail the tone and spirit of the book. It’s not spectacular, but it’s not horrible. A typical Illumination-Grade movie.
The Halloween special wasn’t great, but on a recent rewatching, I had to cackle at the little running gag, “I have to use the euphemism.” Yeah, it’s a toilet joke, but I just adore the use of the word euphemism as a euphemism.
One unsung artist in all of this Grinch celebration and re-evaluation: Albert Hague, the composer of the 1966 “Grinch” songs. He wasn’t a genius like Dr. Seuss, Chuck Jones, and Boris Karloff—he pretty much peaked as a second-tier Broadway composer before being tapped for this gig. But you wouldn’t be singing along with “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” without Hague’s music leading us through the labyrinthine insults. Plus he gave life to Shorofsky in the movie and TV versions of “Fame.” The guy spent his time on this planet well.
it’s amazing how much the Grinch appears to be not much more than an actual horror story until the final five minutes I wonder how much of that comes from the character being voiced, and the narration read, by Boris Karloff. By then, the lilting menace of his voice had been scaring (and delighting) us for decades — he’d aged into Uncle Boris, alternately frightening and kindly as he told us scary stories.I keep going back to this bit from Targets, which you have to know Bogdanovich tossed in just because he could….P.S.: Somebody, please! Get me out of The Greys….
Man, you go down the list and Ron Howard has a lot of box office bombs to his “credit”. He even made a Star Wars universe flick bomb–that takes “talent”.
The newer two movies are fine when you take them for what they are. I don’t necessarily feel the live action one holds up, but I also look at it as a Jim Carrey film and not necessarily a faithful adaptation. It’s got plenty of entertainment value and typical Carrey over the top cringe, but its fine. I don’t believe you would ever make that movie again in this day and age. The animated one works in the logic of what other kids type of movies are nowadays. I doubt my kids would sit through the original, which whatever. Inb4 the generational hot takes and all that.