George Burns presents CHRISTMAS CAROL II: THE SEQUEL!

AMC has been doing multiple broadcasts of A Christmas Carol, the 1984 television movie adaptation with George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge, for the past few nights. It's easily my favorite version of Charles Dickens' timeless potboiler (no really, he only wrote it to sell and pay some bills) although Patrick Stewart's one-man performance runs a very close second.

But have you ever wondered what happened after Scrooge changed his ways at the end of that story?

Well wonder no more! Back in 1985 there was a short-lived show called George Burns Comedy Week. It was a comedy anthology series hosted by Burns: sorta The Twilight Zone but all about the laughs. And just before that Christmas, Burns and company produced a follow-up to A Christmas Carol.

So without further ado, here is Roddy McDowall, Ed Begley Jr., Carolyn Seymour, Paul Benedict, and the one and only James Whitmore himself as Scrooge in... "Christmas Carol II: The Sequel"!

Part 1

Part 2

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First full dress rehearsal for OLIVER TWIST was tonight

And it went pretty good! It's downright amazing how quickly this show has come together. This evening, we got a first real glimpse at how all the hard work and effort is meshing together to convey Charles Dickens' timeless tale of the orphan Oliver Twist and his quest for his own identity. And just like what happened with Children of Eden a few months ago, there's quite a sense of not just friendship, but family among the cast and crew.

I should have some photos to tease y'all with come late tomorrow night. In the meantime, the show opens this coming Friday, December 5th at Rockingham Community College's Advanced Technologies Building Auditorium. Visit the Theatre Guild of Rockingham County's website for more information.

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AMC is running A CHRISTMAS CAROL right now

It's the one starring George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge. Many regard this as the finest version of A Christmas Carol ever filmed. I watched this the very first time it ran, waaaay back in December of 1984.

Okay, question: everyone, and I mean everyone, knows the story of A Christmas Carol. But how many people have actually read Charles Dickens's original novel? How many of you reading this can say that you've gone through the whole thing?

I did, toward the end of my first semester at Elon. While in the library one night looking for something else I came across it, and was surprised at how tiny it is as a novel: not very thick at all. I checked it out and spent the rest of the night reading it. Amazingly, there are things in the original book that to the best of my knowledge have yet to be depicted in any film adaptation.

Did you know that Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol pretty much out of desperation, because he had to publish something to pay off some bills? A Christmas Carol is probably the most classic example of the proverbial "potboiler" that's ever been written.

And for a final anecdote about A Christmas Carol, it might interest y'all to know that when I was 12 years old and in seventh grade, I played the role of Marley's Ghost in our middle school production of A Christmas Carol. Our first performance was one night for the parents and school board, and the following day it was two performances for the lower grades and then the rest of the middle school. The night and elementary performances went off great! But then for the middle school show I walked out in that ghastly makeup and teased-up hair (that the girls loved playing with for some reason) and all those chains... and everybody in the audience started laughing! And then, I started laughing along with them!! I was giggling so hard that I barely got through my lines at all! Who ever heard of Marley's Ghost laughing instead of moaning?? But it happened. Years later and I still chuckle at that :-)

Anyhoo, if you haven't seen it already, you might want to check the listings over the next few days and see if the 1984 version of A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott is playing on AMC again. They're also running 1985's Santa Claus: The Movie quite a lot this week!

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