Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol

🎄 Of all the animated Christmas specials we have covered and will cover, this is the nearsighted granddaddy of them all. 

🎙 Anthony Caruso and Julia Colburn from Tis the Podcast visit the Advent Calendar House for a very special Scrooge Sunday episode as we nearly-blindly fumble back to 1962 to celebrate “Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol,” TV’s first ever animated Christmas special. 

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💬 Topics & Tangents: 

Jim Backus (Mister Magoo) based his portrayal of Thurston Howell III from “Gilligan’s Island” on another character he played on a radio show hosted by another famous future Scrooge, Alan Young. 

Scrooge’s nephew is cut entirely to make room for a song about Broadway that sometimes also gets cut entirely. 

The ghosts of Christmas Present and Past show up out of order for no clear reason, but an A.V. Club article from 2012 tried to find one. 

Tiny Tim is an English-speaking Gerald McBoing-Boing. 

This special invented a flavor! Razzleberry pie is now a thing that exists, made with raspberries and blackberries. 

The Ghost of Christmas Past looks like Toon Link. 

The last surviving member of the cast, Marie Matthews (Young Scrooge), was on a 2009 panel revisiting the special. 

Is Belle’s hair supposed to look like an actual bell? 

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“Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol” © 1962 UPA Pictures, Inc. 

Find us at adventcalendar.house.