A Larger Entertainment Package from the Past for the Holidays

by Bruce Chadwick

Bruce Chadwick lectures on history and film at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He also teaches writing at New Jersey City University. He holds his PhD from Rutgers and was a former editor for the New York Daily News. Mr. Chadwick can be reached at bchadwick@njcu.edu.

For decades, Frank Capra’s 1946 movie It’s A Wonderful Life, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s 1892 ballet Nutcracker, Charles Dickens’ mid-nineteenth century play A Christmas Carol, the tear jerker starring young tiny Tim and cranky old Ebenezer Scrooge, and the 1938 movie Miracle on 34th Street have dominated Christmas entertainment. There are dozens of productions of Dickens’ classic tale from coast to coast. Many, like those at Princeton’s McCarter Theater, have been staged for decades and not only draw the children of original viewers long ago, but their grandchildren. The Nutcracker has been a holiday favorite for 122 years. Miracle on 34th Street, the best ever tale about Santa Claus, has been on movie screens and television (in gorgeous old grainy black and white) since the 1950s.

It’s A Wonderful Life is not only aired on television a few times each December, usually close to Christmas Eve, but has become a radio play and staged all over the country. One of the most interesting uses of the film is at the Mahaiwe Theater, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where the grand old movie house presents it free to townspeople, who have made it a staple of their Christmas enjoyment.

Over the last decade or so, though, new movies and plays have premiered that have added to the consumers’ Christmas. Elf, the lovable story of the oversized elf from the North Pole who travels to New York to find his dad, became a favorite when it debuted as a film in 2003 and when it opened as a play on Broadway in 2013. The movie is aired often during the holidays. A Christmas Story (“you’ll shoot your eye out, kid”), based on Jean Shepherd’s story, became a stage favorite, too, as did the theater version of the film White Christmas.

This year, for no explainable reason, there are many more Christmas themed television movies, specials and plays for the holidays than ever before. Christmas is popping out all over, and all connected to the past. Among the theaters that will host A Christmas Carol are The Alley Theater, in Houston, the Alliance, in Atlanta, the American Conservatory Theater, in San Francisco, the Dallas Theater Center, the Guthrie, in Minneapolis, the Hartford (Conn.) Stage, Denver (Colo.) Center for the Performing Arts, Portland (Ore.) Center Stage and the Milwaukee Repertory Theater.

Other holiday plays: A Christmas Story, Nashville Rep, and Cleveland Playhouse, Fiddler on the Roof, Arena Stage, Washington, D.C., Wizard of Oz movie, at the Ulster County Performing Arts Center, Poughkeepsie, N.Y., it’s A Wonderful Life radio play, Sacramento, California, Theater, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, at the La Jolla (Calif.) Playhouse, South Pacific, Asolo Rep, in Sarasota (Fla.) and Westchester Broadway Theater, N.Y. (right after Christmas)

Watch out for falling mistletoe!

There seems to be more new Christmas stories than snowflakes. Last night, the stage version of Elf opened at the Paper Mill Playhouse, in Millburn, N.J (through January 4). after strong advance ticket sales. In December, New York’s Metropolitan Opera will stage the family themed Hansel and Gretel opera, again, as it tries to do every two years. The Westchester Broadway Theater will stage It Happened One Christmas Eve, the story of a baby left on a Brooklyn stoop in the 1940s on Christmas Eve (through December 28). White Christmas, the movie starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye was turned into a play from the movie several years ago. Many theaters actually stage a snowstorm at the end of the play, when the audience joins the actors in singing Christmas carols).

The Irish Repertory Theater in New York is even staging A Christmas Memory, a Truman Capote Christmas story,

One of the most unusual Christmas shows ever is at the Henry Street Settlement Theater in New York, that will offer Joey Arias: Christmas with the Crawfords, a show based on a Christmas Eve radio show Joan Crawford and her family did. From Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine, hundreds of theaters are hanging up Christmas decorations, putting up trees in their lobbies and getting their staffs ready to lead patrons in the singing of Christmas carols. Television will have people watching every holiday show from Charlie Brown’s to Peter Pan’s, The egg nog will flow and the chestnuts will roast on the open fire,

Mark Hoebee, the artistic director of the Paper Mill, home to Elf, thinks the holidays are a special season. “We decided to do Elf because it has a warm message for all audiences – love of family, Here’s this big lovable elf who goes into culture shock in New York City trying to find and bond with his dad. It is heart-warming. It has everything a family could want and Christmas is a time when families get together and love each other. Christmas plays are all special. We had great success for those same reasons with White Christmas a few years ago,” he said,

Hoebee also thinks that everybody remembers the long history of Elves, that goes back hundreds of years in folklore. “When I was a little kid I loved elves. I’m Irish, so we always had the connection to Leprechauns, too. Look around the country and you see tens of thousands of elves decorating peoples’ porches and living rooms. There are books out on elves, calendars. I have a lovable little elf on my bookshelf at home. Everybody loves elves and the musical Elf is a success wherever it plays.”

The same could be said of It Happened One Christmas Eve, that opens next week at the Westchester, N.Y., Broadway Theater, that produces a number of plays about history (they staged Titanic last spring). It Happened One Christmas Eve was written in the early 1980s by Barbara Campbell and Bob Fitzsimmons, who died tragically at 40.

“It is certainly true that many Americans love to see the Nutcracker and A Christmas Carol every holiday season, but it is also true that many Americans want to see different shows each Christmas. Here, we stage five or six different holiday shows each Christmas on a rotating basis. Our audiences enjoy the mixing of the shows,” said Lisa Tiso, producer at the Westchester Broadway Theater. “Christmas is different for shows. You need a family type show and you need an emotional show, a heartwarming show. That is the key. I think that today, too, you succeed with shows about the past and shows that explain how, over the years, America has changed because of all the people who have moved here.”

“It Happened…” composer Fitzsimmons wife, Lisa Meng, always thought it was a special Christmas story, too. “It has a solid plot that tells the story of orphans, adoption and the American dream. It has a number of Christmas carols in it. You get a story and you have a chance to listen to all the traditional songs. People want that. At Christmas, people need to be reminded, and want to be reminded, that friendship and family and love are the most important things in life, not how much money you have or where you live or what you do for a living.”

There are also far more films, made for television movies and television specials than ever on television thanks to the explosion of channels and the desire of television executives to air more holiday shows. There are more than 100 holiday movies on different channels. Many have already aired and it’s only Thanksgiving. Oddly enough, more Christmas movies aired before Thanksgiving then will air after it.

So, no matter where you live, as Tiny Tim with his crutches and little Ralphie with his Red Ryder rifle would say, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!