Millard Kaufman, 1917 - 2009

Phil Nugent — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Millard Kaufman, who died on Saturday at the age of 92, was a veteran screenwriter with a wide-ranging career that had a few notable highs. A graduate of John Hopkins University, Kaufman served as a marine in the Pacific during World War II. Upon his return to the States, he moved to California and broke in as a writer for UPA cartoons. He first made history as the co-creator, with director John Hubley and actor Jim Backus, of the near-sighted perambulator and Stag Beer pitchman Mr. Magoo. The character first appeared in Kaufman's script for the 1949 short Ragtime Bear; according to that distinguished on-line journal of film studies Wikipedia, "Columbia was reluctant to release the short, but did so, only because it included a bear." On this point, I refer you back to the film's title. (Apparently bears were big box office in those days.) Despite Harry Cohn's ursine fetish, Magoo turned out to be the chief audience attraction, and the blind sumbitch would become UPA's most enduring star character. A year later, Kaufman would officially break into live-action features as the credited author of the cult noir classic Gun Crazy, though in fact, he was fronting for the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo. On his own, Kaufman racked up two Academy Award nominations for writing Richard Brooks's Take the High Ground! (1953), starring Richard Widmark as a drill instructor, and John Sturges's Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), a taut melodrama notable for its muckraking focus on racist mistreatment of Asian-Americans during World War II.

Kaufman also wrote and produced Raintree County (1957) and directed the 1962 Convicts 4. In his later scripts, he returned to military themes again and again; his last credit was for the 1980 TV docudrama Enola Gay: The Men, the Mission, the Atomic Bomb. Two years ago, he made a surprise comeback when McSweeney's published his first novel, Bowl of Cherries, which he began working on when he as 86. His second novel, Misadventure, will be published posthumously. He is survived by his wife, Lorraine; they were married for 66 years.

The Screengrab's 12 Days of Christmas Marathon: "The Muppet Christmas Carol"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Alert readers may recall that, while I'm posting the reviews of the Screengrab's 12 Days of Christmas Marathon movies in dribs and drabs over the days leading up to Christmas, I actually watched them all in sequence over the space of two days in a bleary haze of rum-soaked egg nog and seasonal affective disorder. I had a highly formalized plan for which movie to watch in which particular order, but I drunkenly knocked over my stack of DVDs after the fifth movie, and then I just watched them in the order in which they fell on the living room floor. I was hoping that it would be late in the day by the time I had to get around to watching some variation of A Christmas Carol -- I find the irascible-old-bastard Scrooge largely preferable to the lover-of-all-humanity Scrooge -- but here's where it turned up, so you're going to have to read about it.

My own misanthropy aside, it's not surprising that Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas has become one of the most beloved holiday stories of all time. It's got a little bit of something for everyone: a sincere, adorable crippled boy, for treacle fans; a handful of truly memorable characters; abundant humor, some of it rather more mordant than one might expect; a creepy ghost story; and, best of all, a central plot that appeals to lovers of Christmas everywhere: a cranky old jerk who hates Christmas has, after a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards, a legendary change of heart and embraces the holiday in full, becoming the very embodiment of the spirit of giving and showering those poor souls he previously spurned with largesse.

Dickens write A Christmas Carol for the same reason he wrote a lot of his most famous work: for a paycheck. But it ended up having a much more vast impact on our entire culture than its author possibly imagined. One of the most widely-read stories of the English canon, its familiar story and infinitely flexible formal structure have led it to become one of the most widely-adapted stories as well. The number of stage plays, movies and very-special-episode television series based on the story are probably uncountable; as long as there is economic injustice, as long as there are lazy scriptwriters in love with the flashback gimmick; as long as there are cranky old jerks who, justfiably or not, aren't as into the holidays as the rest of us, there will continue to be new movie and TV versions of A Christmas Carol.

Just to mix things up a bit, I chose as my preferred adaptation this time around the 1992 felt-puppet version of Dickens' classic. Made just after Muppet maven Jim Henson died, it didn't do that well on its initial release, but gained something of a cult following on home video. There's plenty of inside jokes and a clever framing device of the story being narrated by Dickens himself (played by the Great Gonzo) and a comic foil in the form of Rizzo the Rat; the story is surprisingly faithful to the original; the casting of balcony naysayers Statler and Waldorf as Jacob Marley and -- ho, ho -- his brother Robert is inspired and leads to the movie's best musical number; and best of all, Michael Caine as Ebenezer Scrooge proves that, just as he can turn in a great performance in a bad movie, he can be intensely human and affecting while acting opposite a stuffed bag of felt.

You'd be forgiven, naturally, if you chose a different movie version of A Christmas Carol as your favorite; there's enough good ones to make a 12 days of Christmas marathon of nothing but this particular story. The 'canonical' version is probably the 1951 British adaptation Scrooge, carried on the strength of an unforgettable lead performance by the wonderful Alastair Sim, but there's also the 1970 Albert Finney version, a 1935 adptation starring Leo G. Carroll, the George C. Scott-as-Scrooge TV movie from 1984, a 1999 television adaptation with slices of thick British ham from Patrick Stewart, Joel Grey and Richard E. Grant, Henry Winkler's An American Christmas Carol, Bill Murray's post-ironic 1988 adaptation Scrooged, and animated versions starring Mr. Magoo, the Flintstones, and a bunch of talking dogs that all have their fans.

12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS RATING: An enjoyable 9 Muppet ladies dancing. This isn't the best Muppet movie, but it isn't the worst, and its relentless charm is hard to resist. Henson's son Brian and Steve Whitmore do a solid if uninspired job of carrying on the Muppet tradition, and there's the usual blend of kid-friendly shenanigans and clever jokes and references for the grown-ups. Caine's performance as Scrooge, though, is what really steals the show.

The Screengrab's 12 Days of Christmas Marathon: The Star Wars Holiday Special

The Screengrab : mr. magoo

Millard Kaufman, 1917 - 2009

The Screengrab's 12 Days of Christmas Marathon: "The Muppet Christmas Carol"