Last night I caught a part of “Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol,” originally aired on television in 1962. It was the first-ever animated holiday program produced specifically for television – didn’t like it then and, unlike cheese or wine, it didn’t improve with age.
Not that I don’t like Mister Magoo. In fact, he has a special place in my heart. It’s just that I like him for himself – the near-sighted, mumbling old curmudgeon that I looked forward to seeing in the “Short Subjects” at the movies when I was a kid. I can’t imagine why anyone thought that he should play Scrooge! And in a musical? YIKES! I think Dickens would be appalled.
Quincy Magoo (who knew? I always thought his first name was Mister) was created in 1949 by a group of animators that included Hungarian-born artist Jules Engel. Years later, by the time my son attended California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Jules was Founding Director of CalArts’ Program in Experimental Animation, widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost centers for animation arts.
More importantly, of course, (in my mind, anyway) was the fact that Jules was Charlie’s mentor for those important college years. Perhaps it was the thick glasses or his small stature or his rather vague professorial aura, but I thought of him fondly as ‘Mister Magoo’ and had to remember not to address him accordingly on the occasions that we met.
During the years that Charlie worked on (and won Emmys for) “Pinky and the Brain,” I sometimes thought of Jules and Mister Magoo. By then, Charlie was a writer, not an animator, for Saturday morning cartoons, but even so… isn’t there a little resemblance between Brain and Mister Magoo? Or is it only me?
In any case, I’m pretty sure that Quincy Magoo’s connection to Brain is a lot more direct than his connection to Ebenezer Scrooge. If only Jules Engel were still around. I’d be interested in his thoughts on the subject.
I first saw this as a small child. I did not yet know about Dickens, barely knew that Magoo was a well-known cartoon character, but the story-within-a-story thrilled me. I loved that we were watching ‘a play’, and the three apparitions left me thinking far after the show was over. Even the song “I’m so alone in the world” touched my heart then. I was too young to notice the graphics were cheesy, the spirit of Christmas to come was a pretty scary thing, as was the view of Scrooge’s gravestone. Years later, I still look forward to the Dickens novels I haven’t yet read (thank goodness he was a prolific writer!). Perhaps it was Magoo that led me to reading Dickens. At any rate, the child within this adult still has affectionate feelings for the show. Probably a boomer thing.
Good to know! Thanks for sharing that much more charitable (than mine) viewpoint!