But I'm confident that many of you don't know that much about how that special and the later Jim Carrey movie came to be. So let me take this time to make a Retrospective on Dr. Seuss and The Grinch.
1. The Rise of Seuss
Theodore Seuss Geisel started off his career as part of the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern magazine during college between 1921 and 1925. This was during Prohibition, so when he and 9 friends were caught drinking gin in his dorm room, he was banned from Dartmouth's extracurricular activities. To continue working on the magazine, he started using the pen name Dr. Seuss to hide his real identity.
After graduating from Dartmouth and later dropping out of Lincoln College Oxford, he published his first children's books. The first was 1937's And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, referring to a street on his childhood neighborhood in Springfield, Massachusetts.
During World War II, he started making liberal political cartoons against a wide variety of target views, including isolationism and discrimination. During that time, he also became part of the famed First Motion Picture Unit for the U.S. military, which included such members as Ronald Reagan, Frank Capra, and Clark Gable.
2. The Grinch is Written
Most of Dr. Seuss's most popular works were written during the '50s in his La Jolla, California house. The Grinch was one of them. Many of them had underlying themes to them, and in this case the town of Whoville seems to be portrayed as a satire of an increasingly commercialized Christmas. It's been said that Seuss quickly thought of The Grinch a few weeks before he was set to send a Christmas story to Random House. The story was published November 24, 1957 as a hardcover, and also appeared on the Redbook magazine at the time.
We Americans know the story by heart, but for everyone else, the Grinch is basically an angry green misfit of a creature (much like many Seuss characters) living in a cave atop the ominous Mt. Crumpit, which overlooks the obliviously happy town of Whoville. This is only one of many versions of Whoville that Seuss created for his many works, but in this case, it's pretty much a small town that gets very happy and decorative around Christmas. The Grinch had been hating the Whos in the town for 53 years (at least that's how long it was in the special) because of all the noise that would happen with the Who kids and their toys on Christmas day.
Ranting about it to his dog Max on Christmas Eve, he decides to prevent Christmas from coming to the Whos. When Max is accidentally made to look like Santa, the Grinch decides to dress like Santa Claus (with Max as his reindeer cohort) and take all Whoville's Christmas paraphernalia to accomplish his goal. During the ransack of the first house, he is almost caught by the 2-year-old Cindy Lou Who, but he is able to lie his way out.
After taking all the presents and decorations, the Grinch makes Max pull the load up on their sled to the top of Mt. Crumpit to dump it (hehe). But when morning comes, he finds that the Whos still happily celebrate Christmas even without their presents. After thinking about it, the Grinch has an epiphany that Christmas means more than what he thought. So he returns the decorations and presents to the welcoming Whos, who let him carve their roast beast for Christmas dinner.
The entire story of the book is written in rhymed verse, which is common for Dr. Seuss, and was immediately praised by readers and critics upon publishing in 1957.
3. A Televised Grinch
Chuck Jones, one of the most famous cartoon directors of the '50s and '60s, had known Seuss since they worked together on the adult-oriented Private Snafu comics during World War II. Afterwards, they went their separate ways for about 2 decades. During that time, Jones had worked with Warner Bros. on some Looney Tunes cartoons and with MGM on later Tom & Jerry shorts. While at MGM, he worked with Seuss once more on a half-hour TV special based on the aforementioned story. Jones was able to introduce his signature comic style to the characters and their actions, and MGM enlisted Boris Karloff (best known as Frankenstein's monster in several incarnations) to do the narration and portray the Grinch in one of his last works before he died.
Noting that Karloff couldn't sing, Seuss himself brought in Thurl Ravenscroft (who voiced Tony the Tiger for Kellogg's Frosted Flakes during that time) to sing the well-known song "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch". Ravenscroft wasn't mentioned in the credits, so Seuss publicly mentioned it and apologized to him. Nonetheless, the song was just as widely praised as the special after they aired on CBS in 1966, and became a staple of Christmas TV for years after.
4. The Grinch Takes Over Halloween Too
During the '70s and early '80s, Seuss started writing more TV specials himself. In 1977, he produced a special called Halloween is Grinch Night, essentially a prequel to the Christmas story. Most people will recognize it simply as Grinch Night, which it was renamed to for home video release.
In this story, there is a slightly more humble Whoville, which is collectively frightened of whenever a sour-sweet wind blows around. During this time, a chain reaction of events causes the Grinch to get angry and come down to terrorize the Whos in what is called Grinch Night.
The story centers around Euchariah, a nerdy kid who wears glasses because of a slight astigmatism (Seuss liked using complex words in context so that kids would be exposed to it early enough). While he and his family await the lookout Sergeant Samuel McPherson's reports on the Grinch's malevolent activities en route, Euchariah convinces his parents to let him quickly go to the euphemism outside. A euphemism is a phrase meant to replace the harsher meaning. So when Euchariah is seen trying to reach an outhouse, the euphemism is much more clear (hehe). However, the sour-sweet wind had been picking up, and he is ultimately swept up toward Mt. Crumpit.
Unlike in the Christmas story, the Grinch is portrayed here as a much more inhumane creature, going so far as to whip Max to keep him pulling his huge paraphernalia wagon, and destroying everything in reach. While the family was watching the reports, the Grinch makes Max chase the innocent pink Wuzzy-Woozoo. When it's cornered in a brickle bratch (prickle patch), Max stops the wagon, making the Grinch fly into the brickles.
While he is busy trying to recover, Euchariah finds him and decides to stall him long enough for the wind to pass. He tries to stop him two times, but the Grinch doesn't feel he deserves the "first-class Grinching" saved for the other Whos and dismisses him. On a third attempt, Euchariah dares the Grinch to show him the paraphernalia without flinching.
For the next few minutes, there is quite a sight to be had. Euchariah is tormented by a song-and-dance routine of surreal images, innumerable kinds of monsters, and several stages of awe-inspiring scenery before finishing off high on a jack-in-the-box platform ridding of a balloon monster.
Afterwards, Euchariah notices that the sour-sweet wind is gone, and the Grinch is forced to return to his high-up cave. Euchariah returns home (with Max oddly enough) and is welcomed back by the Whos. Meanwhile, the Grinch pulls the wagon back up the mountain, noting that the wind would return, followed by him.
This special was produced by DePatie-Freleng (again one of Hanna-Barbera's competitors during the '70s), and aired on ABC on October 29, 1977. The Grinch was here portrayed by Hans Conried, a former Broadway star who also played Captain Hook for Disney's Peter Pan in 1957. If you hear some of the music, you can also recognize the returned voice of Thurl Ravenscroft in the chorus. I became familiar with this special, as it was a bonus part of the home video release of Green Eggs & Ham and Other Stories (itself a re-release of DePatie-Freleng's 1973 special Dr. Seuss on the Loose).
5. Grinching a Cat
On May 20, 1982, ABC aired an interesting crossover special from Dr. Seuss called The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat. It was produced by both DePatie-Freleng and Marvel Productions (who produced a multitude of popular series during the '80s you older folks might be familiar with).
It's been oddly clear that the Grinch put a curse on his first few portrayers, as both Hans Conried and Boris Karloff had died not long after they voiced the Grinch in the previous specials. Ironically, Bob Holt (a cartoon actor who primarily voiced characters like The Hulk in the '70s) died of a heart attack 3 years after this special aired. In addition, small-time actor Mason Adams replaced TV/music legend Allan Sherman (who died in 1973) for voicing the Cat in the Hat. However, Adams would live to be 86 before dying in 2005.
This is quite a story, but I was never able to watch it save for a few clips. You could get what I know from its Wikipedia article, but I can finish off by saying that I heard those two Emmys it won don't really hold up to today's audience. Still, people might be familiar with it under the name The Cat in the Hat Gets Grinched on some home video releases.
6. Sacrificing for the Big Screen
Seuss never really wanted his characters marketed, but by the time he died in 1991 he had loosened his grip and trusted the properties with his widowed second wife Audrey. By the turn of the decade, director Ron Howard had acquired the rights to make a feature-length adaptation of the classic Grinch story in live action.
Any real adaptation will have one of two problems -- too much material that needs to be pruned, or too little material that needs to extended. The original Grinch special was a half-hour long, so it was clear that new material had to be added to the story, courtesy of writing tag-team Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman. However, Howard and his company Imagine Entertainment wanted to make their live-action design to be as close to the book as possible, so they had to delve deep into many of Seuss's personal designs as well as the book to make it be as properly realized as possible.
Comic actor Jim Carrey played a more comedic take on the Grinch, properly supported by SNL veteran Molly Shannon, long-time actor Clint Howard (brother of Ron Howard), vaudeville actor Bill Irwin (best known today for Sesame Street's Mr. Noodle), small-time child prodigy Taylor Momsen, and narrations by Anthony Hopkins. This film made a lot of changes to the original story, including adding a side story with Cindy Lou Who and her family, a love triangle, and an attached backstory to the Grinch connected to that triangle.
The story could be compared in some ways to the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films. The Grinch is much like Jack Sparrow, except that the Grinch is much more clear in his antagonistic intentions. Their interactions and comedic side to the story allow the other main characters (namely Will, Elizabeth, Norrington, etc. in PoTC and Cindy Lou Who and the other major Whos in The Grinch) to deal with the more dramatic story points. Still, the Grinch does retain the same character arc from the book that is just expanded enough to connect the side stories to the original point of the book's plot, and just solidified enough to make him more sympathetic without compromising Carrey's comedic take.
Legendary film composer James Horner had written many scores, and his peak was undoubtably that of James Cameron's Titanic in 1997, complemented with the ballad My Heart Will Go On by Celene Dion. For The Grinch, Horner made two versions of a single song to go with this score. In the film, Taylor Momson got her first taste of music by performing "Christmas, Why Can't I Find You?" for a scene in the film. For the soundtrack, however, Horner turned to Mariah Carey to write a longer version called "Where Are You Christmas?". Due to legal issues, Carey dropped out and the song was performed instead by Faith Hill for the soundtrack.
Even though it was released a month before Christmas 2000, The Grinch captivated audiences and became an instant classic. It became the second highest Christmas film of all time (just behind 1990's Home Alone) with worldwide sales over $345 million.
Despite living on through nostalgia memorabilia, TV reruns, and parody cameos in various media, the Grinch had not seen any real fame after the release of the film. Still, the character has become quite synonymous with Christmas next to Ebenezer Scrooge. So the next time you see the Grinch on TV, think of how far he's come to get here. Actually, I kinda find it quite ironic that 2010 made the Grinch exist for 53 years.
Anyways, hope to see you later with another Christmas tale! And don't forget about the magical Tangential Learning! Now if you'll excuse me, I've gotta go await RedLetterMedia's upcoming Indiana Jones 4 review...
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