To compliment the other thread going on, now that the role of Ebenezer Scrooge has been played by every actor and actress over 50 there have been some truly atrocious productions as well. My votes for worst takes:
MS. SCROOGE - Cicely Tyson (who should have been given a genius grant that would allow her to live in great comfort into perpetuity after Miss Jane Pittman just so that she wouldn’t have to do schlock like this) played Ebenita Scrooge, a modern day she-miser in a production so bad that not even (fellow MISS JANE alum) Katherine Helmond and the adorable Rae’ven “I’LL FLY AWAY” Kelly could help it.
EBENEZER - if Ed Wood had been hired by the Dickens estate, this is the movie he would have made. Jack Palance stars in the production which has been moved into the 19th century west where Ebenezer is a gunslinger who cheats at cards and abandoned his wife and children. He’s so despicable you don’t want to see him redeemed (it’d be almost like 'Heinrich Himmler’s Christmas Carol").
AN AMERICAN CHRISTMAS CAROL starring Henry Winkler as Benedict Slade, Ebenezer’s alter ego in Depression era America. This one’s main sin is that it’s just soooo boring and way too earnest.
Then of course there are the really horrible TV show takes on CHRISTMAS CAROL including ALICE & DUKES OF HAZZARD that must make Dickens flip in his carefully aligned grave.
Well, Susan Lucci starred in an incredibly bad version of “A Christmas Carol” called “Ebbie.”
Of course, as wretched as it was, it wasn’t nearly as embarrassingly bad as Marlo Thomas’ attempt to play Jimmy Stewart in her remake of “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
Heck, I was never much of a fan of George C. “Patton” Scott playing ol’ Ebeneezer. Every time he says “Bah humbug,” it sounds like it should be followed up by “Now drop and give me twenty, soljer!”
There was one one recently with Vanessa Williams called A Diva’s Christmas Carol. I surely didn’t watch more than a couple of minutes of it, but I noticed that Kathy Griffin played the Ghost of Christmas Past. yuck.
This stuff reminds me of the version of It’s a Wonderful Life with Marlo Thomas in the Jimmy Stewart role.
The Susan Lucci version and the Cicely Tyson one were the first that sprang to mind when I read the thread title. Absolute dreck…I couldn’t sit in the room and watch them when my mother had them on last year.
Do high-school theater club musicals count? If so, I cannot be held completely responsible, since I was only allowed the choice role of “Anonymous Street Urchin #5.”
Brent Spiner (as Data, the earnest robot) did a brief holodeck riff on Christmas Carol in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Painful, especially the analytical discussion he and Picard shared immediately afterward.