From Jim Carrey and Patrick Stewart to Michael Caine and the esteemed Tori Spelling, the role of Ebeneezer Scrooge, Charles Dickens’ classic anti-hero, has been embodied by a long list of Hollywood’s elite. No one, however, played the part (or, in this case, a version of the part) quite like the incomparable Bill Murray in Scrooged.
As Frank Cross, a wealthy television executive who neglected his personal life for success, Murray scores laughs as he’s visited by a who’s-who of Christmas ghosts. While Cross ultimately, as all versions of A Christmas Carol‘s Scrooge do, sees the light of day just in time for Santa’s arrival, the 1988 take on his journey there comes with Murray’s unique brand of mumbling, fumbling, and hilarity.
While it’s certain Scrooged will pop up somewhere on this month’s TV lineup, we’d like to prep you with some more info on the back story of the film that you can use to impress fellow viewers.
Murray and the director did NOT get along.
The relationship between Murray and director Richard Donner, the man behind Lethal Weapon’s 1 through 4, was not a good one. Neither had wonderful things to say about working with each other during press interviews for the film, but they kept it mostly cordial.
Murray said the pair butted heads “every single minute of the day,” and that he felt like barely any of the scenes that made the final cut were symbolic of how he wanted to play the role.
Donner, on the other hand, felt like he spent much of production trying to keep Murray’s “happiness up.” He told the Toledo Blade:
“He’s superbly creative but occasionally difficult — as difficult as any actor… Sometimes he was just wiped out. He was on throughout the picture. He had to tire, had to have a bad morning. So we’d manufacture it – do silly things to make Bill laugh. Billy loves silly things.”
The movie was reworked significantly on its journey from page to screen.
Murray would only sign on to Scrooged under the pretense that it was completely reworked. The actor liked the premise, and was even offered the role two years before signing on, but felt significant changes needed to be made. As he told Starlog in 1989:
We tore up the script so badly that we had parts all over the lawn. There was a lot I didn’t like. To remake the story, we took the romantic element [Frank’s relationship with his former girl friend, Claire, played by Karen Allen] and built that up a little more. It existed in the script’s original version, but we had to make more out of it. The family scenes were kind of off, so we worked on that.”
Regardless, Murray said the movie was “long” and “sloppy” after filming. So sloppy, in fact, that a lot of it got cut out before Scrooged made it to movie theaters. Murray said it was no fault of anyone in particular, though, and added that during production many often “forget” what is wrong with a script.
Carole Kane found her role so emotionally demanding that she regularly broke down on set.
Carol Kane, the actress many recognize by voice alone, had a hard time playing the fairy-like Ghost of Christmas Present. The role, which required Kane to not only be snarky in her interactions with Murray, but also to hit and punch him, proved too much for the actress.
According to Murray and Donner, Kane would regularly break down at inappropriate moments on set, and dissolve into fits of crying that sometimes lasted more than 20 minutes.
Murray improvised many of his lines.
It’s no surprise that Murray has a knack for improvisation – many of the former Saturday Night Live star’s most iconic scenes have been the result of people letting him run wild with his scripted dialogue. As was the case with Scrooged.
Donner said it was often a mystery what Murray would do when the cameras started rolling, comparing the experience to trying to direct traffic on a busy New York City street.
The director added that Murray was also not too keen on working at the time, and would do almost anything to avoid actually having to recite lines. In fact, Donner said the star would tell lengthy stories just to distract from actually having to act out a scene.
Murray took a four-year Hollywood hiatus before the flick.
Good ‘ol Billy was tired after all that Ghostbusters success and The Razor’s Edge backlash, so he took a break. A four-year one.
The actor said he simply “didn’t want to work for a while,” so he turned down any script that came his way and took off for Europe with then-wife Mickey Kelly. After that, he began renovations on his New York home and spent time as a family man. And he doesn’t regret it, per Philly.com.
“I don’t think I missed anything. I should show you the scripts I didn’t do. It’s like the stories police don’t tell you about.”
John Houseman died less than a month before the film’s release.
John Houseman, the Academy Award winning actor and often-Orson Welles collaborator, appeared as the narrator of Cross’ faux-television special, one of his final roles.
After decades in Hollywood, the actor died on Oct. 31, 1988, less than a month before the movie’s November debut. The only other film featuring Houseman that had yet to be released was The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, which followed Scrooged by only a few weeks. Houseman was 86.
It was the last performance by TV’s Solid Gold dancers.
From 1980 to 1988, a group of women performed in risqué costumes to the day’s top hits on national television under the title of the Solid Gold Dancers. The Solid Gold music program (think Soul Train) was popular, and still maintains a place in pop-culture jokes today.
After the show’s cancellation in July of ’88, however, the dancers were disbanded. In fact, their final performance as a group was in Scrooged. Their appearance was even touted in the film’s trailer, as the troupe was meant to be part of Cross’ special.
