How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
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This article is about the book and animated special. For the feature film, see How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (film)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is one of the best-known children's books by Dr. Seuss. It is written in rhymed verse, with illustrations by the author. It showcases the famous character, The Grinch, and has been adapted to other media, also discussed below.
Seuss completed How the Grinch Stole Christmas in 1957. The mid-1950s were a fruitful period for Seuss, during which he wrote many of the stories for which he is most admired today, including The Cat in the Hat, If I Ran the Circus, and On Beyond Zebra.
The Grinch, a bitter, green-coated, cave-dwelling creature with a heart "two sizes too small," lives on snowy Mount Crumpit, a steep, 10,000 foot high mountain just north of Whoville. His only companion is Max, his faithful but dim dog. From his perch high atop Mount Crumpit, the Grinch can hear the noisy Christmas festivities that take place in Whoville. (These are not the same microscopic-sized Whos who appear in Horton Hears a Who!; these Whos are visible to the naked eye, although the Grinch may just be their size, considering that the Whos all live on a snowflake in the film The Grinch, as opposed to living on a speck of dust in Horton Hears a Who. In the Broadway musical Seussical, however, the Grinch's Whos and Horton's are one and the same, the Grinch being microscopic and living on the dust speck as well.) Envious of the Whos' happiness, he makes plans to descend on the town and, by means of serial burglary, deprive them of their Christmas presents and decorations and thus "prevent Christmas from coming". However, he learns in the end that despite his success in stealing all the Christmas presents and decorations from the Whos, Christmas comes just the same. He then realizes that Christmas is more than just gifts and presents. His heart grows three sizes larger, he returns all the presents and trimmings, and is warmly welcomed into the community of the Whos.
The book is one of the purest examples of Seuss's style. The ink-drawn illustrations make use of only black, red, and pink (the latter being the color of the Grinch's eyes), and the versification is strict and never skips a syllable. The purity of the verse is increased by the fact that Seuss avoided introducing made-up words intended to fit the meter (for example, "Jill-ikka-Jast" or "Sala-ma-goox", both from Scrambled Eggs Super).
Contents |
[edit] Adaptations
[edit] Television
| How the Grinch Stole Christmas! | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Directed by | Chuck Jones Ben Washam |
| Produced by | Chuck Jones Dr. Seuss (as Ted Geisel) |
| Written by | Bob Ogle Dr. Seuss Irv Spector |
| Starring | Boris Karloff (voice) June Foray (voice) Thurl Ravenscroft (voice) |
| Distributed by | MGM Television |
| Release date(s) | December 23, 1966 |
| Running time | 22 minutes |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! was adapted to television in 1966 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's MGM Animation/Visual Arts studio as an animated TV special. The Grinch was directed by Seuss's friend and former colleague Chuck Jones, whom Seuss had worked with on the Private Snafu training cartoons for the U.S. Army during World War II. The special starred Boris Karloff as narrator and Grinch, and (unusual for adaptations) included the actual text of the book in spoken form.
Jones, who served as director, character designer, and character layout artist (as he had done for nearly all of his Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, and the latter-period MGM Tom and Jerry films) modified the appearance of the Grinch somewhat to fit the medium, rendering him in green and with a more elongated, frog-like face. In his 1996 book Chuck Reducks, Jones later said that Seuss thought the animated Grinch looked more like Jones than it did the character in the original book, a fact Jones attributed to the use of his own facial expressions as a model for the Grinch's.
Maurice Noble, one of Jones' long-time collaborators, served as production manager, and fellow Warner Bros. veteran Ben Washam served as co-director. The animation was produced by Jones' MGM animation unit, several members of which had come with him from Warner Bros: Ken Harris, Tom Ray, Phil Roman, Richard Thompson, Don Towsley, and Lloyd Vaughan.
The songs, which helped fill out the story to the length of a television program, were written by composer Albert Hague, with lyrics by Dr. Seuss. One of the best remembered of them, "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" was sung by voice actor Thurl Ravenscroft, later well-known as the voice of Kellogg's Tony the Tiger. According to an interview with Ravenscroft included on the early 2000s DVD release of the film, a production error resulted in Ravenscroft not receiving screen credit for his vocal performance, leading to the mistaken impression that it was Karloff who sang the song.
Dr. Seuss also lengthened the text with two interpolated verse passages. The longer one describes the Who children (in the Grinch's imagination) noisily playing with their Christmas toys. Seuss also added a few lines to the dénouement, which in the original is laconic.
The TV special has been highly praised by audiences and film and animation fans alike, and it has been rebroadcast innumerable times since its debut, with annual showings continuing to the present day. The cartoon is typically found on the Internet Movie Database's list of the top 250 films, and is considered one of Chuck Jones' greatest cartoons made after his departure from Warner Bros.-which currently, through several transactions involving MGM's library, owns the rights to the special.
The Grinch later appeared in a few more specials, although none were as popular as his original Christmas outing. In the 1977 special Halloween is Grinch Night, the Grinch (now voiced by Hans Conried) sets out to scare everyone in Whoville after being bothered by a chain reaction of annoying sounds caused by the wind. In The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat (1982), he attempts to ruin things for fellow Seuss star The Cat in the Hat. Most recently, he was a recurring character on the 1996 kids' show The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss, where he was voiced by Anthony Asbury.
In 1992, Walter Matthau narrated an illustrated storybook version of the story that utilized Seuss' original artwork.
[edit] Film
After Seuss's death, a 2000 live-action feature film adaptation was produced. Directed by Ron Howard, it featured Jim Carrey in the titular role and was a major financial success. Although a box-office hit, the film received mostly negative reviews, comparing it unfavorably to the book and the television special. Despite the poor reviews, the movie fleshes out the entire story while showing the Grinch as a young lad. Also, the Grinch tried to tolerate the Whos who made him the star of their community celebration, which leads to a major breakdown and the Grinch to steal Christmas. Finally, the film depicts Christmas as being too commercial, especially in the beginning.
[edit] Stage
A new stage production, How The Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical, is slated to open on Broadway in the fall of 2006. The score includes the two hit songs from the animated special, "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch" and "Welcome Christmas." Grinch on Broadway
[edit] The Grinch in popular culture
[edit] "Grinch" as slang term
Seuss's work has become sufficiently well-known that the Grinch's very name (like that of another fictional character, Ebenezer Scrooge) has entered general usage as a slang term designating a cruel, antisocial, or Christmas-hating individual. In 1994, during the Republican Party's "Contract With America", political cartoonists frequently applied the term to Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, calling him the "Gin-Grinch Who Stole Christmas". In the movie Jingle All the Way, the con artist Santas refer to the police as the "Grinch". In the live-action movie, the Mayor reads a passage from 'The Book of Who', which states 'The term 'grinchy' shall apply when Christmas spirit is in short supply'. The word "Grinch" has also been used by conservative activists to criticize the American Civil Liberties Union and other liberal and secular groups for their so-called "war on Christmas."
[edit] Parodies
Seuss' rhyming style has always made his work a popular reference and target for satirists, and the Grinch was no exception.
- Humorist Bill Maher presented How the Grinch Stole the Election in November 2000.
- Animator Ted Bracewell combined elements of the Grinch with Star Wars for the popular internet fan film How the Sith Stole Christmas (2002).
- In 1999 The Grinch made a cameo in the Family Guy episode- "A Hero Sits Next Door", where Joe has a flashback and battles the Grinch.
- The Grinch has been seen in the South Park episode "Merry Christmas Charlie Manson!" where he appears as The Grinchiepoo.
- The animated special is briefly parodied in "Last Exit to Springfield", a 1993 episode of The Simpsons.
- There is an episode of the Disney Channel series The Emperor's New School entiltled "The Yzma that Stole Kuzcoween".
[edit] Translation
Perhaps because of its demanding meter, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! has seldom been effectively translated, and it is hardly known outside of the English-speaking world. Nonetheless, a Latin translation was prepared by Jennifer Morrish Tunberg with the help of Terence O. Tunberg, entitled Quomodo invidiosulus nomine Grinchus Christi natalem abrogaverit (literally: "How the little envious one named Grinch stole Christ's birthday"). Rather than the rhythmic rhymed text of the original, the Tunbergs produced a prose translation in a somewhat rhythmic Latin. Instead of Dr. Seuss' repetitions of words, the Tunbergs generally come up with multiple synonyms, for instance, the "NOISE! NOISE! NOISE! NOISE!" becomes "STREPITUS, CREPITUS, STRIDOR, FRAGORQUE!" The work has been highly praised by classicists.
- Original
- "Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store."
- "Maybe Christmas... perhaps... means a little bit more!"
- Latin
- "Fortasse," inquit "Laetitia diei festi ex ipsis muneribus non proficiscitur..."
- "Fortasse," inquit Grinchus, "Laetitia diei festi non est res empticia, non est res quaestuosa!"
[edit] Publication data
- Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel). How the Grinch Stole Christmas! New York: Random House, 1957, ISBN 0-394-80079-6
- Dr. Seuss. Quomodo Invidiosulus Nomine Grinchus Christi Natalem Abrogaverit: How the Grinch Stole Christmas in Latin. Translated by Jennifer Morrish Tunberg with the assistance of Terence O. Tunberg. Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1997, ISBN 0-86516-419-3
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- 1966 TV adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! at the Internet Movie Database
- How the Grinch Stole Christmas at Keyframe - the Animation Resource
- Chuck Jones and the preparation of the television version
- Report on the television version by National Public Radio
- 2000 film adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas at the Internet Movie Database
- 2006 Premier of How The Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical on Broadway Grinch on Broadway
- Halloween Specials.Net with review of Halloween is Grinch Night
- Hilton Theatre Broadway now showing The grinch musical
