You never know what'll show up in the thrifts for $3.99. Such as this mint copy of the 1942 three-78 A Christmas Carol set, featuring Basil Rathbone, Jay Novello, Francis X. Bushman, Lurene Tuttle, and Tommy Cook (Scrooge as a boy). Though this audio play is almost as condensed as the Classics Illustrated comic book version, Rathbone manages to create s convincing and (most importantly) a sympathetic Scrooge. All in the space of about 23 minutes! Since he's given so little time to develop the character, the transition from the "before" Scrooge to the "after" edition isn't as convincing as we'd want, but that's not Rathbone's fault, obviously. Everyone is brilliant in this, with Jay Novello's Bob Cratchit (spelled "Cratchet"here) especially amazing. The famous moment when Bob breaks down following his visit to Tiny Tim's grave is quite powerful here. This shortening of Dickens' novella (a novella for which Dickens earned a whopping 230 pounds, according to the notes!) is something to admire, given the challenge of conveying the tale in the style of a radio play. I definitely got my $3.99 worth, as much work as it took to stitch together and sound-adjust everything.
My highly regarded 78 stylus--a replacement for the D-whatever needle used by Stanton's 680 cartridge--gave an okay file, but I got a better one with my $20 after-market 500 cart needle. You never know.
Totally irrelevant to anything is that there are two points of connection to actor Peter Lupus, the big guy from Mission: Impossible--back when it was a terrific TV series and Tom Cruise had yet to lobotomize it on the big screen. I refer to Rathbone's 1960s work for American International Pictures--the studio which brought Lupus to the movies. And Lurene Tuttle was Peter's acting coach. Now you know. Leave it to me to notice that.
Leith Stevens, who composed and conducted the incidental music for this set, was an incredibly prolific film composer, whose stock music was used in any number of movies (I assume "stock" means library music), and whose scores include Destination Moon and War of the Worlds. And he composed music for any number of TV series.
I combined all six sides into a single, unbroken file, of course.
DOWNLOAD: A Christmas Carol--Basil Rathbone (1942)
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