Item Description

The Campbell Playhouse Presentation Of "A Christmas Carol" in CD Audio

Written by Charles Dickens - Starring Lionel Barrymore and Orson Welles and full cast.


Orson Welles revolutionized radio drama with his first-person singular narration in audio storytelling on his Mercury Theatre broadcasts. The tradition continued after The Campbell Soup Company began its sponsorship.

This was the 5th annual adaptation of this Charles Dickens classic.

A SUMMARY OF 'A CHRISTMAS CAROL' (If you don't want to know the story before you listen - stop reading here :)

"A Christmas Carol" is a Victorian morality tale of an old and bitter miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, who undergoes a profound experience of redemption over the course of one evening. Mr. Scrooge is a financier/money-changer who has spent his life concentrating on the accumulation of wealth and little else. He holds anything other than wealth in contempt including friendship, love and the Christmas season.

Ebenezer Scrooge encounters "Ignorance" and "Want" in A Christmas Carol. In keeping with the title "Christmas Carol" Dickens divides his literary "piece of music" into five "staves" (plural of staff, an element of written music) on which he will put his "notes."

The story begins by establishing that Jacob Marley, Ebenezer Scrooge's business partner in "Scrooge & Marley," was dead—the narrative begins seven years after his death to the very day, Christmas Eve.

Scrooge and his clerk Bob Cratchit are at work in the counting-house with Cratchit stationed in the poorly heated "tank," a victim of Scrooge's stinginess. Scrooge's nephew Fred comes in to wish his uncle a "Merry Christmas" and invite him to Christmas dinner the next day. He is dismissed by Scrooge with "Bah! Humbug!" among other unpleasantries. Two "portly gentlemen," collecting charitable donations for the poor, come in right after, but they are rebuffed by Scrooge, who points out that the Poor Laws and workhouses are sufficient to care for the poor. When Scrooge is told that many would rather die than go there Scrooge mercilessly responds, "If they would rather die ... they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." At the end of the workday Scrooge grudgingly allows Cratchit to take Christmas Day off, but to be all the earlier to work on the day after.

Scrooge leaves the counting-house and eventually returns to his home, an isolated townhouse formerly owned by his late business partner, Jacob Marley. In keeping with his miserly character, Scrooge lives in a small suite of largely unfurnished rooms within the house which he keeps dark and cold (the rest of the building he has let out as office space). While he unlocks his door Scrooge is startled to see the ghostly face of Marley instead of the familiar appearance of his door knocker. This is just the beginning of Scrooge's harrowing night.

A spectral hearse charging up the broad staircase in the dark, the sliding of bolts and slamming of doors elsewhere in the house, and the inexplicable ringing of the ancient and neglected bell pull system precedes a visit from Marley as Scrooge eats his gruel by the fireplace. Marley has come to warn Scrooge that his miserliness and contempt for others will subject him to the same fate Marley himself suffers in death, condemned to walk the earth in penitence since he had not done it in life in concern for mankind.

A prominent symbol of Marley's torture is a heavy chain wound round his form that has attached to it symbolic objects from Marley's life fashioned out of heavy metal: ledgers, money boxes, keys, and the like. Marley explains that Scrooge's fate might be worse than his because Scrooge's chain was as long and as heavy as Marley's seven Christmases ago when Marley died, and Scrooge has been adding to his with his selfish life. Marley tells Scrooge that he has a chance to escape this fate through the visitation of three more spirits that will appear one by one. Scrooge is shaken but not entirely convinced that the foregoing wasn't a hallucination, and goes to bed thinking that a good night's sleep will make him feel better.

At one o'clock in the morning the first spirit appears and introduces himself to Scrooge as The Ghost of Christmas Past. This spirit leads Scrooge on a journey into some of happiest and saddest moments of Scrooge's past. These include the mistreatment of Scrooge by his uncaring father (who did not visit Scrooge at boarding school, not even on Christmas), the loss of a great love sacrificed for his devotion to business, and the death of his sister, the only other person who ever showed love and compassion for him. It also is seen that Scrooge's father resented him as Scrooge's mother died giving birth to him. Ironically Scrooge now blames his only nephew because his sister died giving birth to the nephew.

Visions provided by the second spirit, The Ghost of Christmas Present, show him the meagre Christmas celebrations of the Cratchit family, the sweet nature of their crippled son, Tiny Tim, and a possible early death for the child; this prospect is the immediate catalyst for his change of heart. They also show the faith of Scrooge's nephew in his uncle's potential for change, a concept that slowly warms Scrooge to the idea that he can reinvent himself.

The visit of the third spirit, The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, a grim spectre much more frightening that the other spirits, harrows Scrooge with visions of the Cratchit family bereft of Tiny Tim, of Scrooge's own lonely death and final torment, and the cold, avaricious reactions of the people around him after his passing. Without explicitly being said, Scrooge can avoid his own fate, and that of Tiny Tim – but only if he changes.

In the end, Scrooge changes his life and reverts to the generous, kind-hearted soul he was in his youth before the death of his sister.


This compact disc presentation of "A Christmas Carol" is one-hour in length.

The CD is labeled and provided in a highly protective jewel case.


A note concerning sound quality. The sound quality for the shows in this collection is very good to good. It is difficult to find perfect recordings from the golden age of radio due to the equipment used for recording and the fact that many of the recordings were made 60, 70 or even 80 years ago.

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