How the Grinch Stole Christmas
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Wikipedia-Article "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"
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. The book has been adapted to other media, also discussed below.
Dr. 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 creature with a heart "two sizes too small," lives on a snowy mountaintop above Whoville with his faithful dog Max. (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 Grinch movie, as opposed to living on a speck of dust in Horton Hears a Who.) 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 Dr. 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).
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Adaptations and translations
Television
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! was adapted to television in 1966 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as an animated TV special, directed by Seuss's friend and former colleague Chuck Jones, whom Seuss had known from their days of working on Private Snafu training cartoons for the U.S. Army during World War II. The show starred Boris Karloff as narrator and Grinch, and (unusually 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 he had done) 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. Animation was done by Jones' MGM animation unit, several members of which had originate with him at 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, had music written by Jewish composer Albert Hague, with lyrics by Dr. Seuss. The best remembered of them, "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" was sung by Thurl Ravenscroft.
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. These lines were read by Boris Karloff, like the others.
The TV special has been highly praised by audiences and film and animation fans alike. It has seen innumerable rebroadcasts in the years 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.
The Grinch later appeared in a few more specials, and although they weren't as popular as his original Christmas outing, they're well-liked among the viewers. The Grinch returned to animation in the 1977 special Halloween is Grinch Night, in which he sets off to scare everyone in Whoville due to being bothered by a chain reaction of annoying sounds caused by the wind. There, he was voiced by Hans Conried. Later, in 1982, he starred in The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat, where 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.
Film
After Dr. Seuss's death, the book was also made into a 2000 live-action film. Due to all the additions made to the storyline so that it could be brought up to feature-length, it was considerably less faithful to the original book. It creates a new back story to explain why the Grinch acts as he does. The film was directed by Ron Howard, produced by Brian Grazer, and starred Jim Carrey as the title role of the Grinch and Taylor Momsen as Cindy Lou Who. This version is often called simply The Grinch; though the title actually seen in the film is How the Grinch Stole Christmas!; the word "Grinch" is written in much larger letters than the rest of the title. The movie received mixed critical reaction but became the highest-grossing film released in the year 2000, earning $260 million at the box office.
Other cast members include the late Josh Ryan Evans as the young Grinch, Bill Irwin as Lou Lou Who and Jeffrey Tambor as Mayor Augustus May Who.
(Taken from www.juiceenewsdaily.com/1104/ news/quotes_stole.html?1132545266546)
Translation
Perhaps because of its demanding meter, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! has been seldom 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 natelem 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!"
"Grinch" as slang
Dr. Seuss's work is sufficiently well known that the word "Grinch" became used as a slang term, designating a cruel, uncaring person, particularly with greedy tendencies. 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".
Publication data
- Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel). How the Grinch Stole Christmas! New York: Random House, 1957, ISBN 0394800796
- 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 0865164193
External links
- 1966 TV adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! at the Internet Movie Database
- 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
The lyrics to the Grinch Song, "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch".