Scrooge, 1935

Scrooge is a 1935 British fantasy film directed by Henry Edwards and starring Seymour Hicks, Donald Calthrop and Robert Cochran. Hicks appears as Ebenezer Scrooge, the miser who hates Christmas. It was the first sound version of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, not counting a 1928 short subject that now appears to be lost. Hicks had previously played the role of Scrooge on the stage many times beginning in 1901, and again in a 1913 British silent film version.

Plot:
On Christmas Eve in 1843 Ebenezer Scrooge (Sir Seymour Hicks) a cold-hearted and greedy elderly money-lender is seen working in his freezing counting house along with his suffering, under-paid clerk Bob Cratchit (Donald Calthrop). Two fellow business men arrive at the counting house to collect a donation for the poor from Scrooge but the old man instead supports the prisons and workhouses and goes as far to say if the poor would rather die then they ‘better do it and decrease the surplus population’. Scrooge catches Bob trying to take some coal but warns him he will be out of a job if he does not go back to work. Scrooge then refuses to dine with his only relative Fred his nephew and claims Christmas is ‘Humbug!’.