A Merry Mancini Christmas, released in November 1966, has become one of the most beloved of all holiday music collections. Tastefully arranged and performed by Henry Mancini's orchestra and chorus, featuring both secular Christmas songs and sacred hymns, it contained just one Mancini original: "Carol for Another Christmas," a charming instrumental with a hint of melancholy and evocative solos for oboe, harpsichord, flute and French horn.
But what's its origin? Why did Mancini write it and what is its place in the grand Mancini canon of works?
A mystery for many years, due primarily because of the disappearance of the film it was written for, we now have the answer: "Carol for Another Christmas" was the theme for a made-for-television movie that Mancini scored 60 years ago this month, in December 1964.
During the previous six years, Mancini had written a great deal of music for TV: three seasons of Peter Gunn, one of Mr. Lucky, themes for Man of the World and The Richard Boone Show. His transition to writing music for the big screen was inevitable, and the success of "Moon River" from Breakfast at Tiffany's, Oscars for that film and Days of Wine and Roses, then the theme for The Pink Panther, put television very much in Mancini's rear-view mirror.
Yet, for Carol for Another Christmas, Mancini made an exception. It was to be the first in a series of television specials designed to promote the work of the United Nations, then a much-respected organization of countries dedicated to preserving world peace. Xerox was underwriting the cost, estimated at $4 million for four programs, and top talent from Hollywood—both before and behind the cameras—was lining up to participate.
This first installment was a modern-day retelling of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, written by Rod Serling (then a six-time Emmy winner and creator of The Twilight Zone), directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (four-time Oscar winner, director of such classics as All About Eve) and featuring an all-star cast: Sterling Hayden as the Scrooge of this version, an embittered industrialist; Ben Gazzara as his nephew, a liberal history professor; Steve Lawrence, Pat Hingle and Robert Shaw as the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future; Eva Marie Saint, Percy Rodriguez and James Shigeta in supporting roles; and Peter Sellers, who received the most advance publicity as a post-apocalyptic demagogue promoting self-interest over the greater good.
Everyone worked for "scale," The New York Times reported, accepting minimum union payments because they believed strongly in the project. As TV Guide reported: "The motivating force behind these TV dramatizations is the desire on the part of the producers, directors, writers and actors involved to make a strong statement in behalf of the UN."
Mancini's participation was significant—not just the music he would write for the program, but because he was then the most popular film composer in America, sought-after by movie studios and already a big draw in concert venues across the country. Alex North, Elmer Bernstein, André Previn and Richard Rodgers were offering their services, too, but it was Mancini who got the call.
Filmed in September 1964 at a studio in Long Island, N.Y., it attracted considerable advance publicity, including a three-page photo spread in The New York Times. In addition to his memorable theme, heard only under the opening titles, Mancini composed about 20 minutes of dramatic scoring for the film.
He even recorded the Andrews Sisters re-creating one of their biggest hits, "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (with Anyone Else but Me)," a World War II standard that Hayden is playing when we first see him about three minutes into the film. (Variety reported that they recorded on Friday, December 11, 1964.)
Carol for Another Christmas aired, without commercial interruptions, at 9:30 p.m. Monday, December 28. Reviews were generally positive. The Los Angeles Times said "commercial television has never had so inspired and selfless a project," praising its
"powerful moments and magnificent acting," although The New York Times dismissed it as "a pretentious and wearing exercise in garrulous ineptitude." The Associated Press called it "magnificently produced and handsomely acted" and UPI declared it "easily the major dramatic event of the video season thus far."
But ABC had scheduled it opposite NBC's very popular Andy Williams Show and Alfred Hitchcock Presents and a CBS News special, and it finished third in its timeslot. It did earn a pair of Emmy nominations (including "Outstanding Program Achievement in Entertainment") but did not air again and seemed consigned to the dustbin of television history.
Nearly 50 years later, in 2012, Turner Classic Movies unearthed Carol and cablecast it, although its initial showings were of an incomplete print without the Mancini score; in 2021 a complete version was found and aired, and it is that finished print that has aired annually since that time.
Viewing Carol for Another Christmas today, one is struck by the continued relevance of the Serling script: reminders of the horrors of war, the plight of the displaced and hungry the world over, and the frightening prospect of nuclear holocaust in a time of global uncertainty.
The Telsun Foundation, the non-profit group established to make the U.N. films, produced three more for television; of those, only The Poppy Is Also a Flower, a drug smuggling tale directed by Terence Young based on a story by Ian Fleming, endured as a theatrical release in Europe following its American telecast in April 1966.
Meanwhile, Mancini extended and re-recorded "Carol for Another Christmas" for RCA Victor's Merry Mancini Christmas album in 1966, including solos by Arnold Koblentz (oboe), Pearl Kaufman (harpsichord), Arthur Gleghorn (flute) and Vincent DeRosa (French horn). It opened side 2 of the LP and, six decades later, remains a special part of one of the finest Christmas albums ever recorded.
– Jon Burlingame
Jon Burlingame is the author of Dreamsville: Henry Mancini, "Peter Gunn" and Music for TV Noir (Bear Manor Media).