March 2 . . .
Where would the English-speaking world be without Dr. Seuss? His real name was Ted Geisel – and he was born this day in 1904 in Springfield, Massachusetts. The gentle but eccentric writer had an enormous and delightful influence on baby boomers and readers everywhere with his classic tales Green Eggs and Ham (the result of a $50 bet with publisher Bennett Cerf over whether or not Seuss could write a story using just 50 words), The Cat In The Hat, Horton Hears A Who, and many others. Perhaps his most enduring contribution was his modern-day Christmas classic, How The Grinch Stole Christmas.
As a big-budget movie, ‘Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas’ (2000) is an elephantine effort to combine Hollywood star power with the unique and singular spirit that was Dr. Seuss. Jim Carrey is virtually unrecognizable under layers of latex as the misanthropic title character, and director Ron Howard has concocted an eye-popping version of Whoville. But try as it may – and it tries mighty hard – the film pales in comparison to Chuck Jones’ animated 1965 TV version, with Boris Karloff narrating and supplying the voice of the Grinch. Jones and Seuss collaborated closely to combine the best of both worlds – Seuss’ patented rhyming whimsy and designs, and Jones’ celebrated Warner Brothers animation style.
Celebrate Seuss with a rarely-seen, one-of-a-kind film oddity – ‘The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T’ (1953), and bizarre and inventive fantasy. Seuss cowrote the screenplay with Allan Scott, but the overall vibe is definitely Seuss. Nine-year-old Bart (Tommy Rettig) resents his piano lessons, imagining his stern teacher Professor Terwilliker (Hans Conreid) as a madman bent on enslaving 500 little boys at a giant keyboard to endlessly practice Terwilliker’s own masterpiece for all eternity. Bizarre, surreal, and absorbing for both kids and savvy adults, this is a vintage cinematic curio from the imagination of one of the greatest writers for the child in all of us.
Click here to see the trailer . . .
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