Headscratchers / Scrooge (1951)

• During the scene where the two servants and undertaker are bartering with Old Joe, why do the three seem hesitant to reveal what they took? They all knew why they were there, so why the hesitation?
  • Nobody likes to be the first to admit they committed a crime, even in front of other criminals.
  • Being the first to expose their own misdeeds might leave them susceptible to blackmail in future if either of the others backs out of a sale. Also, learning how much Old Joe pays for the first batch of goods might give them a slight advantage in hyping the value of their own.
• The Cratchits can't figure out who sent the turkey (except Tiny Tim), but wouldn't Bob have recognized Scrooge's handwriting on the tag?
  • Maybe he had the butcher send it over to Cratchit's.
  • He probably used generic block-print letters, not cursive. Much harder to tell apart, especially if Scrooge never hand-prints his documents normally.
• Isn't 'Barbara Allen' a pretty depressing song to sing during a Christmas Party?
  • The Victorians romanticized death. They would have considered it a beautiful and romantic song more than a tragic one. Especially because of the ending, where Barbara and her young man (Sweet William, Johnny, Jemmy Grove, Sir John Graeme, or whatever the version of the song names him) are implied to be Together in Death when the plants growing from their graves entwine with each other.
• The two other men that were present in the room when Fan dies (presumably relatives). Did either of them try to reach out to Scrooge and explain to him Fan's dying wish?
  • One of them was probably meant to be a Doctor, who presumably had no further dealings with Scrooge after Fan’s death, whilst the other was Fan’s husband/Fred’s father, who Scrooge had deliberately tried to distance himself from afterwards. This was also the time that Scrooge was starting to become more hard hearted and to become more insular and his brother in law probably never attempted to broach the subject whenever he did see him afterwards.
  • Yes. Note that as Young Scrooge is leaving Fan's deathbed, the young man – her husband and Fred's father – tries to console him, but Young Scrooge looks at him with revulsion and pushes him away. He evidently blamed him for getting Fan pregnant just as much as he blamed Fred for causing her death by being born, so he must have avoided seeing them both whenever possible, and then Fred's father presumably died some time before the main storyline.
• How does old Scrooge know how to perform the latest dance steps? He hasn't socialized or gone to a party in decades.
  • Good one. Mr. Tupper specifically asks the pianist to play a polka, a Czech dance that became popular in the 1840s, around the same time the book came out. Fezziwig's parties had had something close to square dancing, so maybe Scrooge just faked it based on that memory.