Scrooged Again

Radio and TV this year are taking over Christmas, lock, stock and carol. The procession of Scrooges began last week with Fredric March on CBS's Shower of Stars, and he was followed by a whole battery of Dickensian skinflints--Alastair Sim, Reginald Owen, Alec Guinness and the late Lionel Barrymore. Christmas drama also resounds with sleigh bells, seasonal cuteness and commercialized brotherhood. A run-through of the titles suggests the content: Christmas 'Til Closing, with Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn; Santa Claus and the 10th Avenue Kid, on Alfred Hitchcock Presents; Christmas Story, on San Francisco Beat; Barbed Wire Christmas, on Calvacade Theater; A Christmas Dinner, on Kraft Theater; Silent Night, on Rheingold Theater; Santa Is No Saint, on Matinee Theater; A Kiss for Santa, on Ford Theater; Christmas in Camden, on The Big Story; and 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, on The Honeymooners.

Even the season's situation comedies are wreathed with mistletoe: Medic finds its weekly tragedy at an office Christmas party; Spring Byington goes Christmas shopping on December Bride; Red Skelton plays an O. Henry tramp on Christmas Eve; Robert Young stages an old-fashioned Christmas on Father Knows Best; Dragnet repeats its Christmas heart throb of last year and the year before; Eve Arden deals with enchanted music boxes on Our Miss Brooks.

Some of the most successful shows of other Yules will be back again: for the sixth time, NBC presents Gian-Carlo Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors; Max Liebman brings back a new version of Babes in Toyland. Perry Como, Dinah Shore, Tony Martin, Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Steber, together with unnumbered choirs, glee clubs and choruses, will work their way through a long list of popular and pious tunes, ranging from I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus to Adeste Fidelis. CBS radio is not content with bombarding listeners with music. For a full hour on Christmas Eve, Bing Crosby will urge travelers in railroad stations across the U.S.--from Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal to Los Angeles' Union Station--to raise their voices with his in a monster Christmas Sing with Bing. The network further urged all listeners to ". . . join in. We hope to get millions of people to open their windows and let their radios blare forth, bring their portable radios out to the front porch or street corner, have car radios turned on loudly with the windows open and get loudspeakers set up in the city square." The New York World-Telegram and Sun found this "one of the more frightening Yuletide prospects" and added sourly: "If Bing wants any requests, we have one: 'Silent Night: "

A few optimistic whispers could be heard through the seasonal uproar: Sponsor Oldsmobile promised to deliver no advertising messages during Singer Patti Page's Christmas show, while Manhattan's station WINS and New Jersey's WPAT went even further: they banned all commercials on Christmas Day.

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