The final regular Reminiscings of Youth article lands on Christmas Day today and it will be on the theme song for "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" from December 1966. It's a special, just like "A Charlie Brown Christmas", that I used to see every year on CBS on the old tube telly. By this point, pretty much everyone in North America knows about the green Grinch with his heart being two sizes too small (initially at least) and his willingness to ruin everybody's Christmas.
As a little kid, I didn't know who the narrator was and wouldn't finally find out for quite a few years. At first thought, I'd assumed that it was Dr. Seuss behind the narration but then I discovered it was Boris Karloff, Frankenstein's Monster himself, behind the mike when I'd known about his time many decades earlier as a horror movie icon. And dang it! He had a great voice for the theme song "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" which was given lyrics by Dr. Seuss and composed by Albert Hague as this classic comically villainous composition. Karloff chewed the heck out of this tune like a zombie on bone.
I never saw the Jim Carrey version of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" from 2000, but he one-ups Karloff in his rendition of the song. Some fine Canadian ham there!
Anyways, we have a couple of singles in Japan that got released at around the same time as the original cartoon.
The Wild Ones -- Omoide no Nagisa（想い出の渚）
Akira Fuse -- Kiri no Mashu-ko （霧の摩周湖）
The still youthful-looking Akira Fuse has been around for quite sometime! He did not seem to age as much as some others his age or maybe the make up artist are really really good at what they do. As for the grinch I think he is known in Japan a bit too because very cute 3rd film remake in 2018.
ReplyDeleteThe make up artist might be the same person behind Hiromi Go's appearance. 😊
DeleteHe or she just might and I guess he or she will have also had a long career.
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