The Grinch is a fictional character created by Dr. Seuss. He is best known as the main character of the children's book How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1957).
The grumpy, anti-holiday spirit of the character has led to the term "Grinch", which is probably derived from the French word grincheux which means "grumpy", coming to refer to a person opposed to Christmas time celebrations or to someone with a coarse, greedy attitude.
The Grinch has since become an icon of the winter holidays, despite the character's hatred of the season, and has appeared on various forms of memorabilia such as Christmas ornaments, plush dolls, and various clothing items.
In 2002, TV Guide ranked The Grinch number 5 on its "50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All Time" list.
Character description
The Grinch is depicted as a furry green recluse living in seclusion on a cliff overlooking the cheerful and optimistic town of Whoville. He scorns the Christmas season and the boisterous festivities customarily celebrated during the holiday; apparently irritated by the happiness of others and deriving pleasure from spoiling other people's merriment. Aided by his pet dog, Max, he disguises himself as Santa Claus and breaks into the Whos' homes to steal their holiday decorations and gifts. Although his plan works, he is infuriated on Christmas morning to find the Whos singing cheerfully despite his actions. Convinced that the holiday must carry a meaning distinct from its decorations and gifts, the Grinch returns and distributes his stolen goods to the Whos, with whom he thereafter celebrates. Nevertheless, the Grinch is still portrayed as a bitter and ill-tempered character in artwork or other media. With the character's anti-holiday spirit followed by the transformation on Christmas morning, scholars have noted similarity to Ebenezer Scrooge from Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. In both the animated TV special and the 2000 live-action film, he is shown to have superhuman strength when he stops an entire sleigh loaded with presents from going over a cliff and lifts it over his head, and he is also described as "[finding] the strength of ten Grinches plus two" during that moment of crisis.
History
The Grinch first appeared in the May 1955 issue of Redbook in a thirty-two-line poem called "The Hoobub and the Grinch," but made his book debut in the 1957 story How the Grinch Stole Christmas, written and illustrated by Dr. Seuss, published as both a Random House book and in an issue of Redbook magazine. Nine years later in 1966, the story was adapted into an animated television featurette of the same name, which was directed by Charles M. Jones (who was known at this time as Chuck Jones) and which included the song "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch". Boris Karloff serves as both the story's narrator and the voice of the Grinch.
In 1977, Seuss responded to the fan request for more Grinch tales by writing Halloween is Grinch Night, that serves as a prequel to the 1966 film. This was followed in 1982, when Marvel green-lit The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat a TV film starring The Cat in the Hat, also produced by Dr. Seuss (though under his real name, Ted Geisel). Although not as successful as the original, the two films both received Emmy Awards. Several episodes of the 1996 Nick Jr. television show The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss featured the Grinch, this time in puppet form, a rare screen appearance for the character without being animated or illustrated.
A 2000 live-action feature comedy film based on the story, directed by Ron Howard and starring Jim Carrey as the Grinch, was a major financial success, though it received many mixed reviews and holds a 53% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. A video game based on the film, simply entitled The Grinch, was released on several consoles and PC in the same year. It was followed in 2007 with the release of a Nintendo DS version that went under the full title of the movie.
The Grinch was portrayed on the stage when the story was turned into a musical by the Children's Theater Company out of Minneapolis. The show made it to Broadway by way of a limited run in 2006, with Patrick Page playing the Grinch.
In television and film, the Grinch has been played or voiced by six actors. For the three animated adaptations, three actors were used: Boris Karloff in the original 1966 short, Hans Conried in Halloween is Grinch Night, and Bob Holt in The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat. (All three of them died shortly after the production of their respective specials and could not reprise the role.) Anthony Asbury portrayed The Grinch in The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss, and Jim Carrey and Josh Ryan Evans did so in the 2000 film adaptation, for which Carrey received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy.
The Grinch also appears in Glee in the episode "A Very Glee Christmas". The Grinch was played by Sue Sylvester, who seeks revenge on Will Schuester, who stole all of her secret "Santa scam" presents.
The Grinch's story will be adapted in animated form in 2018, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the title character.
In popular culture
- A Grinch-like creature â€" with an elongated face and green skin, wearing a Santa Claus costume, who speaks in rhyme with an imitation of Boris Karloff's voice â€" appears in the fifth episode of the American animated TV series Family Guy, "A Hero Sits Next Door", when Peter Griffin's new next door neighbor Joe Swanson tells the story of how he came to be in a wheelchair: falling off a building while stopping the "grinch" from robbing the Christmas presents of the kids in an orphanage.
- A similar Grinch-like creature, known as the Grumple, is the subject of Homer's Christmas fears in The Simpsons episode "Kill Gil, Volumes I & II".
- Episode 10 of the third season of Just Shoot Me! is titled "How the Finch Stole Christmas" and a narrator's voice is commenting the story in a way reminiscent of the original Grinch tale.
- The Grinch, along with Cindy Lou Who and Max, appears in Seussical, a musical which takes its plot from several Dr. Seuss books.
- The Grinch briefly cameos in the Psych episode "The Polarizing Express," during Shawn's dream sequence. While Shawn is speaking to his superego, the Grinch can be seen stealing the presents of passing pedestrians outside the office.
- How I Met Your Mother episode How Lily Stole Christmas uses the word grinch frequently, apparently as a way of the narrator telling a censored version of the time when Ted Mosby called Lily Aldrin a cunt.
- The Grinch makes a brief appearance in both Home Alone, and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York , on the television set in the original film, and on a limo TV that Kevin is watching in Home Alone 2.
References
External links
- Media related to Grinch at Wikimedia Commons
- The Grinch on Internet Movie Database
- Grinch at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on February 5, 2016.
