Tiny Tim Appearances
A Christmas Carol was published at a time when victorian-era english people were re-evaluating christmas (a LOT of which is taken from pre-christian traditions). As a result, the novella is largely responsible for a lot of modern observances of the holiday. A public domain story with strong timeless themes for all ages, A Christmas Carol has seen massive adaptation in almost every medium.
1916's The Right to Be Happy is the very first feature-length adaptation to A Christmas Carol, directed and starring Rupert Julian as Scrooge. This is also noteworthy because while there are a LOT of adaptations of A Christmas Carol in the silent film era and even more stage adaptations going all the way back to the novella's publication, there weren't stong labor laws for child actors so most of them go uncredited, meaning we have no way of knowing who all those kids were. In this case we know who it is because Tiny Tim is played by Frankie Lee, a prolific child actor that appeared in 56 films between 1916 and 1925.
From a strictly filmmaking standpoint, 1935's Scrooge is one of my favorite early adaptations if only because it presents such a clear representation of 30's era cinematography. Tim is played here by Philip Frost.
1938's A Christmas Carol was a musical with songs by Franz Waxman, legendary for his score to 1935's Bride of Frankenstein. Tim is played here by Terry Kilburn.
The 1951 movie Scrooge starring Alastair Sim was titled A Christmas Carol in the US, and was one of the first movies to apply a lot of modern special effects to the story, establishing visuals that still get referenced today. Tim is played here by Gyn Dearman.
If you're of a certain age, 1962's Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol, a tv special with songs by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill, is the definitive take on the story... even Joan Gardner as Tiny Tim freaking out about razzleberry dressing.
1964's Mr. Scrooge was a made-for television musical on CBS that featured Neil Culleton as Tiny Tim. There were a ton of live performances of A Christmas Carol in the early days of television, but this is one of the first to be pre-recorded, so we're actually able to find photo-reference of the production.
1970's Scrooge was a live action musical adaptation, a direct follow-up to the hugely successful film Oliver! which earned six of it's 11 oscar nominations. Scrooge starred Albert Finney, who I'm only recently starting to realize had such a prolific career as a chameleon of 70's era cinema. Tim is played here by Richard Beaumont, who also appeared in 1974's Great Expectations.
Richard Williams 1971 animated special A Christmas Carol won an Oscar for best animated short and then saw a theatrical release in 1972. Tiny Tim was voiced, uncredited, by Richard's son Alexander, who would grow up to have a prolific career in animation himself.
In 1978, Rankin-Bass set aside their usual stop motion to make The Stingiest Man In Town, a remake of a classic 1956 live-performance TV musical of the same name starring Basil Rathbone of Sherlock Holmes fame. The main character was voiced by Walter Mathau, and drawn to look like him. Unlike a lot of animation at the time they actually used a specific cast rather than just a small team of voice actors, so we know that Tiny Tim was voiced by Robert Rolofson.
1979 saw the production of Bugs Bunny's Christmas Carol, where Tiny Tim was played by Tweety Bird. Like all classic Looney Tunes cartoons, all characters are voiced by the legendary Mel Blanc.
This is another generation-defining adaptation; if you're a certain age, 1983's Mickey's Christmas Carol is the definitiive Christmas Carol. Scrooge McDuck was primarily a comic book character that had only appeared sporadically in Disney animation, but his sucess in this feature lead to the creation of the beloved series Ducktales a few years later. Tiny Tim is played by one of Mickey's nephews, named Morty & Ferdie or Morty & Monty depending on the reference material. He's voiced by an 8-year-old Dick Billinsley, who also voiced Roo in Winnie the Pooh.
the 1984 made-for-tv film A Christmas Carol is best remembered for starring Screen Legend George C. Scott. I remember it because it's probably one of the scariest takes on the story from my childhood. Tim is played by Anthony Walters.
Scrooged is a hard one to explain, but it's so, so worth it; it's a 1988 Bill Murray vehicle about a modern-day television producer trying to stage a live production of A Christmas Carol. It's way, way better than it sounds. Nicholas Phillips plays Calvin Cooley, the son of Murray's assistant Grace (played by Alfre flipping Woodard), who has been mute since witnessing the murder of his father and who brings so much heart to a movie that is so ahead of it's time it gets more relevant every year.
This is the Grandaddy. There were a few generation-defining renditions of A Christmas Carol before this one, but this one is MINE: The Muppets Christmas Carol from 1992 was the first Muppet movie without the stewartship of their beloved leader Jim Henson. Tiny Tim is played by Robin, who is performed by Jerry Nelson. I am filled with joy just thinking about this movie.
In 1994, Hanna-Barbera produced the animated telivision special A Flintstones Christmas Carol, where Tiny Tim was portrayed by Bam-Bam, who was voiced, as he had been since 1963, by Hanna-Barbera mainstay Don Messick.
A Christmas Carol has been wildly adapted into almost any format, and that includes 90's era low-budget direct-to-video animated projects designed specifically for the low hanging fruit of children's entertainment. This sort of movie tended to go for name-recognition in it's voice cast just to drive sales. 1997's A Christmas Carol, despite it's typical low production value and flat, lifeless animation, stands out a little because it went for Tim Curry as it's Scrooge; objectively the best choice, always. Tim is voiced by Jarrad Kritzstein, who was Jimmy on Wishbone.
the 1999 made-for-TV movie A Christmas Carol is best known as a film adaptation of Sir Patrick Stewart's famous one-man stage performance, which cements him as one of the greatest performers of the character in it's history. The rest of the cast, despite being a little bit overshadowed by Stewart's SAG-award winning performance, is also great; including Ben Tiller as Tiny TIm.
Jacob Collier, who has gone on to become an incredible composer, appeared as Tiny Tim in the 2004 made-for-TV movie A Christmas Carol: The Musical alongside Kelsey Grammer's Scrooge.
Movie history is probably going to be very kind to Robert Zemeckis's work in the 2000's in developing motion capture technology to drive computer generated characters in animated films, attempting to bridge the uncanny valley that, at the time, made these characters creepy as hell. This technology is used constantly NOW, and we probably wouldn't have it in near-constant rotation in every blockbuster movie if Zemeckis hadn't worked out the kinks in his admittedly really-hard-to-watch proof of concept movies like Beowulf, The Polar Express, and 2009's A Christmas Carol starring Jim Carry. Tiny Tim is performed by Suzanne C. Robertson, who was apparently also the "Skin Texture Reference"... a role I think I'm totally fine never knowing anything more about.
Noteably, A Christmas Carol has several records for longest productions in hundreds of local and regional theaters all over the world, because so many theater groups put on a yearly production of their rendtion of a Christmas Carol; be it as a musical or dramatic adaptations, a ballet production, or even an opera. I started looking for examples but quickly realized I could do that until I died. Rather than try to include all of them, I settled on just using this image of the Cincinatti Playhouse in the Park's production. Henry Charles Wegorst played Tiny Tim, as best as I can tell, in 2015, 16, and 17. I don't know which year this image is from, but I am using it because it is literally the greatest stage production image I've ever seen.
I do want to include this one local theater production... Sachie Capitani played Tiny Tim in the December 2019 production of Dolly Parton's Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol at the Emerson Colonial Theater in Boston, a show (which did not, sadly, feature Dolly Parton herself) that reimagined the show taking place in a Coal Town in 1930's Tenessee.
One of the best-ever takes on Tiny Tim happened in the VERY good 2019 BBC fantasy miniseries A Christmas Carol by Stephen Knight starring Guy Pierce as Scrooge. Here, Tim is played by Lenny Rush, a 10-year-old stage actor from Essex who has Spondyloepiphyseal Dysplasia congenita, which effects his growth and results in dwarfism. Lenny was able to parlay his disability into his performance, and brings some incredible pathos to the role. I don't think anyone has ever done a better job.