December 5, 2023 – Theme Week Day 2

It’s day 2 of our theme week on Christmas Movies, and today we’re talking about How the Grinch Stole Christmas! 
The character of the Grinch first appeared in a poem by Dr. Seuss called “The Hoobub and the Grinch”, which was published in Redbook magazine in May 1955. He began work on the book a few years later in 1957. Dr. Suess claimed he based the Grinch on himself. Apparently, his wife’s health issues and his dismay with the commercialization of Christmas made him feel “very Grinchish”. He wrote the book quickly and it was mostly finished in just a few weeks.
The book has since been adapted many times, first as a 1966 animated TV special narrated by Boris Karloff, who also voiced the Grinch. The budget for the 26-minute special was an unheard-of $300,000 (more than $2 million today). It required 11 to 14 months of production, 15,000 drawings, and 60 musicians.
Before his death in 1991, Dr. Seuss was refused offers to sell the film rights to his books. After his death, however, his widow agreed to several merchandising deals and announced in 1998 that she was going auction the film rights to How the Grinch Stole Christmas. This would be the first live-action film adaptation of any Suess work. There were some pretty hefty stipulations, though. To pitch their ideas, suitors had to be willing to pay $5 million, 4% of the box office gross, 50% of the merchandising revenue and music-related material, and 70% of the income from book tie-ins. And she wasn’t interested in amateurs. She wouldn’t consider a director or writer if they hadn’t earned at least $1 million on a previous film. She also said that any actor submitted to play the Grinch had to be of “comparable stature to Jack Nicholson, Jim Carrey, Robin Williams, and Dustin Hoffman”. In September 1998, it was announced that Ron Howard had signed on to direct and co-produce the film with Jim Carrey in the lead role.
The Grinch suit was covered in yak hair, dyed green, and sewn onto a spandex suit. Applying the makeup took up to 2 and half hours. Carrey regularly compared the costume to being buried alive, and after one session he was so frustrated he kicked a hole in the wall of his trailer. Things got so bad that the makeup artist left the project, and they eventually hired someone who trained CIA agents in torture endurance to give Carrey some distraction tactics. Carrey spent 92 days in the Grinch costume, and eventually got much better at remaining calm in the makeup chair.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas was released in the U.S. on November 17, 2020. It spent 4 weeks as the #1 movie at the box office. At the time, it was the second-highest-grossing holiday movie of all time, after Home Alone. Learn more here.