It’s never easy to be the one who leads the office Christmas sing-along. But that’s a task that Alfre Woodard happily accepted in the closing moments of Scrooged, Richard Donner’s much-loved 1988 version of A Christmas Carol starring Bill Murray as a modern-day variation on Charles Dickens’s holiday-hating Ebenezer Scrooge.
As in the original tale, the film follows Murray’s TV exec Frank Cross as his Christmas frown is turned upside down thanks to the intervention of three rambunctious phantoms who take him on a tour of his past, present and future should he keep up his “Bah humbug!” ways. In the final scene, the convert interrupts his network’s broadcast of A Christmas Carol to preach his newfound love of the season live on-air, surrounded by the very employees whose lives he previously made miserable — including his long-suffering Bob Cratchit-esque assistant, Grace, played by Woodard. Just as the closing credits kick in, Grace leads everyone in the studio — and those watching at home — in a rousing rendition of “Put a Little Love in Your Heart,” the 1969 Jackie DeShannon chestnut that became a Christmas anthem.
“Think of your fellow man, lend him a helping hand,” Woodard sings while holding her young son, Calvin (Nicholas Phillips), who serves as the surrogate for A Christmas Carol’s tragedy-prone Tiny Tim. In fact, just moments prior to the sing-along, Calvin spoke his first words since seeing his father die in front of him years prior — avoiding an alternate Christmas future where his mental health troubles have landed him in an institution. (For the record, Olympic icon Mary Lou Retton plays Tiny Tim in The Christmas Carol-within-The Christmas Carol.)
“It was a lot of responsibility to lead the song,” Woodard tells Gold Derby during a conversation about her latest role on the Apple TV series, The Last Frontier. “It was like, ‘OK, I get to choose the key.’ But I had to choose a key that everybody could sing! In my head I was thinking [the notes] as I was speaking.”
But the Oscar-nominated actress literally didn’t miss a beat in those opening bars, which allowed the rest of the cast to quickly join in. “It’s one of those songs that sounds treacly and sentimental, but when everybody is singing, you can’t lose with it,” Woodard says, laughing. “Lord knows we all need to sing it! All of us in American should all agree to sing it on a particular day and a particular time — even if you’re an American living abroad, you can join in.”
It’s worth noting that besides the cast’s rendition of “Put a Little Love in Your Heart,” the makers of Scrooged also commissioned a cover version of the ’69 tune belted by the unlikely, but awesome duo of Annie Lennox and Al Green. In classic ’80s fashion, the accompanying music video was filled with scenes from the movie, including glimpses of David Johansen’s chain-smoking, cab-driving Ghost of Christmas Past, Carol Kane’s slap-happy Ghost of Christmas Present and even the freaky Ghost of Christmas Future and the rubber-faced demons inhabiting his rib cage. Those spirits are also present in the closing credits sequence, as Frank looks over at them in the same way that Luke Skywalker spots the various Force ghosts at the end of Return of the Jedi.
But before you can say “mistletoe,” he’s back to smooching the love of his life, Claire (Karen Allen), who he’s finally made amends with years after they went their separate ways. We’re then treated to little grace notes with the rest of the supporting cast from Bobcat Goldthwait’s mistreated underling Eliot to a pair of homeless shelter residents played by real-life spouses Logan and Anne Ramsey. Donner, of course, had previously immortalized Anne Ramsey in the minds of ’80s kids as Mama Fratelli in The Goonies and the beloved actress filmed her Scrooged cameo just prior to her death in August 1988 — three months before the movie arrived in theaters. (Donner died in 2021.)
Midway through the closing credits, Murray can’t resist breaking the fourth wall like those pesky Gremlins or Ferris Bueller. Beckoning the camera his way, the actor opens his clearly improvised riff by quoting Little Shop of Horrors — the Frank Oz-directed movie musical Murray had a scene-stealing turn in two years earlier. Murray then encourages moviegoers to join the sing-along giving a special shout-out to the person “making noise throughout the whole movie.”
Asked what it was like to watch Murray shoot that direct address to the audience on set, Woodard confirms that the Saturday Night Live star essentially wrote his own script. “Bill came up with a lot of things on the day,” she recalls, adding that plenty of material hit the cutting room floor. “He never did anything exactly the same way twice, because if the crew didn’t laugh — if they weren’t bent over trying not to cackle during a take, which they almost always were — he would do it again. That’s how he worked! He never worked in a vacuum; he had to have a live audience, and it was often the crew.”
Released over the Thanksgiving holiday, Scrooged had moviegoers in stitches, too, banking $60 million despite mixed critical reactions. (Roger Ebert famously penned a single-star review, calling it “one of the most disquieting, unsettling films to come along in quite some time.”) But the film found its biggest audience on home video and its perennial presence on cable channels and streaming services when the calendar turns to December.
“People always tell me that they watch it every Christmas,” says Woodard. “They’ll say, ‘I watched it growing up, and now I show it to my kids. It just goes on and on.”
Woodard has several of those multi-generational staples on her filmography, including How to Make an American Quilt, Star Trek: First Contact, and Love & Basketball. But the career highlight that merits rediscovery is Cross Creek, Martin Ritt’s 1983 drama that earned four Oscar nominations — including Woodard’s first, and so far only, acting nod for Best Supporting Actress. Filmed on location in the Florida Everglades and also starring Mary Steenburgen and Rip Torn, Cross Creek is currently streaming on Tubi.
“It felt like the Super Bowl, Mardi Gras and prom all rolled into one,” Woodard says, thinking back on her experience at the 56th Academy Awards in April 1984. “But what I really remember about that experience was working with Martin Ritt and thinking that my life couldn’t get any richer. He and our director of photography, John Alonzo, would hold the camera up in the swamp water and kept a pistol handy because there were snakes around.
“I remember Marty had to go to the hospital after we had been working for 10 hours on one scene,” Woodard continues. “Rip’s character was supposed to be drunk and he believed in Method acting so he started drinking Jack Daniels at five in the morning. 10 hours later, we still couldn’t finish the master shot! They had to take Marty to the hospital, and as he was leaving, he said: ‘It’s always worth it for what you get out of Rip.'” (Ritt died in 1990, and Torn passed away in 2019.)
Moments like that — or her Scrooged sing-along — are ultimately what stick with Woodard all these decades into her career as opposed to the glamor of Oscar night. “People think [the Oscars] are our lives, but we’re a company town,” she emphasizes. “We’re workaday people, so I remember the work, always.”