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…