Before the Grinch, there was Scrooge. And if ever a man could play Charles Dickensâ Christmas curmudgeon to the hilt, it was the late great Earl Wynn, a distinguished professor credited with creating in 1954 the department of Radio, Television and Motion Pictures at UNC-CH, which merged in 1993 with the School of Journalism and Media.
A holiday tradition for at least two decades, from the â60s into the mid-â80s, Wynnâs dramatic reading of the Christmastime classic delighted Hill Hall audiences with his basso-profundo voice and dynamic performances. In my Chapel Hill News photo from 1984, Wynn as Scrooge lambastes his good nephew, Fred, with the scathing rant: