Vincent Price Was Originally Cast To Play Santa Claus In The Nightmare Before Christmas
Just under three decades ago, the stop-motion animated classic "The Nightmare Before Christmas" was released. Directed by Henry Selick, the film introduced us to Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town in charge of the holiday. He's starting to get bored with being spooky, though. One day he discovers the door to Christmas Town and sees a different sort of celebration. Jack formulates a plan to kidnap Santa Claws — who he thinks is named Sandy Claws — and take over the winter festivities himself. Chris Sarandon voiced the role of Jack Skellington, with score composer Danny Elfman singing the songs for the character.
Santa Claus was voiced by Ed Ivory ("Rampage," "Blood Red") in the film, but the role originally went to someone who is very familiar with scary things. That man was horror legend Vincent Price ("Laura," "The House on Haunted Hill"), according to a Daily Beast interview with Selick from 2013. He wasn't the only person they saw for the role, but he got the furthest. They even recorded some dialogue, though the reason it didn't work out is very sad.
Making Christmas
In the interview, Henry Selick discusses the casting and spoke about how Vincent Price was originally cast and recorded the role of jolly old Saint Nick, and said he would have done an introduction and ending for the film as well. However, Selick said:
"[Price] had just lost his wife, and he was despondent, and it just didn't work. He was the first choice, that didn't work out, and we met with Don Ameche, who was insanely grouchy. I couldn't believe how grouchy he was. Then we met with James Earl Jones, and Danny had a weird moment where he went up to him and said he'd written the part, especially for James Earl Jones, and James Earl Jones got very angry and yelled, 'You don't know me!' It was a very tough voice to cast, and we just went with a local actor from San Francisco [Ed Ivory]."
Give yourself a moment to take that all in. People were angry about being considered to play Santa Claus. James Earl Jones has certainly played iconic characters before. He's the voice of Darth Vader in "Star Wars" and Mufasa in "The Lion King." He's the voice of CNN! Don Ameche worked with Betty Grable and Carmen Miranda in "Down Argentine Way," but the reactions are strange and not very Christmassy at all.
A bunch of people probably got coal in their stockings that year
To be fair though, Santa does become a bit of a spicy candy cane in the film, so maybe grumpy wouldn't have been such a bad thing. He's kidnapped by Oogie Boogie (voice of Ken Page) and he's not very jolly about being put in a bag and dragged to Halloween Town. Then again, can you blame him? Those weren't the only voice changes though. Henry Selick also said that Danny Elfman wasn't very happy to have his speaking voice replaced. He explained:
"When Danny tried to do the speaking voice of Jack as well as the singing voice, it just wasn't up to the level of his singing, so we got Chris Sarandon to do Jack's speaking voice. Tim and Danny have mended fences over the years, but it really upset Danny when I had to replace his speaking voice, and I had to go to Tim to do it. Then, later in the film, it was supposed to go to Santa Claus finishing the poem at the film's end, but that didn't work either, so we scrapped it. Danny and Tim's friendship is very weird."
All that drama aside, the film has been a staple of the holiday season(s) for people all over the world, and I apologize if you have "Kidnap the Sandy Claws" in your head now like I do.
"The Nightmare Before Christmas," as well as the sing-a-long version are currently streaming on Disney+.