[4] The special is directed by Abe Levitow and features songs composed by Jule Styne, with lyrics by Bob Merrill, while Walter Scharf arranged and conducted the orchestral score.

Marley is bound in heavy chains due to his misdeeds in life and warns Scrooge that he risks the same fate unless he heeds the advice of three spirits who will visit him over the course of the night.

The Ghost warns Scrooge that Cratchit's young son Tiny Tim, who is sickly, will not survive to next Christmas if things do not change.

The Ghost also shows him Belle, a woman whom Scrooge, as a young man, had been courting; the moments he sees are those in which she sadly explains that she is leaving him due to his greed for money ("Winter Was Warm").

Scrooge sees his charwoman, his laundress, and the local undertaker sell his belongings to a fence named Old Joe ("We're Despicable (Plunderer's March)").

He later visits Cratchit to give him a raise in pay and help nurse Tiny Tim back to health, and shares Christmas together with them ("The Lord's Bright Blessing (Reprise)").

Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol was produced by UPA in its last days as an animation studio, following its acquisition by Henry G. Saperstein.

NBC aired the special again in 2012, with scenes depicting Magoo in the framing device cut in order to make room for commercials.

Thomas Vinciguerra for The New York Times praised the special and gave it a 4.5 out of 5, saying "not merely a superior musical version, it is a pioneer among animated Christmas traditions.

In 2014, the Actors Fund produced a one night only semi-staged live adaptation of the special at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College.

[12] Five years later, the Actors Fund once again staged the show at the same theater, this time with Gavin Lee as Scrooge, Clifton Duncan as Bob Cratchit, and Sierra Boggess as Belle.