The Extras - Talking Classic Christmas Animation with George & Jerry

Episode Date: December 13, 2021

Warner Bros executive George Feltenstein and animation historian Jerry Beck take us on a nostalgic walk down memory lane as they talk about early theatrical Christmas animation and the development of the first Christmas holiday television specials.  The discussion begins with Jerry providing a brief review of early animated Christmas films.  Then they start the discussion of television specials with the 1962 film “Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol,” and their fond memories of watching it as children.  Next is the 1964 Rankin and Bass stop-motion classic, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” which ushered in a series of subsequent holiday-themed stop-motion films.  The beloved 1965 Peanuts special, “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” set a new bar for animation based on comic strips, and offers some interesting stories about the development of consumer products.  And finally, George and Jerry discuss the work of Chuck Jones leading up to his Dr. Suess Christmas classic, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”The Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to a special Christmas edition of The Extras. I'm Tim Millard, your host. Today, Warner Brothers executive and film historian George Feltenstein and animation historian Jerry Beck take us through a nostalgic walk down memory lane as they talk about early theatrical Christmas animation and the development of the first Christmas holiday television specials.

Well, Jerry and George, it's the most wonderful time of year, the Christmas holiday. So I'm glad we could get together to talk about some of our favorite Christmas animation specials. So, George, why don't you start us off? How far do we go back in film history to find the first animated Christmas films? Well, I think actually I wouldn't have the best answer for that. I think Jerry would. Jerry, can you

think of an early Christmas cartoon prior to Can't Be Where Santa Claus Lives? That's pretty early. I know. I really don't know. Early 30s. Yeah, that's early 30s. I'm sure there's some silent ones, but I can't think of any this minute. It's not my

expertise, but you know, yeah, Shanty where Santa Claus lives. There's a night before Christmas that Disney did as a silent, excuse me, as a silly symphony. They did a couple of silly symphonies that took place in like toy shops, you know, and toys come to life, that kind of thing. And GM did as well. Right. Toyland Broadcast. And, but, you know, they didn't do it as often as, as, as people think. The fact that we have, you know, Christmas specials that are constantly rerun and we're in heavy production in the sixties and 70s and 80s. That wasn't a big thing back in the old theatrical days.

You know, for some unknown reason, they made Christmas and holiday cartoons, but not as many as one would think. All the studios did, you know, Fleischer did Christmas Comes But Once a Year. Columbia Pictures did that Little Match Girl film. But they're like few and far between. I can't really think of them doing it on a consistent basis. Warner Brothers cartoons, you know, there's just a couple that have any kind of Christmas reference. You know, Gift Grab is a –

I haven't seen it yet. Yeah. You're talking about Sandy Claws? No, no. The title is obviously a Christmas – Ilaws no no that's good the title is obviously a Christmas I don't think that's a Christmas cartoon am I wrong no that's what I was saying

I don't even know I'm trying to remember because in putting together compilations it was almost impossible to find you know like to do a Christmas Looney Tunes without relying on those like later TV specials or, but I have a theory as to why there were not an abundance of theatrical Christmas

cartoons from the major animation studios. And that is that they could really only market them during a very, very limited time of the year, whereas any other cartoon that wasn't seasonal could be used all year. And that's just a theory. It's not based on any fact. It's just a belief. It's probably the case. You know, something I always talk about and remind people of is that these cartoons were, I love this word, ephemeral. They were just of that moment. They weren't meant or thought of to be evergreen or to be rerun or that they didn't even know that there would be television and streaming and Blu-rays. And so they were of, that's why they were more topical in the 1930s and 40s. You know, the cartoons are, you know, they're like the newspaper comic strips

and you see them now and then they're garbage in a way. I don't mean that, but you know what I mean. They're yesterday's news in a way. That was the thinking back in the 30s. They were there. They were expected to be there cartoons. Cartoons are expected to be at the theater for every new change of bill, just as we expect Blondie in the LA Times every day. You know, it's there, there's a new one, and then tomorrow comes. So the Christmas ones came out for a special time during the year. And then sometimes they'd make cartoons. By the way, I just remembered the captain's Christmas, the captain and the kids, the MGM, uh, Christmas cartoon, which is really good. But most of the time they would come up with something that was Christmas E not really

Christmas. Like, um, I keep thinking of, of I works, the brave tin soldier was marketed as a Christmas cartoon, but it really, it's, you can show it all year long. It's, it's the, that, that famous story about the little tin soldiers, you know. Jack Frost, another of Iwerks. Again, not necessarily Christmas, but it came out at that time of year. So the early ones, you know, Christmas specials are a thing that came to be with television, you know, obviously. And the Flintstones pioneered being in prime time. And then following that were three or four almost in a row on an annual basis. You've got

famous Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. And there's probably a few more I'm leaving out, but there was literally a hundred more or more, you know, that they made in the next 15 years. You know, Garfield, every character you can think of had a Christmas special. But although I want to say George will agree with me on this, that our favorite Christmas special, and I speak for George when I say this, our favorite Christmas special is Channel 11's Yule Log. Yes, I would have to agree. Yule Log used to make me crack up as a little kid because I thought it was so ridiculous. And it was a loop, like a 16 millimeter loop of a log burning. And so the film dirt and the splices,

and it would get worse every year as the film got older and then it started fading and they're playing all this Christmas music. And then I move out to Los Angeles and I find out that the, this was when a channel 11 in New York was owned by the same people that own Channel 5 out here in Los Angeles. And I found out that the Yule Log was not consigned to just New York, but that LA had it too. They just didn't have snow like we did growing up in New York. have it too. They just didn't have snow like we did growing up in New York. I keep imagining that, I think somebody should make a short about the filming of the Yule Log. You know, they have to set up all day. They have to get it all right. You know,

they have to now film it for like 20 minutes or something, you know. Now they have it on YouTube. It's a whole other thing. But just, I was a very cynical youngster and I loved and still do love Christmas. But the Yule log just seemed to be a little bit over the top. Now it's just, you know, it's a lot of people think it's funny. You know, it's a lot of people think it's funny. So anyway, we're here today to talk about really the television medium gave birth to the phenomenon. I think it's its own phenomenon of the Christmas animated programming. And I don't think it really was ever contemplated. And Jerry, I'd like your thoughts on this, but I think the first animated Christmas program of note was Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. I think you are absolutely right about that. And it's a special little film too,

because it's an unique, it's unique and odd. And yet I think you, like me, we really liked that short. I mean, that film, it was TV special. It was, uh, Magoo was being, you know, the ghosts were coming for him. He saw his death. I mean, it was kind of a traumatic experience watching that when I was a kid. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast. And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. Oh, it's there. There's some very dark moments of that. And basically they, the show starts with Magoo trying to get through New York traffic.

Of course, we love seeing him in the car. But Magoo trying to get through New York traffic to get to the theater so that he can do a Christmas carol. And he sings, It's Great to Be Back on Broadway. And that whole big opening number. I remember seeing this i was so little but i loved you know i loved everything related to the musical theater and the fact that you know they were doing like fake marquees and the whole design of it and i was already a mr magoo fan but you know as it it ran if i recall correctly on nbc throughout the 60s i think it was yeah

regularly broadcast on nbc if i remember correctly and i was paying attention to those at a sickly young age but 1962 jake is when i first aired on NBC. I didn't know at the time, I wasn't that precocious that I knew that Julie Stein and Bob Merrill had written the score or who they were. But by the time I was four or five, I did. But that is really a wonderful score. And I think there's very upset that there wasn't a soundtrack album. Or if there was, it certainly wasn't anything I ever found in the record store. But you had... It was an odd... Go ahead.

You had wonderful performers. Jack Cassidy did the voice of Bob Cratchit. And Jim Backus was fantastic. And there's the most memorable point of that program was when the Scrooge character has a, you know, going back in time sees himself as a child and he sings, I'm all alone in the world. And it was just devastating. It was so sad. And recently I went to see a really not good, I'm being kind here, really not good, I'm being kind here,

community theater production of A Christmas Carol that was basically using the music from the 1970 Albert Finney film Scrooge, but they decided to interpolate, you know, who cares about copyright? They decided to interpolate that one song from Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. And I thought, okay, I had to sit. A family member was in the show, so I had to sit through it. I don't want to be mean about community theater.

But I was impressed that whoever put this together had the smarts, even if they weren't following the law, had the smarts, even if they weren't following the law, they had the smarts to put that song in because it was such a beautiful, moving thing, but it was created for an animated cartoon. Yeah, I mean, I've got a couple of really ridiculously trivial comments. George has his opinions. I have the color commentary, as they say.

Now, that was obviously produced in the first years of 19 of the 60s when UPA had just been bought by Hank Saperstein. It isn't was no longer the company it was in the 1950s, which was a very innovative, you know, animation studio. And now they were basically Mr. Magoo and Godzilla movies and things like that. And they were very ambitious, though, in the early 60s. That's the same period of time when they did Gay Paris. And the fact that they went out and got, you know, Julie Stein, I mean, the fact that they got those songwriters and that kind of writer, the fact that they made this special and couched it in a way where Mr. Magoo is a person, a star, and we're putting him in this play. I'm not even sure why they did that because they've already done some period pieces with Magoo as it is. But when I

came out here and I was working in the, this is in the, oh gosh late 80s uh i was working in film distribution and i had to do a lot of stuff through oh gosh the studio that the lab that was on highland is it consolidated maybe not it was one of those there's a famous lab laboratory i don't know if you know where i'm even going with this and no i don't the guy at the at the oh you're gonna like this did you ever have to deal with crest yourself crest was a customer of ours when i was employed by mgmu a home video so okay i should say they were a vendor so right and so did you ever deal with a guy at the front who was like their customer rep, a guy named Lee Orgel? Or Lee Orgel? No.

Lee Orgel? Does that ring any bells? No. Okay. No. He was at the front desk. I was not involved in that part of the business at the time. All right.

Well, listen to this. Lee Orgel was the guy. I had to deal with him because I was doing the Japanese animation and we were duplicating prints, film prints from the negatives. And Lee was great. We went out to lunch. We hung out. He was this old guy. He really, and I don't mean to say he's now gone. I'm so sad to say, but he really was. He had an older look to him. He looked like an old guy and, um, the nice guy, sweet as anything. Um, we went out to lunch once and I don't know why I didn't know this. We didn't have IMDB at hand back then. Uh, I was just chatting with him and we started, I started

asking about his career, you know, in, in the biz. And for all I i know he's a guy who's just a customer rep at crest oh it turned out oh my goodness he he was the producer of mr mcgoo's christmas carol his name is on like the dick tracy cartoons he was like he was like saperstein's production guy get ready for this one george then after after he left that I can't say what his whole career is. I can't remember anymore. He started doing screenwriting and he wrote, and it popped in my head the minute I started asking him questions. He wrote that first episode of the cat woman on Batman 66, Julie Newmar, the very first one. I think it's the one with Leslie Gore.

I don't remember that well I can see his name now written by Lee Orgel I can see it and and I'm like I was like holy I mean I couldn't believe and he's you know this is the end of his his you know his you know uh retirement years he was being a rep for Crest you know in the 1980s anyway uh but he was a great guy he was telling me about mr magoo's christmas carol and from his point of view he ran the show you know he was basically the one of the producers he got the songwriters the script together he was there when they uh recorded everything and uh he knew all about it so So I, you know, I'll leave it at that. Well, I happen to also know about him that he didn't get credit for it, but he was the producer of Crusader Rabbit.

Oh, I wish I knew that. What was funny was I think one of the reasons he took a liking to me was I was talking about animation all the time. I think, why would he? I mean, maybe he was taking me out to get more business or something, reasons he took a liking to me was uh i was talking about animation all the time you know i think why would he i mean maybe he was taking me out to get more business or something but but uh this animation thing was like our link and uh uh you know the most interesting people you know somehow were involved in animation no matter what they're doing later years the other thing i remember about that that show was that it was sponsored by Timex. Timex watches.

And, you know, the thing is that this is, we'll be talking about other shows and other sponsors. It was very often a product that would put up the money for these shows to be produced on the networks. And sponsors were providing the coin. And this show, I think, was really forgotten about for many years. And then in the last, I'd say, 10 or 15 years, it resurfaced on video and whatnot. But it doesn't have the cachet that some of the other things we're about to talk about

have that made such an impact on people's lives and never left Christmas programming. left Christmas programming. The next one that I was going to talk about was animation of a different sort, and that's animated puppetry. And if I have my year correct, I think I do. It was NBC that had Rankin and Bass's Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1964. had Rankin and Bass's Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1964.

And I think that was the next big children's Christmas special. So big that they, like Charlie Brown that we'll talk about, they never stopped rerunning it since then. It's always been on. I don't think it had one year. The only thing that changed was that it moved from NBC to CBS. That's the only thing. You know, I remember taking the NBC tour as a child with my parents and they had the puppets that were used in the special behind a glass case. And they showed them.

And the one character that wasn't in the, in the case was the abominable snowman because he was so much larger than all the other puppets. But that show, you know, it was, the score was all written by Johnny Marks, who wrote Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which I think was a hit in the late 40s. And there was a cartoon. Right.

Jerry, you might know the aegis of that cartoon. I've never known how it came to be or what you know it wasn't studio related um but there well this rudolph the red nose ring gear yeah i mean that that was a massive success and i recall that being sponsored by Norelco and having the razors going down the snowy hills with the characters from the show. Yep. Right. Yep. I love that. But I really wanted to buy all of the songs, all of the songs for that show. And, uh, you know, I don't know what he ever did after that. I'm sure other people out there do, but I don't. Um, but I wanted an album of that and there was an album of it, but I didn't get it until I was probably in my twenties or th 30s and I found a used record store. It was out on Decca Records with Burl Ives.

That's a classic score and his songs are classic, you know, Christmas classics. And Rankin and Bass went on to do many other things, but I think that was their first big success. Am I not correct about that? Yeah, they did two things. Again, I'm doing this off the top of my head. Did they do those Wizard of Oz cartoons before that? Yes, they did.

Yeah, I believe so. I believe they did. I could be wrong. Maybe they did it in the following year. But they did the Wizard of Oz. But before that, they did, you'll remember this, The New Adventures of Pinocchio. You remember that? That stop motion?

Oh, yeah. I have very vague memories of that, but yes. That was a WPIX special. Yes. No, it was a series, believe it or not. I know, but I meant. It was a weird little stop motion. It was something unique to WPIX.

I remember the series. These are the things I saw before I went to kindergarten, so we're digging back there, folks. Well, you know, like I was saying before, every eight-year-old kid wanted a Norelco Razor for Christmas after that. Well, or to get one for their old dad. Yes. But that's also part of how these specials and things that were in primetime were geared towards adults for the most part, which is another thing.

Let's see, a little more backstory on some of the things you asked about. Obviously, the song Rudolph the Red- Nose Reindeer was a big hit. I think Gene Autry had the record on that in the late 40s. What happened was Rudolph, I don't understand the whole history. I think Rudolph was based off of, it had something to do with like the Montgomery Re reward department stores or something like that and and that they sponsored a seven minute cartoon that was done by the jam handy company in detroit uh supervised by max fleischer oh my god and uh it's still around it's it's pd so it's all around but max fleischer called in some of his new york animators from the days. They made this one-off special. It's a Christmas cartoon like we were fishing for before,

a seven-minute cartoon in Technicolor. And it was sold as theaters. It wasn't distributed by any studio. It was just like Montgomery Ward had booked it out. It was like a promotion for them. And that was the story. Obviously, the song became a classic throughout the 1950s. Rankin-Bass, even today, people refer to the style of animation there as Rankin-Bass style. But Rankin and Bass were two TV executives who got the idea very early on in television animation to outsource doing animation. A Wizard of Oz was actually done in Canada and Pinocchio and Rudolph were done in Japan. It's actually Japanese animation, if you think about it.

It was a little studio in Japan doing funky, you know, very low cost animation for commercials in Japan. And they made a contract with them and they did write it here. They did score it here. They did voice it here. They did design the characters. Sometimes Rankin and Bass let the Japanese do it. And some of their stuff has an anime feel to it. But Rudolph was designed by their American crew that they had New Yorkers, actually New Yorkers. Rankin and Bass were located in New York. They got a lot of people who worked on like Underdog and things like that. That was out of New York as well. So that's sort of the genesis

of that. And like I said, it was the thing that put them on the map and they made insane deals. They had deals for Christmas specials and holiday specials for the next 20 years. You know, they did Easter and New Year's and everything you can think of. Plus they did features, you know, many have fallen away, but features like Mad Monster Party and things like that. Yeah, they ended up, they were, I think, sponsored by a company called Videocraft. I think sponsored by a company called video craft. And I don't know the, the corporate, you know,

chronology of, of them. And I know it's been documented. I know there's like a Rankin Bass expert out there, but in 1974, they broke off of these videoocraft people and went on their own and existed on their own for over a decade. And then they ended up getting purchased by Lorimar, who ended up getting purchased by Warner Brothers. So all the Rankin-Bass material from 1974 on is with us. And that's why we have things like Rudolph and Frosty's Fourth of July. But we don't have the original, most beloved specials that feature those characters.

But they kept milking them. And then they went into making some live action films, which were Japanese co-productions. And we released some of them in the Warner Archive, most recently the Bermuda Depths. Cool. Do you have the rights to The Last Unicorn? That was one of their films. I believe

that one we don't have. And the one I think that we think we have, but we haven't been able to find the elements, is The Ivory Ape. You know, it's very... The Ivory Ape.

I've never heard of it. And it's, I think it's the Japanese connection because on the Bermuda Depths and the Last Dinosaur with Richard Boone, we can't find the original camera negative for the Last Dinosaur. We put both of them out on dvd through the warner archive but with the bermuda depths we were able to uh we had the original negative and we did a beautiful blu-ray which came out not too long ago and we want to do the same for the last dinosaur dinosaur which has an awesome uh end uh credit theme song and i'm being a little bit uh cynical there but um people when they saw that we put out the bermuda depths they were like well where's the last dinosaur we want that too so there there is a faction of Rankin Bass fans throughout the world. You know, they're out there.

And there's a reason for that because, I mean, if you think about how many people saw and continue to see, Rudolph is now passing its 50th, 55th anniversary. It will be 60 in three years. You know, just Christmas programming in general, Jerry, you made this very good point, is mostly geared towards adults. And it goes back, the earliest days of television,

Minotti wrote this opera, A Mall in the Night Visitors, that was written for NBC. And, you know, that was shown every year and it was done live until they could record it. Then all of the big stars would have Christmas specials. Every year, Bing Crosby had a Christmas special in the 60s and brought out his second family, you know, because he had a second wife after his first wife passed away. And he'd come out every Christmas with the annual special right up to his death. And the last one he did, he did that duet with David Bowie. But every big star had a Christmas special,

and it was the animated ones that have survived and gone on to be perennial broadcast treasures, whereas the adult specials have faded into obscurity. And some of them are probably lost because television preservation is even worse than film preservation. And thankfully, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was made on film and it was restored by it. The irony is that it is now owned by Comcast, Universal, NBC. So the network that originally broadcast it now owns it after going through so many other owners in the meantime. So I don't know if they're still showing it on CBS,

but I think it'll probably end up back on NBC at some point. The year after Rudolph was probably, I'd say, one of the most impactful Christmas animated specials. And Jerry, you know what I'm talking about. I think you're talking about Charlie Brown Christmas. Indeed I am. Yeah, a lot of classic aspects to that one. I mean, this is timeless.

Absolutely timeless. But what it what it did was Peanuts comic strip had been around for 15 years and was not. Not unknown, but it wasn't hugely popular and there there wasn't Peanuts merchandise everywhere. hugely popular and there were, there wasn't peanuts merchandise everywhere. There were these little books that you, there were buried in bookstores with compilations of the comic strip, but it was basically not a promoted marketed property. And the idea of doing a Charlie Brown Christmas, I think, Jerry, you'll probably know more. I don't know that much about the prehistory of it, you know, like how they approached Charles Scholes. And do you know how that came to be?

Yeah, I mean, again, I'm not, you know, researching my references here, but in a nutshell, pre-Charlie Brown's Christmas, and I don't remember the exact year, early 60s. Remember there was a Tennessee Ernie Ford show? Do you remember that at all? Do you know anything about that? It was a week ago. I know about it. I did not ever see it. Okay. The Tennessee Ernie Ford show, we have to look up what network that was on, a primetime series, for whatever reason, was sponsored, well, they were sponsored by Ford.

And Ford had some deal with the Peanuts characters. They licensed, it's kind of like how in later years, I forgot what the company was, but there's a Metropolitan Life, I think it is, had a deal with Peanuts. Anyway, the Tennessee Ernie Ford Show, they commissioned brand new animation of the Peanuts characters to open up that show every week. Different animation weekly of the characters presenting the Tennessee Ernie Ford Show and a little bit of funny little skit with those characters. They'd also appear in the commercials during the show, somehow talking about the cars. That animation was done by Playhouse Pictures, one of the big one of the studios here in L.A.

The director in charge of that was Bill Melendez, who was an ex-UPA, ex-Warner Brothers animator, was working at this Playhouse Pictures. And he honed the drawing. So it was perfectly Charles Schultz. It looked just like Schultz animated it himself. He had gotten that talent from having worked at UPA where he was in charge of films like Madeline, where they copied the style of the artist, the original artist. That was a new thing back in UPA in the 1950s.

Well, he did that with the Peanuts characters. And as far as I know, the story was just like with the other ones you said, they had to have a sponsor. I believe they got Coca-Cola and they went to they pitched Coca-Cola. I'm going to say they it was producer Lee Mendelsohn and I guess Charles Schultz himself. And they had some animation of what it could look like. It looked like the Tennessee Ernie Ford show. And they they had a pitch doing the Charlie Brown Christmas.

You know, Schultz was the only person after, with Christmas and beyond, he's the only cartoonist creator of a comic strip, whatever, who actually wrote all the episodes of all those specials were all written by Charlie Schultz. I can't think of another case like that in this country. Anyway, they got it on the air. There was a lot of objection to it because of the religious content of it. But they ultimately gave in. They thought it was going to be a bomb.

Of course, it was an overnight raiding, you know, gigantic thing. And I mean, that's how it got there that's that's roughly how it got there and once it was there once again never left and of course uh schultz uh obliged by doing specials on obviously the great pumpkin was next and uh they've done every holiday and they've gone way beyond that now i think was it you that know i forgot how many specials there were, like 60. There's some crazy number like that. Yeah, it got to the point where I lost count. But, you know, I remember-

You could run one of those specials once a week. Seeing that first broadcast and being so blown away. And then, not unlike other kids at the time wanting peanuts merchandise. And it was interesting because the peanuts merchandising rights were owned by, if I'm, my memory's correct, a housewife like on the West coast. housewife like on the West Coast and she became incredibly wealthy and held on to those rights as long as she could. I know there's a situation like that. I'm not sure if it was. I don't know.

I'm going to be honest that I don't know that. I know that United Features Syndicate, I think, who owns the comic strip. But Schultz made, you know, he was cut in on any merchandise. He made a fortune off of that. Oh, for sure. And they became like a joke that, you know, you can buy Charlie Brown staplers and scotch tape dispensers. And I mean, anything you can think of, there was a Peanuts. I still have a Peanuts garbage can in my bathroom that I bought years ago. I mean, it was every little thing in the world. And, of course, they appeared on Dolly Madison Cakes labels, which was one of their sponsors as well.

Along with Coke. Yeah. There was a woman and there was a situation that has to do with Winnie the Pooh. I may be getting too far afield here, but there was a woman. That's a whole other thing. And that doesn't involve us. Okay. But it's not related.

I know that's a fun story to talk about off the air. Yeah. Well, that's the situation, like you mentioned, that's where she's like a housewife that happened to have the rights to Winnie the Pooh. There was a thing like that. Disney fought her for decades. I think they finally settled out of court. But anyway, but I digress.

Well, the year after Charlie Brown Christmas and the phenomenal reception that it had, I have to think that this was probably in the planning stages even before that. But what I'm referring to is the fact that the very next year, Charlie Brown Christmas, of course, was repeated. That was the byproduct of a longtime friendship between Chuck Jones, who had not that long ago moved from the shuttered Warner Brothers Animation Division to MGM, where he was taking on the task of making new Tom and Jerry cartoons. taking on the task of making new Tom and Jerry cartoons. And as part of that, he was also doing other animation. So with Chuck Jones' arrival at MGM, he had to take on the very unusual task of taking characters that he did not develop, task of taking characters that he did not develop that were well developed and popularized for decades prior by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera and add his own touch to them. But his Tom and Jerry cartoons are more Chuck Jones cartoons than they are necessarily similar to the way we're used to

seeing Tom and Jerry. But during his time at MGM, he worked with some of the animators he worked with at Warner Brothers, as well as some other people. And he didn't just do Tom and Jerry. And I know that he made a one-off cartoon that is very near and dear to your heart, Jerry, if I'm correct in my assumption. Well, you are. You're talking about The Dot and the Line, which Chuck was hungry to make his own cartoons, whatever he was wanted to do. You know, when he was at Warner's, and I know you know these, George, at the very end, in the last few years he was there, he made an unusual cartoon called High Note, which was nominated for an Academy Award. That's

the one with musical notes on a staff, you know, almost a precursor to Dot and the Line. And then he made another one called Now Hear This, which is just a bizarro cartoon about sound effects and a devil's eardrum. And I mean, you got it. He was trying some new things. He was trying to break out a little bit when Warner Brothers closed, when Chuck and everybody was let go. You know, he struck out. He started a studio with somebody else. They got a client, which was MGM, that was desperately looking to do new Tom and Jerry cartoons. And they seem to have a priority.

They seem to have a, I don't know this absolutely, but it just seems like they had an agenda that has to be an Oscar-winning animator. We can't get Hanna-Barbera back. They're making cartoons and winning Emmys. And they just won't come back to work for us anymore. But we've got to get an Oscar winner. And that didn't quite work out when they first got Gene Deitch, you know, a few years earlier, he had won an Oscar for short. And, you know, his cartoons being made in Prague in Europe,

in behind the Iron Curtain, weren't exactly what anybody wanted with Tom and Jerry. Then they were looking for another person like that. And luckily for them, Chuck Jones was available. But Chuck, Chuck, who had created, you know, Coyote and Roadrunner and Marvin the Martian and on and on, he wanted to do his thing. He was now doing this like kind of experimental thing, you know, where he was trying to create characters, personality animation out of things that aren't characters. Meaning at Warner's, he did that cartoon with the musical notes. And here was a perfect thing. He found this book, I happen to have a copy of it, of The Dot and the Line. And he said, this would make a great, I can see this. I can add personalities to The Dot

and to The Line. And he got permission from MGM. They funded doing this short. They wanted an Oscar winner. They got an Oscar winning cartoon. The Dot and the Line won for Best Animated Short in 1965. And I believe that opened the door for Chuck to do some more things. He bought the book by the same author of The Dot and the Line, Norton Juster, who also did The Phantom Tollbooth. They got the rights to that. And of course, you know, they made a feature of The Phantom Tollbooth. I believe, I have to tell you, I don't know the facts, but I believe that he went to theater Geisel and they then went to, and they pitched it to MGM TV special, you know, how the Grinch stole Christmas. That was, of course, it's a classic. It was spectacular.

I saw it when it first aired, it was beloved immediately. You know, it was just a fantastic few years for Chuck at MGM. He was one last thing I want to say about Chuck during that period. He was very anti TV cartoon. He was he didn't like what Hanna-Barbera were doing on TV, even though they were being very successful. It wasn't his thing. It wasn't what he thought animation could be. So he was trying his best and he succeeded in maintaining making Chuck Jones cartoons, even after he left Warner's. First at MGM and later on, I mean, and later on through the 70s doing animated specials. And then ultimately in 1975 or 6, I think it was, he came back to Warner Brothers and continued on from there with Bugs Bunny Roadrunner movie and a bunch of animated specials. So Chuck did what he wanted to do, despite really the odds being against him during that period. Yeah. And really the collaboration between Chuck Jones and Dr. Seuss of taking How the Grinch Stole Christmas. of taking How the Grinch Stole Christmas, turning it into a television special,

adding things into the special that were, you know, the book itself didn't lend itself to a half hour TV special. It was a very short little Dr. Seuss book. And Chuck added color, figuratively and literally, into the story. And he added music by Albert Haig. And I believe, if I'm correct, and I don't know if I'm, I should know this, especially since I did the soundtrack album. But I think Dr. Seuss wrote the lyrics and Albert Haig wrote the music.

the lyrics and Albert Haig wrote the music. But they had an original score and it was planned to broadcast on CBS in December of 1966. And the unusual nature of this is that MGM Records had to have a soundtrack album in record stores by Christmas time when that special appeared on CBS in December of 1966. But in order to do that, they actually recorded the songs in a record, maybe it was Radio Recorders or one of the regular music recording studios, not at the MGM lot, where they recorded the music for the show with different artists, with the exception of Thoreau Ravenscroft, who did the unmistakable Tony the Tiger voice and saying, we can't sing on podcasts, but you're a mean one, Mr. Grinch. And he actually recorded that twice because the recording made for the album, which said original soundtrack album, was actually not a soundtrack album. It was kind of a hybrid because the Boris Karloff narration was the same in both the television special as well as the record album. But the music was recorded prior to the special being completed. And the music for the television special was recorded probably about two or three weeks before airtime. I mean, it was that tight. I learned all of this when I was working on producing a new How the Grinch Stole Christmas true soundtrack album from the original recordings made for the television soundtrack.

And noticing how different they were and single voices versus choral voices. And it was an eye-opening experience. And it wasn't unusual at the time for a record to be out in the marketplace and say original soundtrack recording when, in fact, it was a studio re-recording. Another famous example of that is Ben-Hur, a huge selling album with Miklos Rosa recording. They didn't want to have to pay the musicians union here in the United States, so they recorded it in Italy where they didn't have to pay the musicians union fees, but they marketed as the soundtrack album.

Wow. The actual soundtrack recordings didn't come out until the late 90s when we had our Turner Classic Movies music, Rhino Movie music to joint venture. And that was the first legitimate release of the actual soundtrack recordings. So that whole line of recordings was quite successful and quite diverse. And putting an album of Grinch along with a cartoon Chuck would do later that isn't related to Christmas of Horton Hears a Who, the music and the soundtrack for both of those half hour specials made up the CD that I had worked on. But I think that the How the Grinch Stole Christmas special is more popular than ever. It inspired two subsequent feature films.

It inspired a Broadway musical. It inspired a Broadway musical, although I don't know if Seussical the Musical is an adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I think it's all sorts of things and was the butt of many jokes because it was a huge success in the ratings and has never left the air and continues to get remastered and restored as technology improves. And it is a perennial both on broadcast television, cable television, on home entertainment. Everywhere you look, there's How the Grinch Stole Christmas. And You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch is a perennial song. Right now, I've got Sirius XM in my car with the holiday favorites, and I hear it. They still play it all the time. So, I mean, it's, by the way, a lot of stuff from these classics. The Charlie Brown Christmas music is also a perennial, all of,

you know, pretty much all the show, all of the shows we've talked about in this hour, maybe except for Magoo. I can't think of a song from Magoo that you didn't sing already that, that I hear repeated, you know, but, but, you know, Rudolph, you know, and Grinch and Charlie Brown, the musics lived forever too. Well, and I think of all of them, the most kind of different approach in terms of music. Everything about A Charlie Brown Christmas was different. Having the Vince Giraldi trio, that jazz, those original compositions, Linus and Lucy is the famous theme, and then Christmas Time is here, and the jazz version of O Christmas Tree, I love that. And music is so integral in animation, music and animation.

You know, that's why we have Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies. But the way all of these television specials, the animated television specials could not have made the impact that they made without their own unique songs. And each one of them had different kinds of music that's kind of remarkable yeah yeah i'm trying to think if they ever did a rock and roll animated christmas special and nothing is coming to mind but i bet i'm wrong coming to mind to my mind but i have a feeling the answer would be yes they probably did something really awful and tacky in the 70s. Yeah, I can't think of – I can't think of awful and tacky. I can't tell you what it is, but I don't remember anything.

Was there a – for example, was there ever like a – let's say an Osmonds animated Christmas special? You know what I mean? Something like that. No, I think if they did a Christmas special, it was the real brothers, not their animated versions. Right, right. I don't think, I don't think, you know what, I'm going to go look that up and next time we do a case. No, it's a fascinating subject, but we could do a whole diatribe just on the relationship of music and animation.

Absolutely. Which is a fascinating subject into and of itself, because if you think about it, every classic cartoon studio, whether Disney, MGM, Warner Brothers, even Paramount, even Terry Toons with their really cheap sounding music, even Terry tunes with their really cheap sounding music, they all had a very, you know, the by-product of a specific style. Yep.

It's a combination of the musician. It's a combination of the composer and the, and where they're recording and how, you know, like, you know, are they in a giant stage with X number of musicians or are they in a closet with four musicians like Terry Toons? Right. But the thing is, there's a I had once had an opportunity. There was a Walter Lance cartoon from the from the 30s. And there was a brief moment when the harmonizing studio closed the MGM Happy Harmonies.

And then, as you know, Fred Quimby, they had to reorganize their in-house animation studio, which that's when they started doing Captain and the Kids. And they had problems with Milt Gross doing a few cartoons. And then they brought back harmonizing as employees of MGM. But my point is, during that period of management shifts and Harmon and Ising leaving and this and that, Scott Bradley, the musician for Harmon and Ising, who would go on to have the rest of his career at MGM doing the cartoons, he was looking around. He was out of work for a few moments or whatever. And he did a cartoon. He did one cartoon for Walter Lance. It's a black and white cartoon with cats. I don't even know the name of it right now.

But I was going through these Walter Lance cartoons and suddenly out of the blue, I hit this black and white cartoon. Oh, my God, it sounds like a Tom and Jerry soundtrack. I'm like, what? And then and it all came. I got me. I realized right there. It's the musician.

It's the it's the composer. You know, Scott Bradley, if he goes to another place to do music, it still sounds like Scott Bradley. Well, the great thing about Scott Bradley is, I think about Carl Stalling at Warner Brothers and Scott Bradley at MGM. Totally. Both had this amazing talent, these amazing orchestras, because the Warner Brothers and MGM orchestras would work all day scoring a feature. And during the last hour of the workday, they might have made a pit stop at the bar across the street, at least at MGM. I know they did. They would go across the

street and have a couple of drinks and come back and record the cartoon. I know that because I've listened to the recording sessions and the musicians are rowdy as hell on the MGM recordings. I have not heard as many of the Warner at Warner Brothers than at MGM, because MGM had songs written for MGM movies, whereas Warner Brothers had songs written for Warner Brothers movies in addition to the three biggest music publishers of the prior 30 years before Soundhead and all these different popular songs that dated back to the turn of the century, all the way to the end of the 20s. And so we have, you know, cartoons called like Ain't She Tweet or Ain't She Tweety or, you know, you know, that are based on some of those songs. And MGM didn't have that same thing. Carl Stalling would find a song that was exactly appropriate to the scene in a cartoon and he would brilliantly mix it into the score.

That was his genius. And of course, Scott Bradley equally. You know, how many times did he make great use of the trolley song in an MGM cartoon or the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe. I mean, you know, just... Off to see the wizard, isn't it? Right. Always. It's really quite remarkable. But would you say that How the Grinch Stole Christmas

was the last landmark animated Christmas special or was there another to follow? Because the ones that followed, I think, didn't have this humongous impact the way the ones we've just been talking about did. Well, I mean, that's certainly a conversation that our listeners would definitely want to debate. I mean, there's things like Frosty the Snowman. Well, yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Santa Claus is coming to town like Frosty the Snowman. Well, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Santa Claus is coming to town, Frosty the Snowman. But they were not as good as Rudolph. You know, the words like Rudolph set the bar so high that nothing Rankin and Bass did after that came close. Well, those first ones, those first four that we've been talking about are are it. They're they're the establishment of of that new. What's the right word? I mean, specials were a major thing for at least 15 years. Maybe one could say 25 years.

They're still making specials, Christmas specials right now based on all sorts of things. I just saw the there's a stop motion elf special based on the movie Elf, and it's done in the style of Rankin Bass. And it is Jim Parsons did the voice. Yeah. I mean, you know, there's still good stuff being made, but the impact and the long lasting, the classicness, if that's a word, of those first four, I mean, that's, you know, really, if that's a word, of those first four. I mean, that's, you know, really, there's almost nothing else I can think of to add to it.

Well, I think that that's why we're here, because we just thought this would be such a good topic to talk about at this most wonderful time of the year. I hope you have enjoyed our Christmas special with George Feltenstein and Jerry Beck as they shared stories about some of the first animated Christmas specials, both on film and television. You can find links to all of their podcasts on the website at www.theextras.tv. And be sure and subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast provider so that you don't miss any of their future episodes.

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