In 1960, Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass founded a company in New York City that would go on to produce some of the most popular animated Christmas specials. Founded as Videocraft International and later renamed Rankin/Bass Productions, the company became famous for stop-motion TV specials like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), The Little Drummer Boy (1968), Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town (1970) and The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974).
Because these decades-old specials air every year, they’ve become a holiday tradition for multiple generations of viewers. Here are some things you might not know Rankin/Bass’ Christmas productions, both the popular (Rudolph) and obscure.
1. Rudolph’s Red Nose Was a Recent Invention
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer premiered in 1964 on NBC as part of The General Electric Fantasy Hour. To create Rudolph’s glowing red nose, animators used a type of LED lightbulb that General Electric engineer Nick Holonyak Jr. had invented just a couple of years before. It was the first LED bulb to produce visible light, and the red glow it emitted made it the perfect way to represent Rudolph’s nose.
“Rudolph was intended only to be a two-year special and promotion, but it became something much bigger because of the ratings,” says Rick Goldschmidt, a historian of Rankin/Bass Productions who has published several books on the company and its specials. Rudolph has aired every year since its debut, making it the longest-running holiday TV special.
2. Animation Was Created in Japan
Rankin/Bass hired Japanese companies to animate almost all of their TV specials. The Tokyo studio MOM Productions, founded by pioneering animator Tadahito “Tad” Mochinaga, did the stop-motion animation for Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and The Little Drummer Boy. After MOM Productions changed its name to Video Tokyo Productions, the company animated Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town and The Year Without a Santa Claus.
Rankin/Bass also used Japanese studios for its cel animation specials. Mushi Production animated Frosty the Snowman (1969), and Topcraft—the studio where famous animator Hayao Miyazaki worked before founding Studio Ghibli—also did the animation for a few lesser-known Christmas specials like ’Twas the Night Before Christmas (1974), Frosty’s Winter Wonderland (1976) and The Stingiest Man in Town (1978).
3. ‘Rudolph’ Used Over 200 Stop-Motion Puppets
MOM Productions crafted over 200 stop-motion puppets for Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and it’s unclear where they ended up. Animators probably repurposed some of them for other animated specials by removing the heads and redressing the bodies.
“There was one guy in Japan several years ago [who] sent me pictures of a head from The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus,” Goldschmidt says, referring to the lesser-known 1985 Rankin/Bass TV special. At the time, “I thought it was kind of weird that he just had the head, but now I understand that the bodies were reusable. They didn’t have to make as many bodies, all they had to do was change the clothing on them.”
The only publicly-identified Rudolph puppets never actually appeared in the TV special. In 2020, puppets of Santa Claus and Rudolph that were incorrectly identified as the ones from the special sold for $368,000 at an auction. Later, Goldschmidt discovered these figures were actually only used in U.S. promotional materials. He says that if any original figures from the TV special exist, they’re probably in the personal family collections of the animators who worked on the production in Japan.
4. Not All Rankin/Bass Holiday Specials Were Popular
You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, but do you know Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey? The 1977 special told the story of Nestor, a donkey ridiculed for his long ears, who ended up taking Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem to give birth to Jesus.
It turns out that while Rankin/Bass’ best-known productions are their Christmas specials, some of their least-known productions are also their Christmas specials. These less popular productions include Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July (1979), Pinocchio’s Christmas (1980) and The Leprechauns’ Christmas Gold (1981).
5. Many Specials Had Very Famous Voice Actors
Throughout the many decades that Rankin/Bass specials have aired, younger viewers may have recognized some familiar voices without quite realizing which famous actors were behind them.
The singer Burl Ives played the narrator Sam the Snowman in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and the gravelly-voiced comedian Jimmy Durante narrated Frosty the Snowman. In Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town, dancer Fred Astaire played mailman and narrator Special Delivery “S.D.” Kluger, while Mickey Rooney voiced the role of Kris Kringle, the man who became Santa Claus. Rooney also played Santa again in The Year Without a Santa Claus.
6. The Actors for Rudolph and Hermey Sang Duets in Their Retirement Home
In Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Rudolph and Hermey the Elf sing a duet about being misfits. In real life, the voice actors for these characters ended up living in the same community for older and disabled artists, where they performed this song for other residents.
While living at the Performing Arts Lodge in Toronto, actress Billie Mae Richards (who voiced Rudolph) and actor Paul Soles (who voiced Hermey) frequently entertained their neighbors by singing “We’re a Couple of Misfits.” Soles discussed these performances with a Toronto news outlet shortly before his death in 2021. (Richards died in 2010.)
7. TV Networks Edit and Change the Specials Over the Years
If you’ve seen Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town, you may remember a character named Topper the Penguin. That is, unless you watched a broadcast version in the early 1980s in which editors changed its name to “Waddles,” supposedly due to a lawsuit over its original name. After a brief period as Waddles, the penguin’s name soon became Topper again.
TV networks edit and change Rankin/Bass specials all the time. In fact, the very first broadcast version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1964 was different from the version that aired the next year. Goldschmidt says that in 1965, editors added the song “Fame and Fortune” and a new end-credits sequence that introduced some spelling errors.
TV networks have made many other changes to the specials over the years, though it’s not always clear why. One of the most frequently cut songs is “My World Is Beginning Today,” from Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town.
