Rankin/Bass Animated Entertainment (founded and formerly known as Videocraft International, Ltd. and Rankin/Bass Productions, Inc.) was an American animation studio located in New York City. It was known for its seasonal television specials, usually done in stop motion animation. Rankin/Bass's stop-motion productions are recognizable by their visual style of doll-like characters with spheroid body parts.
Nearly all of the studio's animation was outsourced to Japanese animation companies, such as Toei Animation, MOM Production, Mushi Productions and Topcraft. Rankin/Bass was one of the first Western studios to outsource their low-budget animated television and film productions to animation studios in foreign countries; the others that already practiced animation outsourcing include Total Television and King Features Syndicate TV in New York City; and Hanna-Barbera and Jay Ward Productions in Los Angeles, California.
History
The company was founded in New York City by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass on September 14, 1960, as Videocraft International, Ltd. The majority of Rankin/Bass' work, including all of their "Animagic" stop-motion productions (which they were well known for), were created in Tokyo, Japan. Throughout the 1960s, the Animagic productions were headed by Japanese stop-motion animator Tadahito Mochinaga at his studio, MOM Production. He was credited for his supervision as "Tad Mochinaga".
Rankin/Bass' traditional animation output was done by several animation studios such as Toei Animation, Eiken (formerly known as TCJ), Dentsu, Mushi Production, and especially Topcraft, which was formed on February 1, 1972, by Toei animator Toru Hara (who was credited as an animation supervisor in some of Rankin/Bass' specials). While several of Topcraft's staff, including Hara and industry legends such as Hayao Miyazaki, established Studio Ghibli in the wake of Topcraft's closure, others formed another studio: Pacific Animation Corporation, which continued working on Rankin/Bass' titles until it was bought by Disney in 1988.
In addition to the "name" talent that provided the narration for the specials, Rankin/Bass had its own company of voice actors. For the studio's early work, this group was based in Toronto, Ontario, where recording was supervised by veteran CBC announcer Bernard Cowan. The Canadian group included actors such as Paul Soles, Larry D. Mann, Billie Mae Richards, Paul Kligman and Carl Banas.
Maury Laws served as musical director for almost all of the animated films and television programs. Romeo Muller was another consistent contributor, serving as screenwriter for many of Rankin/Bass' best-known productions including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), The Little Drummer Boy (1968), and Frosty the Snowman (1969).
Output
One of Videocraft's first projects was an independently produced television series in 1961, The New Adventures of Pinocchio, based on the Italian author Carlo Collodi's 1883 novel The Adventures of Pinocchio and featuring "Animagic", a stop motion animation process using figurines or puppets (a process already pioneered by George Pal's "Puppetoons" and Art Clokey's Gumby and Davey and Goliath), managed by Mochinaga and his MOM Production staffers for Videocraft with Dentsu. This was followed by another independently produced series in 1961, Tales of the Wizard of Oz, Videocraft's adaptation of the 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, as well as their first production to use traditional cel animation. Unlike many of Rankin/Bass' works, Tales of the Wizard of Oz was animated by Crawley Films in Ottawa, headed by F. R. Crawley.
Rudolph era
One of the mainstays of the business was holiday-themed animated specials for airing on American television. In 1964, the company produced a special for NBC and sponsor General Electric, later owner of NBC. It was a stop motion animated adaptation of Robert L. May's 1939 story "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and the 1949 song it inspired, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", written by May's brother-in-law, Johnny Marks. Almost two decades earlier, in 1948, it had been made into a cartoon by Max Fleischer, brother and former partner of Dave Fleischer, as a traditional cel animated short for the Jam Handy Film Company.
With the American actor Burl Ives in the role of Sam the snowman, the narrator, Canadian actress Billie Mae Richards as the voice of the main title character, Rudolph, and an original orchestral score composed by Marks himself, Rudolph became one of the most popular, and longest-running Christmas specials in television history: it remained with NBC until around 1972 when it moved to CBS. In 2019, for its 55th anniversary, the special was also aired on Freeform as part of its "25 Days of Christmas" programming block, although it continued to air on CBS under a separate license with Universal, but in 2024, it came back to NBC for its 60th anniversary.
The special contained seven original songs. In 1965, a new song was filmed in "Animagic" to replace "We're a Couple of Misfits", titled "Fame and Fortune".
The success of Rudolph led to numerous other Christmas specials. The first was The Cricket on the Hearth in 1967, with two live-action announcements by Danny Thomas, continuity and character designs by Don Duga and Paul Coker, and animation by Jiro Yanase's TCJ, followed by the 1968 Thanksgiving special The Mouse on the Mayflower, told by Tennessee Ernie Ford and animated by Kenzo Masaoka, Sanae Yamamoto, and Yasuji Murata's Toei Animation. Paul Coker Jr. would go on to design characters and production for more than 40 Rankin-Bass specials and episodes.
Other holiday specials Many of their other specials, like Rudolph, were based on popular Christmas songs. In 1968, the British-American actress Greer Garson provided dramatic narration for The Little Drummer Boy, based on the traditional song and set during the birth of the baby Jesus Christ, and starring the Puerto Rican actor José Ferrer as the voice of Ben Haramed. During that year, Videocraft International, Ltd. (whose logo dominated the Rankin/Bass logo in the closing credit sequences) changed its name to Rankin/Bass Productions, Inc., and adopted a new logo, retaining a Videocraft byline in their closing credits until 1971 when Tomorrow Entertainment, a unit of the General Electric Company, acquired the production company. The "Animagic" process for The Little Drummer Boy took place at MOM Production, which was renamed Video Tokyo Production after Tadahito Mochinaga left Japan for his return trip to China following the completion of the animation for Mad Monster Party?, thus ending his collaboration with Rankin/Bass. Takeo Nakamura, the director of Sanrio's 1979 stop motion feature Nutcracker Fantasy,"Saniro's Stop-Motion Nutcracker Fantasy to be Screened in LA" . Anime News Network. was among the "Animagic" team, but he was never credited as a supervisor.
The following year, in 1969, Jimmy Durante sang and told the story of Frosty the Snowman, with Jackie Vernon voicing Frosty."The Rankin/Bass 'Frosty' Specials on Records". Greg Ehrbar, Cartoon Research. It was based on Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins' 1950 song of the same name, and also introduced Billy De Wolfe as the voice of Professor Hinkle, a greedy magician who tries to steal away the magic hat that brought Frosty to life to become a billionaire. Mushi Production, an animation studio founded in 1961 and formerly led by the manga artist Osamu Tezuka (creator of Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion and Ambassador Magma), handled the animation for the special with supervision by Yusaku "Steve" Nakagawa, a layout artist and character designer from Hanna-Barbera Productions in Los Angeles, California.
The year 1970 brought another Christmas special, Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town."Rankin/Bass 'Santa Claus is Comin' to Town' on Records". Greg Ehrbar, Cartoon Research. Rankin/Bass enlisted Fred Astaire as narrator S.D. (Special Delivery) Kluger, a mailman answering children's questions about Santa Claus and telling his origin story. The story involved young Kris Kringle, voiced by Mickey Rooney, and the villainous Burgermeister Meisterburger, voiced by Paul Frees. Kringle later marries the town's schoolteacher, Miss Jessica, voiced by Robie Lester. Kizo Nagashima, the associate director of Rankin/Bass' previous productions, was credited as a production supervisor.
In 1971, Rankin/Bass produced their first Easter television special, Here Comes Peter Cottontail, with the voices of Danny Kaye as the narrator Seymour S. Sassafrass, Vincent Price as the evil rabbit January Q. Irontail, and Casey Kasem from Hanna-Barbera's Scooby-Doo franchise as the title character Peter Cottontail. It was not based upon the title song by Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins, but on a 1957 novel by Priscilla and Otto Friedrich titled The Easter Bunny That Overslept. This was the second and final "Animagic" production to be supervised by Kizo Nagashima. Steve Nakagawa was also involved in this special as a continuity designer. In 1977, Fred Astaire returned as S. D. Kluger in The Easter Bunny Is Comin' to Town, telling the tale of the Easter Bunny's origins. From there, Rankin/Bass used Masaki Iizuka as an associate producer, and Akikazu Kono as an "Animagic" supervisor. Back in 1973, Iizuka was the production assistant of Marco—a live-action musical film based on the biography of Italian merchant, explorer, and writer Marco Polo, filmed at Toho Company in Tokyo and on location throughout East Asia, and featuring Kono's "Animagic" sequence of the Tree People. Previously, he was met by Rankin during the animation production of the Halloween television special Mad, Mad, Mad Monsters at Mushi Production in 1972, and became an integral part of Rankin/Bass for many years.
In 1974, Rankin/Bass Productions was relaunched once again as an independent production company and produced another Christmas special for television, The Year Without a Santa Claus, featuring Shirley Booth, voicing narrator Mrs. Claus; Mickey Rooney, returning as the voice of Santa Claus; and supporting characters Snow Miser (voiced by Dick Shawn) and Heat Miser (voiced by George S. Irving). It was the first Rankin/Bass "Animagic" production on which Akikazu Kono and puppet maker Ichiro Komuro share in the production supervision. It was remade as a poorly received live-action/special effects TV movie shown on NBC in 2006 starring Delta Burke and John Goodman as Mrs. Claus and Santa.
Throughout the 1970s, Rankin/Bass, with Video Tokyo and the former Toei Animation employee Toru Hara's Topcraft, continued to produce animated sequels to its classic specials, including the teaming of Rudolph and Frosty in 1979's Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July, with the voice of Ethel Merman as Lilly Loraine, the ringmistress of a seaside circus, and Rooney again returning as Santa. The special features cameos by characters from several other Rankin/Bass holiday specials, including Big Ben the Clockwork Whale from Rudolph's Shiny New Year and Jack Frost from Frosty's Winter Wonderland. Later that year, Jack appeared in his own special, Jack Frost. Narrated by Buddy Hackett, it tells the story of the winter sprite's love for a mortal woman menaced by the evil Cossack king, Kubla Kraus (Paul Frees, in addition to Kubla, voiced Jack Frost's overlord, Father Winter). In this special, Jack's voice was performed by Robert Morse, who previously voiced Stuffy in 1976's The First Easter Rabbit (loosely based on Margery Williams' The Velveteen Rabbit), and young Ebenezer Scrooge in 1978's The Stingiest Man in Town (based on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol).