How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (also known as Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!) is a 1966 American animated television special, directed and co-produced by Chuck Jones. Based on the 1957 children's book of the same name by Dr. Seuss, the special features the voice of Boris Karloff (who also narrated the special) as the Grinch. It tells the story of the Grinch, who tries to ruin Christmas for the townsfolk of Whoville below his mountain hideaway.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas! was produced by The Cat in the Hat Productions in association with the television and animation divisions of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. It completed production in a year and originally aired in the United States on CBS on December 18, 1966. The special is considered a perennial holiday special.

Plot

The Grinch is a cranky, grumpy, mean, surly, antisocial green creature with a heart "two sizes too small" who lives alone in a snowbound cave on the side of Mt. Crumpit, overlooking the town of Whoville. He especially hates Christmas and has always been annoyed by the town's noisy Christmas celebrations. On Christmas Eve, he finally decides to stop Christmas from coming to Whoville by disguising himself as Santa Claus, his dog Max as a reindeer and, in a reversal of Santa's visit, stealing all presents, decorations, and symbols of Christmas from the Whos. Once loaded, he plans on dumping the bags of stolen goods. He is noticed by a girl named Cindy Lou Who but is otherwise undetected.

As the Grinch reaches the icy summit of Mt. Crumpit, ready to dump the bags, he discovers that the Whos, despite having no gifts or decorations, have gathered in the middle of town to sing as Christmas Day dawns. Realizing that Christmas means more than just material possessions, the Grinch has a change of heart. As the sleigh begins to slip, he and Max attempt to grab it; the Grinch's heart grows three sizes and he saves the sleigh, returns the presents and decorations to the Whos, and joins in the town's Christmas celebration by carving the roast beast, with Cindy Lou Who giving Max the first slice.

Voice cast Boris Karloff as the Grinch / Narrator June Foray as Cindy Lou Who (uncredited) Dallas McKennon as Max (uncredited) Thurl Ravenscroft as Vocalist ("You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch") (uncredited) MGM Studio Chorus as Citizens of Whoville (uncredited)

Production Development Animation director Chuck Jones and children's-book author Dr. Seuss (real name Theodor Geisel) had worked together on the Private Snafu training cartoons at Warner Bros. Cartoons during World War II.In the Making of: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1994). TNT Jones was interested in adapting one of Geisel's books into a television special and approached him to turn How the Grinch Stole Christmas! into one in time for the holiday season. According to Jones, when he first read the book, his comment was that the Grinch was the best Christmas villain since Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol. Although Geisel was initially reluctant, he agreed with Jones' idea.

During the process of storyboarding, Geisel and Jones worked closely at the MGM studio and Geisel's glass-enclosed eagle's nest in the neighborhood of La Jolla in San Diego, California, taking approximately two months to be finished. After storyboarding was finished, Jones went to New York City to sell the special to a sponsor. He presented the idea with the storyboard and acted all the parts 28 times. The special was bought by the Foundation For Full-Service Banks. CBS gave Jones and MGM a $315,000 budget (), more than four times what Bill Melendez was offered to produce A Charlie Brown Christmas. According to The Daily Herald-Tribune in 1992, it was a record for a cartoon at the time.

Voice cast Jones and Geisel cast Boris Karloff to narrate the special because of his "beautiful, rhythmic, caring" voice and the poetic quality of the way he read the script. He also voiced the Grinch to ensure the voices of the Grinch and Cindy Lou Who were well received by fans. Jones described Karloff as "the only one [in mind]" because of his establishment of Rudyard Kipling's stories and others. Prior to its production, Karloff was eager to do the special since he had been a Dr. Seuss fan for several years. After recording, the sound engineers removed Karloff's high pitches to create the "gravelly grunt" of the Grinch's voice. June Foray provided the voice of Cindy Lou Who. She listened to Karloff's reading on earphones to maintain the same poetic quality.

Designs and animation

Since the special did not have a script, the special was presented visually. Jones and MGM assured Geisel that there would be no limit of quality on its animation. The animation for the special was followed carefully by sixteen rules on the guidelines of "good animation", which was applied to most of Chuck Jones' films. Most of the fully animated characters have implied skeletal structural and muscle movements. Approximately 15,000 drawings and cels, 250 background drawings, 4,500 dispensable and unusable character layout drawings, and 1,200 character layout drawings were created for the special. Jones worked on more than 1,500 sketches to "bring [the characters] to life" and changed their physical appearances, although their personalities remained the same. Animators Ken Harris, Abe Levitow, Ben Washam, and Richard Thompson animated the special respectively.

The special was produced in color (as virtually all prime time television programs on major American networks were by 1966); in discussing possible colors for the Grinch, Jones and Geisel mutually agreed that there was no other choice except green. The job for animators was to animate the Grinch's movement in believability. Due to the lack of Grinch's skeletons, the Grinch's sketches were carefully drawn with Dr. Seuss's academic drawings. His movements were done by identifying the Grinch anatomically. Jones redesigned Cindy Lou Who as the "great-granddaughter" of the Grinch in appearance and, with great reluctance, pared her role down from the role he envisioned. According to Jones, the character Max was set up as an observer and victim in the same way as Porky Pig and Daffy Duck in Duck Dodgers or Robin Hood Daffy. Jones also added honesty, decency, and drama for the character to be relatable. The identity source for Max was Jones' childhood dog who was a young fox terrier. Animation production designer Maurice Noble established Whoville, the Whoville homes, the Grinch's hideaway, and the icy slopes of Mt. Crumpit. Because the book ran up to 12 minutes, additional scenes were created to extend the adaptation.

Music The score consists of 60 musicians playing a 34-piece orchestra with a 12-voice choir. They worked for a total of eight hours. It included three songs: "Trim Up the Tree", "Welcome Christmas", and "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch". Jones questioned how to make a Christmas special without typical Christmas elements. Jones' answer: "Write our new carols in Seussian Latin. After all, 'Fahoofores, Dahoodores' seems to have as much authenticity as 'Adeste Fideles' to those untutored in Latin." The song "Trim Up the Tree" was written in a Polka square-dance type form by Albert Hague.

Because Thurl Ravenscroft was not credited in the closing credits as the singer of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch", it is sometimes attributed to Boris Karloff. In his interview in TNT's In the Making Of: How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1994), Ravenscroft revealed that Geisel neglected his screen credit. After becoming aware of this oversight, Geisel called Ravenscroft to apologize and later wrote letters to columnists nationwide telling them that it was Ravenscroft who provided vocals for the musical number.

Soundtrack

On December 18, 1966, MGM released a soundtrack LP record in conjunction with the television special. In the recorded version, Boris Karloff does all voices including Cindy Lou Who. The song "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch", which comically describes the level of the Grinch's despicable nature, includes all verses with their original rhyming lyrics and the isolated song tracks have different durations due to being re-recorded. On October 3, 1995, Mercury Nashville released the soundtrack on CD.

On October 5, 1999, Rhino Entertainment released a new CD soundtrack (which included the soundtrack for another Dr. Seuss cartoon, Horton Hears a Who!). Both story collections contain selected dialogue and music numbers. The "isolated music tracks" in this edition are taken from the television soundtrack and are not the re-recorded tracks from earlier versions. The dialogues are the originals, being voiced by Boris Karloff for "Grinch" and Hans Conried for "Horton".

Original version (1966)

Side one

Side two

Television soundtrack (1999) All tracks were narrated by Boris Karloff and performed by the MGM Studio Orchestra. Most of the songs were performed by the MGM Studio Chorus, with the exceptions of "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch" and "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch (Reprise)", performed by Thurl Ravenscroft.

The Story

Isolated Music Tracks

Broadcast How the Grinch Stole Christmas! was originally telecast in the United States on CBS on December 18, 1966. The original broadcasts from 1966 to 1970 were sponsored by the Foundation for Full Service Banks, whose sponsor plugs within the special were edited out for subsequent broadcasts after 1970. In 1971, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! was sponsored by Nabisco Inc. and Reynold Metals Company.

CBS repeated it annually during the Christmas season until 1988. After Turner Broadcasting System bought the pre-May 1986 MGM library in 1986, it was transferred to its cable network TNT, which debuted on the network on December 9, 1989. It was also broadcast on TBS and Cartoon Network. The WB returned it to broadcast television by adding its own annual screening in 2001. ABC took over the special after The WB ceased operations in 2006. NBC acquired the rights in 2015; its deal with Warner Bros. Television Studios allows two broadcasts per season. The Christmas night broadcast which traditionally aired at 8:00 p.m. in all time zones except for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands which airs at 9:00 PM AST (due to NBC affiliates in these territories using the Eastern Time Zone feed) has been later followed by the airing of the 2000 film of the same name. In 2022, the second airing of the special was aired on December 23 instead of Christmas Day due to a National Football League (NFL) game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Arizona Cardinals. Both TBS and TNT continue to air the special many times presently during the holiday season due to the channels' complete ownership through Warner Bros. Television.

Reception Critical response