Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was not the first animated Christmas special, but it has aired longer than any other on broadcast network television. It has aired every single year on a broadcast network since its debut on December 6 1964, over sixty years ago. So popular is the special that. I imagine there are a few who think Rudolph originated with the TV special. Still more might think that he originated with the classic song written by Johnny Marks. In truth, Rudolph's origins go back to a Montgomery Ward advertising campaign.
In 1939 Montgomery Ward asked copywriter Robert L. May to develop a a holiday tale that they could give away to shoppers. May came up with the idea of a reindeer named Rudolph who was an outcast because of his red nose. May's story differed considerably from both Johnny Marks's song and the Rankin Bass TV special. Rudolph was not one of Santa's herd of reindeer and did not grow up at the north pole. Since Rudolph was not one of Santa's reindeer, he did not pick Rudolph out from his herd on that foggy Christmas Eve. Instead Santa found Rudolph when he was delivering presents at Rudolph's home. Santa thought that the nose could help him finish his deliveries in the thickening fog and adopted the reindeer. Regardless, Rudolph the Reindeer was a hit. Unfortunately, May saw none of the money from the merchandising of the character, whose copyright belonged to Montgomery Ward.
Eventually, in 1947, Montgomery Ward's president Sewell Avery gave May the copyright to his creation. May had copies of the original story printed in 1947 and 1948 saw a 9 minute theatrical cartoon based on the tale, produced by the great Max Fleischer. It was 1949 that really brought the Red Nosed Reindeer to fame. May's brother in law, songwriter Johnny Marks, wrote the famous song based on the story, changing it considerably in the process. After being turned down by a number of artists, the song was finally recorded by Gene Autry in 1949. It became Autry's biggest hit and the 2nd best selling song at the time (only to "White Christmas").
This brings us to the Sixties and the TV special. In 1955 Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass founded Videocraft International, later renamed Rankin/Bass. Initially they produced television commercials, although they wanted to expand into both feature films and TV shows. In 1960 they did exactly that, producing a series of 130 stop motion cartoon shorts under the title The New Adventures of Pinocchio. They followed this in 1961 with a series of limited animation shorts entitled Tales of the Wizard of Oz, based on the works of L. Frank Baum.
As it so happened, Arthur Rankin Jr. was a neighbour of Johnny Marks. It was Rankin who suggested to Marks that the song could be adapted as a TV special produced using stop motion animation. Marks was reluctant, fearing that the special could endanger the success of his biggest hit song, but eventually Rankin won him over. In fact, Marks even wrote new songs for the special, including "We Are Santa's Elves," "Holly Jolly Christmas" and "Silver and Gold."An instrumental version of Johnny Marks's hit "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," originally recorded by Brenda Lee, even appears in the special. The script, written by Romeo Muller, drew upon Marks's song for inspiration, and expanded on the story considerably.
The hour long Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer special took a year to make, with many hours devoted even to the shortest of sequences. While still in production, Rankin pitched the special to sponsor General Electric. General Electric bought time on NBC. It debuted on NBC in 1964 under the title The General Electric Fantasy Hour: Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. The special was an immediate hit and aired on NBC every year until 1972, when it moved to CBS. This year Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer returned to NBC for the first time in 53 years.
Considerable changes would be made to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer over the years. The original version that aired in 1964 included a scene towards the end of the special in which Yukon Cornelius discovers a mining vein of peppermint. At the same time the original version of the special did not include the sequence in which Santa rescues the toys from the Island of Misfit Toys. A writing campaign convinced Rankin-Bass to change the ending and it was altered so that Santa did indeed save the Misfit Toys. As result, the scene in which Yukon Cornelius discovers a peppermint mine was cut from the special due to time constraints.
This would not be the only change made to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer for its airing in 1965. The song "We're a Couple of Misfits," sang by Rudolph and Hermey the Elf, was replaced with the song "Fame and Fortune," although it still used much of the same animation. Over the years, snippets of the special would be cut to make room for commercials, including the instrumental bridge for the song "We are Santa's Elves" and some of Sam the Snowman's dialogue. It was in 1998 that many of these cuts were restored and "We're a Couple of Misfits" replaced "Fame and Fortune" in the special. While it still aired on CBS, in 2019 the cable channel Freeform also began airing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Freeform reintroduced even more of the material that had been cut or changed over the years, including the scene in which Yukon Cornelius finds peppermint. When Freeform first aired it in 2019, it was then the first time in 55 years that the peppermint mine scene was seen on television. This year NBC would follow Freeform's lead in including the scene in which Yukon Cornelius discovers peppermint.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer has aired on broadcast network television every year since its debut in 1964. Along with Frosty the Snowman, it is the only Christmas special to have aired each year on a broadcast network without interruption. I have to think people will still be watching it sixty years from now.
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