RIP Jules Bass

 

Jules Bass, Producer Behind the ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ and ‘Frosty the Snowman’ TV Specials, Dies at 87

He and the late Arthur Rankin Jr. also worked on such classics as 'Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town,' 'Here Comes Peter Cottontail' and 'Mad Monster Party.'

The Hollywood Reporter

By Mike Barnes

October 25, 2022

 

Jules Bass, the animator, producer, director and composer who partnered with Arthur Rankin Jr. on the stop-motion holiday TV specials Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman and Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town, has died. He was 87.

Bass died Tuesday at an assisted living facility in Rye, New York, publicist Jennifer Fisherman Ruff told The Hollywood Reporter.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, based on the song popularized by Gene Autry and featuring the voice of Burl Ives, debuted in 1964. Frosty the Snowman, starring Jackie Vernon and Jimmy Durante, bowed in 1969, and Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town, starring Fred Astaire, premiered in 1970. All three have remained strong television draws through the decades.

Rankin/Bass Productions’ cel-animated, stop-motion features were farmed out to Japanese animators and were painstaking to make, with thousands of still photos of their characters’ incremental movements put together at 24 frames a second in a process called “Animagic.”

Bass also directed and produced Mad Monster Party, a 1967 feature starring Boris Karloff and Phyllis Diller.

Born in Philadelphia on Sept. 16, 1935, Bass attended New York University and worked at an advertising agency before he joined Rankin, formerly an art director at ABC, at his film production company, Videocraft International (later known as Rankin/Bass Productions).

Said Rankin in a 2005 interview: “We sort of complemented each other. He had certain talents that I didn’t have, and I had certain talents that he didn’t have. I was basically an artist and a creator; he was a creator and a writer and a lyricist.”

The duo’s first production was syndicated TV series The New Adventures of Pinocchio, which debuted in 1960. They came up with a total of 130 five-minute chapters, which made for a series of five-chapter, 25-minute episodes.

The pair shared an Emmy nomination for outstanding children’s special in 1977 for their work on The Little Drummer Boy Book II and received a Peabody a year later for their animated version of The Hobbit. They also handled an adaptation of another J.R.R. Tolkien property, The Return of the King, in 1980.

Their other TV projects included 1966’s The Ballad of Smokey the Bear, 1967’s The Wacky World of Mother Goose, 1968’s The Little Drummer Boy, the 1971 Easter special Here Comes Peter Cottontail, 1974’s The Year Without a Santa Claus, the 1971-72 series Jackson 5ive, the ’80s series Thundercats and the 1983 animated movie The Coneheads.

He and Rankin co-directed The Last Unicorn (1982), featuring the voices of Jeff Bridges, Mia Farrow, Angela Lansbury, Alan Arkin and Robert Klein and songs composed and arranged by Jimmy Webb and performed by America.

Rankin died in January 2014 at age 89.

Bass wrote the children’s books Herb, the Vegetarian Dragon and Cooking With Herb, published by Barefoot Books, and his 2001 novel, Headhunters, was adapted for the 2011 film Monte Carlo, starring Selena Gomez.

His daughter, Jean Nicole Bass, died in January at age 61

BASS, Jules (Julius Bass)

Born: 9/16/1935, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.

Died: 20/25/2022, Rye, New York, U.S.A.

 

Jules Bass’ western – voice actor.

Home on the Range – 2004 [voice of a cowboy]