A cozy, animated Christmas card from another era. That’s how Rankin/Bass’ Frosty the Snowman could best be described. There’s good reason for this, thanks to legendary artist Paul Coker, Jr., character designer for the special.
“Paul Coker was a card designer for Hallmark, and Arthur [Rankin] said he was looking for that Christmas card look for Frosty,” said Rick Goldschmidt, official Rankin/Bass historian/biographer and author of such books as Frosty the Snowman 50th Anniversary Scrapbook and The Enchanted World of Rankin/Bass.
Coker’s style carried over to several elements in the special, including the opening and closing titles. This unique look is just one of the many reasons why Frosty the Snowman has become a cherished television staple of the Holiday Season. Originally broadcast on CBS on December 7th, 1969, Frosty is celebrating its 55th anniversary this year.
The special has been an annual tradition on CBS through last year, and this year, it transitions over to NBC, where it has been broadcast twice already and is also airing on the Freeform network as part of their “25 Days of Christmas” schedule.
However, Frosty the Snowman is more than a TV special for generations. Similar to the holiday card it resembles, it’s like an annual greeting from an old friend.
By the time Frosty aired in 1969, Rankin/Bass was already becoming synonymous with producing popular Christmas specials, having given us Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer just five years prior (Rudolph’s 60th was celebrated here last week). The Studio would go on to produce other classics of the season, such as Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (1970) and The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974).
For Frosty the Snowman, Rankin/Bass’ animated special once again took a favorite Christmas song (written by Walter “Jack” Rollins and Steve Nelson and first recorded by Gene Autry and the Cass County Boys in 1950) and expanded it into a half-hour TV show. As with many of the Studio’s specials, Frosty features a narrator who speaks directly to the camera.
This time, it was iconic comedian Jimmy Durante, in an animated caricature of himself. He relays a tale that begins on the last day of school before Christmas vacation, where a bungling magician named Professor Hinkle attempts to entertain a classroom of kids at their Christmas party. The professor’s rabbit, Hocus Pocus, hops off with his magic hat as the bell rings and the kids are released from school.
One of the children, Karen, heads outside with friends to build a snowman, who they name Frosty. As they do, the Professor’s hat blows off of Hocus Pocus. Karen places it on Frosty’s head, and he comes to life, announcing, “Happy Birthday!”
When the Professor sees that his hat is magic, he takes it back, but Hocus Pocus returns it to Frosty and the kids, bringing the snowman back to life. However, Frosty notices that the thermometer is getting all red, which means he will start to melt and get “all wishy-washy.” He has to get to the North Pole, so Karen decides that they will get Frosty there.
The kids lead Frosty to the train, where he boards a refrigerated car with Karen and Hocus Pocus to make the journey. On the way, the three get off the train to make their way on foot (with Hinkle tracking them), and they eventually stop at a greenhouse used to grow “precious tropical poinsettias.” Frosty takes Karen inside so she can warm up, but Hinkle locks them in.
And, in a moment that is seared into many a traumatic pop-culture childhood memory, Frosty melts. Thankfully, Santa shows up at this moment, allowing not only the December wind to bring Frosty back to life but also convincing Hinkle to let Frosty have his hat (“If you so much as lay a finger on the brim, I’ll never bring you another Christmas present as long as you live,” Santa states).
So, Frosty returns to life, Karen gets to go home, and the magical snowman heads off with Santa in his sleigh, promising to return.
Frosty the Snowman is set apart from a number of the Rankin/Bass holiday specials as it was completed in traditional, 2D animation, as opposed to the stop-motion “Animagic” animation that the Studio used for such specials as Rudolph. Goldschmidt noted a reason for this: “They couldn’t do everything in Animagic because it would be too much work. So, they had to do some things through cel animation, which they were already doing regularly for Saturday morning series like The Smokey Bear Show”
Also, in addition to Durante, Frosty the Snowman boasted a talented comedic voice cast, including the casting of Jackie Vernon in the title role. “It was an odd choice to get Jackie Vernon. He had he hadn’t done any animation, and he hadn’t done very much acting,” said Goldschmidt, adding, “He was perfect for Frosty, and that’s what Arthur [Rankin] was always known for. He would hear voices and just know that they would be good for a character.”
The other voice talent in the special included Billy DeWolfe as Professor Hinkle, Rankin/Bass regular Paul Frees as a number of voices, including Santa Claus, and renowned voice actress June Foray as the schoolteacher.
Initially, Foray also provided Karen’s voice, but the actress’s performance was replaced by that of child actress Suzanne Davidson in subsequent showings.
The connection between Karen and Frosty provided the heart and emotion of the special, written by another Rankin/Bass stalwart, Romeo Muller, once again displaying his ability to create an entire world from a Christmas song. “He understood what was good about the world,” said Goldschmidt of Muller, “and brought that out in his stories.”
In the years following its debut, Frosty would return in the Rankin/Bass sequels Frosty’s Winter Wonderland (1976) and 1979’s Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July (which was produced in Animagic). There was also 1992’s Frosty Returns, which Rankin/Bass was not involved with.
Like so many of the Rankin/Bass Christmas specials, the popularity of Frosty has only…snowballed…in the fifty-five years since its debut. Frosty the Snowman merchandise, decorations, and ornaments are now as much of a tradition of the season as watching the special itself.
Reflecting on the enduring popularity of Frosty the Snowman, Goldschmidt recalls what the TV special’s designer noted: “Paul Coker Jr. always said, ‘It’s a very simple story with simple characters, and it’s not very complicated.’ That simplicity of it really is the appeal. I think he’s right. It gives you that early 70s feel of the Christmas cards and the way Christmas was for many when they were growing up. And we also remember we had to watch it that one time, or it would be gone for another year.”
Or, as Frosty himself says at the end of the special, “I’ll be back on Christmas Day!”
Next Week: a look back at more Rankin/Bass Christmas specials.
Michael Lyons is a freelance writer, specializing in film, television, and pop culture. He is the author of the book, Drawn to Greatness: Disney’s Animation Renaissance, which chronicles the amazing growth at the Disney animation studio in the 1990s. In addition to Animation Scoop and Cartoon Research, he has contributed to Remind Magazine, Cinefantastique, Animation World Network and Disney Magazine. He also writes a blog, Screen Saver: A Retro Review of TV Shows and Movies of Yesteryear and his interviews with a number of animation legends have been featured in several volumes of the books, Walt’s People. You can visit Michael’s web site Words From Lyons at: 
When you intimated that you would be covering the anniversary of another classic Rankin/Bass Christmas special this week, I figured it had to be either “The Year Without a Santa Claus” or this one. Hope we’ll get to Snow Miser and Heat Miser next week.
I had no idea that Paul Coker Jr. ever designed Christmas cards. I always associated him with MAD magazine, to which he was a prolific contributor and a distinguished member of “the usual gang of idiots.” While his work lacked the detailed draftsmanship of Mort Drucker or Jack Davis, or the zany humour of Don Martin or Al Jaffee, Coker had an appealing, cartoony style that suited the satirical material well. The example of his work that I remember best — and please bear in mind that I was an impressionable adolescent boy — was a piece dealing, like so many in MAD, with the subject of hypocrisy. In the first panel, a man is ogling a sexy young woman in hot pants. In the second, the same man comes home, finds his wife and daughter wearing hot pants, then panics and frantically draws the curtains so the neighbours won’t see them. So when I think of Paul Coker Jr., I don’t think of Christmas cards; I think of that sexy girl in hot pants. Those people who used to insist that MAD magazine was undermining the morals of American youth may have been on to something.
Like his fellow Rankin/Bass narrators Burl Ives, Fred Astaire, and Danny Kaye, Jimmy Durante was a kind-hearted and generous person in real life, and his essential warmth shone through in his storytelling. For many children in 1969, “Frosty” would have been their first glimpse of this legendary entertainer. I, however, had already seen him earlier that year in a memorable episode of the sitcom “The Mothers-In-Law” (and by “memorable”, I mean that I literally cannot remember any other episode of the show). So I became a fan at an early age. It was a treat whenever I caught one of his old movies like “Joe Palooka” or “George White’s Scandals of 1935”, and of course I took special note of the many depictions of him in old cartoons. There were, so it seemed — dare I say it? — “a million of ’em!”
The idea of a snowman coming to life, playing with the children who created it, and then melting, was nothing new to animation. It was used in the 1940 Terrytoon “The Snow Man” as well as its 1946 Technicolor remake, with the snowman befriending young rabbits rather than human children. In Germany, Hans Fischerkoesen’s “Der Schneemann” (1944) followed a similar scenario. All of these cartoons predated the “Frosty the Snowman” song by several years. Still earlier, there was Ted Eshbaugh’s “The Snowman”, in which the title character sits down at an organ keyboard and briefly transforms into… Jimmy Durante! “A hot cha cha! Everybody wants to get into the act!”
Jackie Vernon had made a memorable guest appearance on the Jackie Gleason Show at some time prior to the airing of this special, so his voice was known to me when I heard him as Frosty. And Billy de Wolfe around the same time had a recurring role on the Doris Day Show. Of course, Jimmy Durante even at that late date was still a well-known and much-imitated personality.
The melting of Frosty is indeed “traumatic” as you say, especially to an impressionable child of nine, as I was, or seven, as my brother was. An adult will of course pick up on the subtext that leads up to the cataclysmic event, and will understand that it’s for dramatic purposes and will be ultimately resolved, but to a kid watching the heartbroken Karen crying over the puddle that is all that is left of Frosty, well, it’s the stuff tear-jerkers are made of. There is a wonderful sense of Santa Claus coming to the rescue that makes him into a bona fide hero. And also the rabbit for alerting Santa to the situation. Yes, from the standpoint of true drama it’s a bit of a cheater to have a “deus ex machina” arrive on the scene to put things to rights, but in the context of a children’s Christmas special, it’s acceptable, like justice arriving at the precise moment of need. Plus, with only a few minutes left, the writers had to come up with some way for the day to be saved. And who better to serve as deus ex machina than Santa himself?
I was intrigued, even as a child, that it was a magician’s hat that brought Frosty to life. Though Professor Hinkle never reappears in any of the sequels, the properties of the magical hat provide key plot points in Frosty’s later appearances. This underscores the brilliance of the original concept, to provide a magical reason for the hat to work its wonders on the snowman. Kudos to Rankin/Bass for this expert crafting of a satisfying story from a popular song.
Always liked that nice guys Santa and Frosty ditch Karen on the steep snow-covered roof of her multi-story home.
There’s a pretty good article that could be written about animators and cartoonists who worked for greeting card companies if someone really dug in.
This special was animated in Japan by Mushi Production. While not THE first instance of outsourcing to Japan, it was definitely one of the earliest. Unlike some American series animated by Japan (particularly in the ’80s and ’90s), it doesn’t carry any of the visual earmarks of anime- in fact you’d be forgiven for thinking it was an all-American production as usual if you don’t check the credits.
Does anyone remember the original airing? Did a commercial break come after the opening credits or before the show even started? I ask this because newer prints cut quickly from the opening credits to the next scene, and the music spills over. If not, they need to fix this.
I couldn’t tell you when it might have been recorded, but I remembered one year during the holiday period listening to local radio and they played ‘Uncle’ Jimmy Durante singing ‘Frosty the Snowman’. I noted it was not from the special’s soundtrack and I realized that this earlier rendition must have been part of the motivation for hiring Durante to narrate the special.