The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus was the end of an era for the Rankin/Bass Studio. It would be the last holiday special produced using their special brand of stop-motion animation, which they dubbed “Animagic.”
This comforting style was, of course, responsible for such beloved TV favorites as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) and Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (1970), and with The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, that age so familiar to generations came to a close.
This December marks the fortieth anniversary of The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, which makes it the perfect time to revisit this Rankin/Bass special – and thank you to reader Nik Kramer for suggesting it!
Based on a 1902 book by none other than author L. Frank Baum, well-known for creating the beloved Oz books, who crafted an intricate origin story for Santa in The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus.
With so much detail in the book, writer Julian P. Gardner (a pseudonym for Jules Bass, who also wrote the lyrics for the songs) had to truncate the story when adapting it for the one-hour special. As it opens, Tingler the Imp (Robert McFadden), a character created for the special, informs the Supreme Immortal, The Great Ak (Alfred Drake), that the Immortals of the world are coming to the magical Forest of Burzee for the meeting that The Great Ak called.
At the meeting, The Great Ak informs the Immortals that Santa Claus, a mortal who has shown the world great kindness, is on his last Christmas Eve travels and will, sadly, face death after. It is proposed to the others, by The Great Ak, that Santa be made an Immortal, and to convince the group, he tells the story of how Santa came to be.
Sixty years prior, a baby was found by Ak and placed into the care of the lioness Shiegra and eventually adopted by Necile, the wood nymph (Lesley Miller), who names him Claus, a name used in the forest for little one.
When he grows into a young man, Ak takes Claus to visit the mortal world, where they are invisible but can observe. Here, Claus is shocked by people’s cruelty and the suffering it causes others.
He questions Ak about mortals and is told they’re here to make the world better than they found it, which becomes Claus’ purpose. He determines that he must live among the mortals, leaves the forest, and sets up a home and workshop in the “Laughing Valley of Hohaho.”
He rescues an orphan child, Weekum (Joey Grasso), for whom he makes his first toy, a wooden cat. This leads to making toys for other children in the village.
One day, a note tied around a rock is thrown through his window. The threatening note reads: “Mr. Claus, if you make another toy, we are coming for you. Signed King Awgwa.” The Awgwas, who can make themselves invisible, are ugly, troll-like creatures who influence children to do bad things.
Claus defiantly decides to continue his toy-making, and the Awgwas attempt to kidnap and capture him, but he receives aid from the forest creatures, the Knooks. While deliveries, the invisible Awgwas constantly ambush him and steal the toys.
Claus decides to try delivering the toys at night, is ambushed again, and is saved by Shiegra. After this, Ak meets with the Awgwas, warning them not to harm Claus, and war is declared. A battle follows between the Immortals and the Awgwas, in which the Awgwas are defeated, and Claus is free to deliver his toys.
To assist, he is given flying reindeer from Peter Knook (Peter Newman), a mythical fairy, and when he gets to the first house, he finds it locked and must use the chimney, and places gifts in the children’s stockings left by the fire to dry.
The next morning, Claus is called a saint by one of the children’s fathers, which the kids interpret first as Saint Claus, then Santa Claus. After Claus returns, it’s decided by him and Peter Knook to limit the trip to Christmas Eve.
Concluding the story of Claus, we return to Ak at the table with the Immortals, who vote to bestow the mantle of immortality upon Claus. As the special ends, Santa Claus thanks the Great Ak and says, “For in all this world, there is nothing so beautiful as a happy child.”
Directed by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin, Jr., The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus is a much different special for Rankin/Bass, despite it being told in their familiar “Animagic” style. The character design, particularly of the Immortals, has none of the more cartoony tone of the Studio’s previous work, but instead is more dramatic and striking.
When the special debuted on December 17, 1985, on CBS, critic John O’Connor wrote in his New York Times review: “Much to its credit, this version of the Santa Claus legend gets away from the jolly old St. Nick routines and those busy little workshops run by adorable elves.” This is a good note for Rankin/Bass fans who haven’t seen The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. While Santa’s name is in the title, there’s very little Christmas in the special, instead focusing on the high-fantasy fable of how he came to be. It’s also not connected to the sunnier, Mickey Rooney-voiced origin story and sequel, Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (1970) and The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974) that audiences may be more familiar with.
The story itself is also darker in tone, from the fact that it opens with Santa’s potential demise, to the stark scenes, such as when young Santa witnesses starvation among many mortals and the Awgwas unleash fierce creatures during their battle with the Immortals. In his book, The Enchanted World of Rankin/Bass: A Portfolio, author and Rankin/Bass historian, Rick Goldschmidt wrote, “This special is not the usual happy fanfare that Rankin/Bass has been associated with in years past. This is probably due to the fact that they were trying to recreate the images of Baum’s book and didn’t want to repeat any of their past efforts.”
While not as well-known as the other, famed Rankin/Bass holiday specials, consider The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus as part of your Holiday viewing, to celebrate the holiday season, its 40th anniversary, and the end of an “Animagic” era.
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: 
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, along with Baum’s short story “A Kidnapped Santa Claus” and the surprise guest appearance of Santa at Princess Ozma’s birthday party in the fifth Oz book, “The Road to Oz” reveal an alternate take on the St. Nicholas legend that is unique to the world of Baum’s creation. In the early 1900s, the Santa mythos had not been as fully established and ingrained in public consciousness as it is today. Thomas Nast had illustrated a children’s book which placed Santa at the North Pole, but evidently Baum did not consider this to be a hard and fast rule when he wrote his “biography.” Similarly, the names of the reindeer are different from those found in the Clement Clarke Moore poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” The character of Mrs. Santa Claus was embryonic at the time of Baum’s writing, and of course Rudolph was decades in the future. So, none of these factors appear in Baum’s version.
The Rankin/Bass Christmas specials had so far appeared to take place in approximately the same universe, with crossovers aplenty between Rudolph, Frosty, and Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus. In fact, the feature film “Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July” serves to tie all of the various characters and scenarios together. It was therefore rather daring and unusual, even self-contradictory, for Rankin’Bass to take on what was by then a revisionist approach to the Santa story. The fact that the tone and characters of “Life and Adventures” are so vastly different from the more light-hearted specials of the years before speaks volumes for the flexibility of R/B in retelling a story that had essentially been definitively told by them over a decade previously. Face it, the Kringle elves and Burgermeister Meisterburger, “Put One Foot in Front of the Other,” and so forth had been practically ingrained in public consciousness. So, to tackle the same character’s origin in a completely different way was a very bold move indeed.
The works of Baum were enjoying a resurgence in popularity in the mid-eighties due to several factors, primarily centered on Disney’s release of the feature film “Return to Oz.” Ballantine Books was in the midst of an ambitious project to reprint the entire series of Oz books in affordable paperback format. This was also the era when the recently-mentioned special “Thanksgiving in the Land of Oz,” a Rankin/Bass-like production (thought not produced by them) was aired on television.
The presence of Alfred Drake lends a unique flavor to “Life and Adventures,” as in many respects it becomes his show. His characterization of the Great Ak sets the template for the tone of the story. The star of the Broadway “Oklahoma” was an interesting choice and a dignifying one especially as the script is built around a matter which is only fleetingly dealt with at the very end of Baum’s book–the bestowing of the Mantle of Immortality on Claus. It makes sense to introduce this concept of a mortal and dying Santa at the very beginning of the story, and it lends structure and tension to the plot, further justifying the use of a well-respected actor as narrator. Also not to be missed is the “Read All About It” segment which played right after the initial airing.
I’ve never heard of this and while I credit the studio with having the guts to move well beyond their signature sixties style the result looks oddly generic and lifeless, like store bought Barbie dolls dressed up and animated. Stop motion only works for me when it is very stylized and organically weird. So much Rankin-Bass, particularly from the seventies on, is only weird in a bad, unimaginatively inbred sort of way.
Elf: “what is a ‘child’?”
Ak: (your people don’t have children, none of us do, none of us even ever were children)
Are you gonna answer the question, Ak?
The role of Santa Claus was voiced by veteran radio actor Earl Hammond, who at this time was also voicing the cadaverous villain Mumm-Ra in the Thundercats cartoons. The guy was nothing if not versatile.
“The role of Santa Claus was voiced by veteran radio actor Earl Hammond, who at this time was also voicing the cadaverous villain Mumm-Ra in the Thundercats cartoons. The guy was nothing if not versatile.”
Basically, this starred most if not all of the voices of Thundercats including another versatile voice-over artist Larry Kenney aka Lion-O. He was known for being on radio including the legendary WOWO 1190 in Fort Wayne, IN (there is a great site dedicated to its history that if you are into radio, I suggest giving it a listen. And from what I hear, Larry was a bit of jokester).
He also was a DJ on WHN 1050 in New York, then a country music station (now WEPN, an ESPN Radio affiliate). He also hosted the New York version of the show Bowling for Dollars on channel 9 WOR-TV (now WWOR) from 1977 until 1979 after taking over for Bob Murphy, who was part of the three-man broadcast team for the Mets.
in 2160P !
https://ok.ru/video/8597942635211
enjoy
Thanks for that link – I’ve embed it into the post.
I was a kid when Rudolph and the whole animated special thing was just beginning. In ’85 I was thirty, and struggling to figure out what small post-boomer relatives thought was cool. It felt like Rankin-Bass was having a similar experience here.
This may have been an experiment. Rankin-Bass did further non-cutesy fantasies, but cel animated in the style of their “Hobbit”: “The Last Unicorn”, “Flight of Dragons”, and “Return of the King”. Even their “Wind in the Willows” was less cuddly in its character designs.
Michael, this Christmas Eve will mark the 30th anniversary of “Oy to the World”, the fully animated musical Christmas episode of the CBS sitcom “The Nanny”. Any chance of an Animation Cel-ebration of this one? Like the show itself, it was a lot better than I expected it to be, and to my knowledge it’s the only Christmas special with a Jewish protagonist that wasn’t set in Biblical times,
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the note. Unfortunately, with the remainder of the year mapped out, I don’t think I will be able to cover “Oy to the World.” I remember it airing, but have never seen it and, now, thanks to your recommendation, I will be sure to check it out this season. Thanks again.
Fair enough! Hope you can cover it in a future Post of Christmas Yet To Come!