December 6, 1964…A Christmas Classic Was Born!
The evening of December 6, 1964, kids across the country tuned into NBC for the debut of “Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer” in living color. It has aired every year since.
The Christmas television special was produced in stop motion animation by Rankin/Bass Productions, and was sponsored by General Electric under the umbrella title of “The General Electric Fantasy Hour”. The GE commercials in the first two years also featured the Rankin/Bass characters. All the classic Norelco commercials with Santa riding an electric razor are based on this Rankin/Bass process and look.
At this link is a story on two surviving articulated models used in the filming of the classic from “Antiques Road Show”, where they were presented for appraisal a few years back.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/stories/articles/2006/5/15/is-this-the-real-rudolph
Below, the special that we all loved as kids is ready to view! Happy Birthday Rudolph! -Bobby Ellerbee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BctWze2UMj4&ab_channel=MovieNight
with virtually all canadian voice talent if I remember right
What’s sad is I really liked this show when I was a kid, now it makes me cringe.
I just watched this yesterday – twice! – with my daughter who loves this. We took her to see the stage version of the show a couple of weeks ago and it was really a fun show. She loved it, that is all that matters to me now 🙂
No problem with Canadian voices, who doesn’t like at least one song from the legendary Burl Ives? Rudolph is a classic! Right up there with the Grinch, Charlie Brown and Frosty the Snowman.
I remember watching and being sad when it ended because it would be a year until they ran it again. Late Sunday afternoon air time, if I recall.
I was a huge Burl Ives fan. Loved all of his folksy songs. “Big Rock Candy Mountain”, “Little Bitty Tear Let Me Down.”Other great songs that seemed to always be filled with love.
“The General Electric Fantasy Hour” – the time reading pension info from GE.
Oops I mixed it up, the Canadian voice talent was on “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” from Rankin Bass…..who also did the 1967 animated Spider-Man series. Details here:
http://www.whallopinwebsnappers.com