#348 The Magic Behind Rankin/Bass: A Conversation with Rick Goldschmidt

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Jeff Dwoskin 0:28

all right, Hannah, thank you so much for that amazing introduction. You get the show going each and every week, and this week was no exception. Welcome everybody to episode 348 of classic conversations as always, I am your host. Jeff Dwoskin, great to have you back for what's sure to be one of the most AniMagic episodes of all time. We are going deep into the world of Rankin/Bass with their historian, Rick Goldschmidt, Rankin/Bass . You love Rankin/Bas . You probably grew you grew up with Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus is coming to town the year without a Santa Claus and so much more. But do you recall the greatest pocket anyway? Oh, wait, and that's coming up in just a few seconds. And in these few seconds, do not miss my conversation with William Keck. He was here last week confessing all of his entertainment sins when he worked for the National Enquirer. Do not miss that amazing episode. But right now we're chilling with Rick Goldschmidt. We're talking miser brothers. What heat? Miser, snow miser, you know it? I'm Mr. White Christmas. I'm Mr. Snow. All right, well, you don't want to hear from me. All right. You're gonna love this deep dive intoRankin/Bass . All right, everyone. I'm excited to introduce my next guest, designer, author, artist, Rankin/Bass , historian and biographer, welcome to the show. Rick Goldschmidt, Hey, Rick, hey, thanks

Rick Goldschmidt 2:06

for having me.

Jeff Dwoskin 2:07

I am so glad to have you. We met briefly at the Great Lakes Comic Con. You had a pretty cool booth there. You had Pete miser. I love Rankin/Bass . Can you do one thing? Just because I'm sure everyone's familiar with frosty, and we all grew up with Rudolph, but I don't know that everyone knows Rankin/Bass well, like when you know, I think a lot of people do. But what's your like? Elevator Pitch. Someone goes, Oh, Rankin/Bass . What's that? Well, Arthur

Rick Goldschmidt 2:37

Rankin JR and Jules Bass were the two producers that put all these shows together. Arthur's background was he was the art director at ABC Television, basically when it first started in the mid 50s. He was the art director on things like tales of tomorrow and all the live shows of the day, and Jules bass were at an ad agency, and he wrote jingles. And their paths crossed, you know, at ABC, and they decided they wanted to put together a studio. Now, at first, they did primarily commercials. Some of them were animated, but some of them were live commercials. And then Arthur went to Japan in 59 I think it was, and saw what they were doing over there in stop motion. And he thought this, this would go over really well in the United States, and he decided to do The New Adventures of Pinocchio. And The New Adventures of Pinocchio, the reason that he chose that was Pinocchio, the Walt Disney movie was his favorite animated movie, so he wanted to do something with Pinocchio himself, and he developed this syndicated series that was sort of a five part series, where it would tell a story in five installments so that local kids hosts could show it each day, And the story would end on Friday, and they financed that and tales of the Wizard of Oz, basically with their own money. And it didn't go over that great. They didn't make as much in the way of profit until they met up with NBC, and their first special was actually returned to us, but then Rudolph was second on the slate, and that just took off. It became a huge hit, and really opened the door for everything else that they wanted to do for the next 30 years. So that's basically the story of right? Rank, invest once they hit it with Rudolph, they never looked back. They could do pretty much everything that they wanted to do, including live action movies, which is where Arthur really wanted to go. And unfortunately, the budget on those wasn't all that big. So they never really had, like a major, major film. Probably the last unicorn was the closest thing to a big budget movie. They'll be known forever for the Christmas classics, and I think both of them realized that was quite an achievement.

Jeff Dwoskin 5:37

It's interesting, because when I think of rank and bass, that's really what I think about, is those Frosty the Snowman and Santa Claus is coming to town, and here come the year with content, right? The year with, uh, what was it? The year without a Santa Claus. Year Without a Santa Claus. As a Jewish boy growing up, this was what I knew of Christmas, right? That was, like my little insight into the world that everyone else seemed to be doing well, right? Celebrating Hanukkah. So it was like, it was great. I remember watching it like every year, like Rudolph the Red Nosed Ranger was just, I mean, even if it comes on now, right? I feel like Rankin/Bass is the same. Those shows, the stop motion, all those, that whole feel has the same effect on me as, like, when I go to Disney World and I see things like, from the early ages of growing up with Disney, like it's that embedded from my childhood, that it just, you can't, not Rudolf was on. I would stop and watch it, you know? I mean, it's like, right, even now. I mean, even now I had in my office. I mean, when I say in my office, I'm talking five years ago, I UConn, Cornelius and the bumble thing, I just would sit on my desk, because I just love those characters. How did you become so entrenched with rank and bass that you were eventually deemed their historian. As

Rick Goldschmidt 7:04

I was growing up, I kind of, I didn't forget about Rankin/Bass , but I kind of put them on the back burner, and I became a musician and an artist and raised a family, and I didn't really think too much about rank and bass during those years, but right out of college, I started developing a friendship with Jack Davis, because his art was what I wanted to do. Similar things he did Time magazine covers and movie posters and record album jackets, and he was a very prolific artist, and as I talked to him and was collecting his stuff, I realized he designed mad monster party, which I always loved. You know, I loved the old monsters, and I loved that AniMagic style, and I asked him whatever happened to Arthur Rankin and Jules bass? I never really heard much about them. I didn't know if they were both still living, and I didn't know anything about them, because you never really could. You never saw him on television being interviewed or anything like that. So he said he still was doing work for them, and to get a hold of Paul Coker Jr, which I did, and I wanted to get in touch with Paul Coker Jr anyway, because he was a Mad Magazine artist like Jack Davis, and he had a very unique art style that I always loved. And when I called him up, he gave me Arthur's number in Bermuda. Arthur lived between Bermuda and New York, so I called him up one day from work, and I said, you know, there really should be a book about this stuff. And he said, Send me two chapters. And that was pretty much it that's that's all he said. And and I said, Give me your address. I went home, and I put together two chapters, and he liked it. And then he sent me, like his, his life story on a little micro cassette. And from there, I started scrounging up everything I could find. And by the time I finally got a publisher and was ready to go to print, he came out and met me at my home and went through everything and brought a lot of his photographs for me. So it just kind of developed like that. But the thing about Arthur and I, we became really close, because we like the same things. We had a lot of similarities. He was always this very driven and productive guy who always got things done, and he saw that in me. We were both artists, and we both. Of Jack Davis and Paul Coker and Al Hirschfeld and all the artists that he used for these television specials and and movies, he just was happy that someone was kind of resurrecting their whole career and putting it into book form, because he was still trying to sell various projects. One thing that he made during that time was the King and I, which was a feature film, but it got kind of watered down from what he wanted it to be, and it wasn't all that successful. And then they did another television special after my book came out and Santa baby, which was an all black cast, but it was a very talented cast like Eartha Kitt was in it that also wasn't, as, you know, remarkable as the rank and bass specials of the 60s and 70s. And the reason for that is Romeo Muller was a huge part of the equation. He wrote for the whole entire family. And very few writers know how to write for the whole family. You know generations of people. He wrote in such a way that the stories you can watch them over and over and over again and still get something out of it, and it still kind of is, makes you feel good. And you know, these underdog characters triumphing in the end, and the villains reforming most of the time. It was a unique writing style and all of the other parts of rank and best sort of just fit together Maury laws music and Paul Coker Jr's art style and the wonderful voice actors that they got even, you know, the famous people are one thing, and They got the famous people for their voice. You know, they had very distinctive voices in Hollywood back then. You can't really say the same of modern Hollywood. But back then, there was such a variety of talent, like Jimmy Durante and bur lives, and they just had a very unique vocal pattern that was great for animation. Mickey Rooney, all of these things just all seem to work for Rankin/Bass, and that's why Rudolph is 60 this year, and the year without a Santa Claus and Twas the Night Before Christmas are 50, and that's the subject of my seventh book on rank and bass. So it's been a long and I would say, very fun career for me, because during these times when things are not so great in the world, you can always go back to the things that were great in the world, and Rankin/Bass is a big part of that. Like you said, it was something that you watched growing up, but you could still watch it today, and it's like going home just to such a nice quality to him. And I'm, I'm proud to be a part of it. It

Jeff Dwoskin 13:18

is timeless. It's very timeless. Yeah, it was funny when I was doing some research for you, because in my head when, if you were to say, okay, what are the rank and bass? I'd probably list off just the Christmas ones, but rank and bastard, the Osmonds, Thundercats, Jackson Five, The Hobbit, The Return of the King. You mentioned mad monster party. But, I mean, that's just, you know, just a few the King Kong show. I didn't even realize the breadth of all that Rankin/Bass . Did I was, I'm a hardcore Rudolph. So, all right, so this was their first then smash hit, right? It wasn't their first project, but it was their first smash hit. So we're talking 1964 60 years. Like you said, I learned in prepping for this, they used a lot of songs as the basis for kind of creating an expanded story, and Rudolph being one of those, right? I also learned it was just a story, but made for Montgomery Ward to sell. I didn't know

Rick Goldschmidt 14:18

that. Yeah, well, Robert L May was the guy who came up with the idea and put it into that Montgomery Ward storybook. And in fact, he lived in Evanston, Illinois, which is not too far north of me. And when I wrote my Rudolph book, The Making of Rudolph book. I was the same age that he was when he wrote that Rudolph story book. And then his brother in law, John Johnny marks wrote the famous song, which everybody saying, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, but the first person that. That it was Gene Autry, and he had a huge hit with it. He was Arthur Rankin's neighbor in New York. Arthur had his Rankin/Bass studios in the brownstone building that he lived in, and Johnny marks was just across the way, and he would see Johnny marks at parties, and he said that, you know, this should be a television show, and he didn't want to do a television show, because he thought that would be over exposure of the song and the character and everything. But Arthur prevailed on getting this television special made. But a lot of people don't know that Romeo Muller created, along with Tony Peters, who was the art director of it, all of the other characters The Island of Misfit Toys, Hermey mu con Sam, none of those characters existed in the story book, so Romeo Muller and Rankin/Bass were a huge part of developing that story, far beyond the story book in the in the song. Whenever you go to stores at Christmas time you see all of his characters, you know, being marketed, and his estate and Tony Peters estate are owed millions because they created all those characters, just like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the Marvel Universe primarily. So it's interesting to note that most of the development of the story that we all know was from Romeo Muller and Tony Peters, so

Jeff Dwoskin 16:52

the millions that they're owned owed, do they not get it because of the copyright issue?

Rick Goldschmidt 16:58

No, they they should get it. They just need to go after it. They probably will in the future, because there's so much you go to Menards or even a grocery store, you're going to find a whole bunch of Rudolph stuff at Christmas time. Most of it are characters that they created.

Jeff Dwoskin 17:21

I read, I saw, like some trivia that they The reason I brought up the copyright was that they put it in Roman numerals, but accidentally put it as 1164 instead of 1964 right? Which caused a lot of problems, and that's why it's in public domain, right?

Rick Goldschmidt 17:38

That's but universal still claims that they own it. You know you'd have to go after them if you wanted to do anything with it. So I don't know there's a question mark as far as the actual show goes, but I know those characters based on what Jack Kirby and Stan Lee got from their lawsuits, those characters are owned by the creators of those characters. That's something completely different than owning the actual show and distributing the actual show. And I've learned that over the years, and I've I've been dealing with a lot of law issues past and present that I know about these things now, and I was friends with a lot of other people in the entertainment industry because of my rank and bass affiliation. I was good friends with Earl Hagan, who wrote the themes to the Andy Griffith Show. I spy that girl. You know, Gomer Pyle, all these great shows. And his estate filed a lawsuit not long ago, because when he originally signed his agreement, and I think the last one he signed was with Viacom. There was no such thing as DVDs and blu rays and all all the other physical media that came later. So they were going after these companies for more money. And the contracts when rank and bass existed were only like two page contracts, and they didn't even deal with merchandising. They didn't say, like, you know, we're going to sell toys and this and that that wasn't even in the contract. So it's a different world today as far as all the legal issues go,

Jeff Dwoskin 19:37

let me ask a couple questions on Sure, what was the inspiration of Herme being a dentist or wanting to be a dentist?

Rick Goldschmidt 19:44

Hermey was also different than the other characters because he didn't have pointed ears and he didn't have bulbous nose. The reason they made the bulb nose is because GE. He was sponsoring the special. He wrote this unique character who wanted to be a dentist rather than an elf, and gave him, you know, more of a dimensional character than just your typical Christmas elf. And he had to be sort of an underdog. He didn't want to be a dentist, and just like Rudolph, who has this red nose, and they don't know what to do with it, so he finds his place in the world, and then they accept him at the end. And that's what makes it so fulfilling to watch the show. You know, everybody kind of finds their place, even the bumble becomes a tree top decorator. So it was very unique. And like I said, that's kind of Romeo's trademark. He, he wasn't writing things. And a lot of people say Santa's so mean, you know, I don't like this. I don't like Santa. He was, he was bullying. They say, Well, I love that version of Santa, because he's kind of irritated, you know, and he's not always in the mood for Christmas. And a lot of people get like that at Christmas time, my family sometimes gets like that. They don't want to decorate, or they they're not in the best of mood, maybe they got health problems or whatever. And that's the kind of multi dimensional character that Romeo would write, and Santa realizes he was wrong by the end, that he His attitude was wrong, his attitude about Rudolph was wrong, and he admits it. He's happy at the end, and he he flies off with Rudolph. So everything works out in the end.

Jeff Dwoskin 21:56

Well, he needed him. He ended up needing him. Yeah, the red nose is the only thing that could get him through so they could do it. So, right? What if that had never happened? What Rudolph had always been ostracized, right? Right? It's a good lesson, but it's also like,

Rick Goldschmidt 22:11

Yeah, well, it had to be written that way. I too, because Santa probably should have recognized that right at the beginning, but then it would have been a shorter special if he went into the cave and he said, Whoa, his nose lights up, that would be great for the slay. He probably could have done that, but he had to write it in such a way that that wouldn't happen till the end.

Jeff Dwoskin 22:35

Yeah, we needed the 44 minute version, not the four minute version. Right, right, right, right. Of course, yeah. Sorry to interrupt. Let's take a quick break. I know I missed a green Christmas. Ah, Mr. Sun. All right. You know, I know. I wish I could sing anyway. I do want to thank everyone for the support of the sponsors. When you support the sponsors, you're supporting us here at Classic conversations, and that's how we keep the lights on. And now back to my amazing conversation with Rick Goldschmidt The Misfit Toys. What made them misfits? Exactly, other than that they could talk. They didn't seem that broken. No,

Rick Goldschmidt 23:13

in the scripts and I had three different versions of Romeo Mueller's script, the little misfit Girl doll that everybody asks about really didn't have much of a part in the special. So Romeo did really write what her affliction was. And when the 65 version of the show came out, there were a lot of changes made, and she got a few more lines, or at least one more line around the campfire, when Santa came back and picked them all up, and she had more screen presence. But for some reason, Romeo didn't really say what was wrong with her. So Arthur always made a joke out of it, and said she was clinically depressed and cast up by her mistress. And they didn't have Prozac back then, or something like that, just to make a joke out of it. But some of them, you know, like people say, like the the squirt gun that has jelly in it. You could put water in it and not jelly. It wouldn't be a misfit if things like that. The scooter doesn't really have anything wrong with it, and there's a few others. But that wasn't really the the whole point. It just was that these toys wound up on an island, and that castle in the island is kind of the whole special kind of reminds me of The Wizard of Oz, and the king Moon racer is kind of like he's the wizard or something. And there's all these toys, rather than Munchkins. They just. Want to get off the island and be with kids. That was kind of the overall purpose of the misfit toys. But so many of them have become merchandise. You know, Charlie in the box, you see a lot of products made with him, and it's just a very unique bunch of characters.

Jeff Dwoskin 25:21

Oh, yeah. I always thought of them as just more discarded toys, right? Exactly. Now, yeah, the movie Elf Will Ferrell's elf drew on this a lot, including the SAM the snowman Burro lives character, right? Really, kind of pulled that classic element of Rudolph into the new classic elf,

Rick Goldschmidt 25:43

right? And he did use and even admitted it, we did a 2020, ABC specials about eight years ago, and they got John Favreau for that. And that's when he started admitting that the costume design for elf really came from Rudolph. You know the elf costume. He had Rudolph in mind when as he was doing it, and he even bought the rights. And I don't know what he's doing with them, but he was going to make a feature film out of the year without a Santa Claus. They already attempted to do a television like a live action television show. And then they did that miser brothers Christmas, which I could only watch about five minutes of. And I had the turn. You know, whenever they remake these things, they pretty much ruin it, but then it makes you like, like the original even that much more and appreciate it more.

Jeff Dwoskin 26:44

You cannot remake these. It's just impossible, the innocence of just the just everything about it, right? Can't recreate magic. So the Misfit Toys, when you said they added to it, right? Because people sort of said, what happened in the midst of toys, right, right? So they went and they created a scene where Santa goes back and gets them, which then caused, which I was reading, I was laughing, is, uh, they made a point that the one bird couldn't fly, but then they just drop him out of this the flying sled, right to his death. Like, Well, David WKRP in Cincinnati, Turkey style,

Rick Goldschmidt 27:24

the bird, actually, it's kind of like the Wizard, Wizard of Oz, like I said before, that was kind of the inspiration. I think that Romeo Muller and he had just written returned to us, which was their first special So really, the bird could fly, and he didn't know it. You know, just like the Scarecrow had a heart, he didn't know it. And, you know, all the other characters in The Wizard of Oz, they really could do what they wanted to do, but they didn't know it until they had to do it. I think when the Scarecrow was burning. The lion did have courage, because he tried to put them out. You know, it was stuff like that where these characters really could do what they thought they couldn't. I think that's why he threw him off the sleigh, because he really could fly. I

Jeff Dwoskin 28:19

don't know Rick, I like my version better.

Rick Goldschmidt 28:24

Yeah. Well, things happen too. There's there's mistakes in everything. So maybe it was a mistake.

Jeff Dwoskin 28:32

I like your version, but it is fun to think of it as a mistake as well. The other thing I read that I would have never noticed was Rudolph at the end, when he's leaving. There's only six other reindeer, not eight, because of right deduction costs or something, right? Well,

Rick Goldschmidt 28:48

it's easier to animate. You might also notice that in animation, you know, character, sometimes characters only have three fingers and a thumb, and that's why, because of the animation is easy, easier to do. It's something to do with the animation style. They maybe they tried eight reindeer and Rudolph, but it it wasn't holding with whatever they used to hold them up for flying. It was too heavy or something I don't know.

Jeff Dwoskin 29:20

Tell me the story about how you found and restored some of the original what do they call it? Puppets? Or what are they? AniMagic figures. Ana magic figures, okay,

Rick Goldschmidt 29:31

I guess the correct term. When we went out and found the original Rudolph and Santa, what we thought were the ones used in the special. They were restored by screen novelties after they were on antiques roadshow. A lot of people see that at Christmas time they're always sharing the link to the show that they brought them on, and everything they said about them was wrong. Wrong. We thought they were the original animated Santa and Rudolph when they were restored, and we took them out and brought them to Wizard World and the Brookfield Zoo and all these other places. And eventually, my friend that owned them, he had to sell them, and a collector held on to him for a long time, and they were on a few shows after, and then he auctioned them off. And I helped with the auction. I gave them photos for their catalog, and kind of wrote some stuff and and they sold for $368,000 and then they were put in. They were donated to the Center for puppetry arts. Well, when I wrote my book about Santa Claus is Coming to Town in Frosty the Snowman, I included photos from an exhibit in Japan of tad Moshe Nagas collection, and I paid closer attention to the special, and I realized that the Santa that is in the special is the one that tad hung on to in Japan, because the beard moves up and down and there's lines in the beard which are decaying on The tad motion AGA puppet. The one that we had here is nothing like that. It's like the ones that are pictured in the publicity photographs that I own and put in my books. Santa has a much rounder and bigger beard. So last December, I finally found a picture of the display that was in the NBC building at Rockefeller Plaza from 1964 to 1971 they made this big display, and all the puppets in the display were The ones that were photographed in New York for different publicity things, for TV Guide covers and photographs and the Santa that we restored, he never could stand up. He's sitting in the display with limp legs because he was only used for photos. And what they did was they pegged them up through the bottom of a display and put rods up his legs so that he could be photographed in the group. So I'm going to include that photo in my next book, the one on the year without a Santa Claus, and talk all about that. And I also wrote an article for remind magazine's website about this, that the actual puppets, most of them, stayed in Japan, the ones that were used in the special all of those stayed in Japan. The only ones that came to the States were used for publicity.

Jeff Dwoskin 32:59

Very interesting. Wow. So it's amazing how you just figured that out, but, like, it's really cool. Yeah, let's talk about Frosty the Snowman. Sure. I did have a question for you, though that leads into this. So in Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Dan Francis voiced Santa Claus, right? Paul freeze did in Frosty the Snowman, and then Mickey Rooney pretty much took over from that point on, give or take, right? The majority of it overall. And you've mentioned Marvel a couple times. Is the rank and bass, at least the Christmas? Is it a universe like is it all the same world?

Rick Goldschmidt 33:36

It is, but they couldn't keep everything the same. And the reason for that is they were airing on three different networks. Back then. We only had three networks and like a UA, Jeff station, what So, yeah, so when they did the sequel to frosty, frosty's winter wonderland that was on ABC so they couldn't use Karen and Hinkle and all the other characters, because they were on CBS and they were still airing every year, and ABC didn't want that anyway. They wanted their own unique take. So frosty is basically the same, although he's designed a little different. He has on a scarf and a head and a big flower on the hat and everything. They had Jack Frost and crystal and, you know, it was a whole different thing. So they couldn't really keep, like a continuous universe going. They had to change a lot of things make Santa and Rudolph look different. Like Rudolph doesn't look the same in Rudolph shiny new year, because that was on ABC. So they had to design him a little bit differently than the one that was there in a CBS at the time. So, you know, they. Had to change things a little bit because of that reason, because there were three networks involved. Did

Jeff Dwoskin 35:05

people write letters? I don't remember as a kid watching them and noticing myself as a kid that Rudolph was different. I mean, his antlers were a different size later on, but like

Rick Goldschmidt 35:16

I noticed as a kid, and I didn't like it as much. I remember when I started seeing some of the later versions, I wish they had all looked like the early version. You know, that was a minor thing. The specials were still good, and the songs were still good. A lot of things were still good, but Paul coker's design was a little bit different than Tony Peters, who did the early stuff. His stuff was Tony Peters was a little bit more streamlined, kind of like UPA style, very simple, and Paul Coker style was a much different style. So that's why the later specials looked so much different than the early the early stuff

Jeff Dwoskin 36:06

with Frosty the Snowman. Why did they move away from the anim AniMagic and do it as an animation? Because

Rick Goldschmidt 36:13

when they would employ M O M, which was doing the AniMagic, that sometimes could run into a year to a year and a half. And if they went into say, CBS and said, we have this idea for frosty, and they're already working on Santa Claus is coming to town, you know, doing this stop motion for ABC, they had to subcontract another studio, which, in the case of frosty, was mushy, and partly Arthur wanted it to look like a Christmas card. And Paul Coker Jr was a Christmas card artist for Hallmark. But the other part of it was they were already working on a project that was stop motion, and they couldn't they couldn't have two going at the same time. It just took too many people and too much money, so they had to mix it up. And they kept doing that all through the 70s and into the 80s, where they were doing cell animation with Mushi and Tony, and stop motion with the MLM and a magic crew. They just got so busy, you know, like I said, they were working for three networks. They had shows on all three networks at Christmas time and even at Easter too. Two of the Easter specials are AniMagic, and one of them is cell animated. So, I mean, they were very, very busy, even working on feature films too. They did King Kong Escapes, while they also did the same year, the little drummer boy in mouse on the Mayflower, and they did cricket on the hearth right before that. So they had a lot of projects going on simultaneously.

Jeff Dwoskin 38:11

It's amazing to think that if Santa Claus is coming to town, hadn't been done, then the entire visual of frosty could have been different. But I can't picture frosty being any different, it seems right. So perfect, the way, like, however that happened to happen, seems like it was perfect or meant to be, yeah? So frosty breaks the fourth wall. Is that the one of the first instances of this? Yeah?

Rick Goldschmidt 38:34

I think so. And frosty also was the beginning of what I would call the rank and bass look. Because obviously you think of the puppets, first of all, you know, the ANA magic figures that that's what comes to mind when we think of Rankin/Bass, but with frosty, the Paul Coker style, with the lettering that he used for the credits and the buildings and all of that. And the sort of very stylistic 2d art of Paul Coker became the rank and bass look for what was to become a festival of Family Classics, the reluctant dragon and Mr. Toad show, and all the other shows that followed had this certain look about him that it didn't look like Disney. It looked like Rankin/Bass. And they even hired Paul to do variety ads every year that would say, you know, this is frosty fourth anniversary, and this is Rudolph's, you know, sixth or seventh, and all the ratings that they were getting by taking an ad out of variety like that that would kind of prompt ABC or CBS or NBC or major movie game. Companies to say, hey, maybe they could do something like this for us. And that's how they got a lot of their work. So it led to things like the Hobbit and The Last Unicorn and Thundercats and all the other things that came afterwards.

Jeff Dwoskin 40:17

Yeah. I mean, they did so much, so much. Santa Claus is coming to town as an origin story, but let's talk about the year without Santa Claus because, I mean, literally, just the other day, my hair was crazy, and I'm looking at a mirror and I'm like, heat miser, I look like, freaking heat miser. I mean, right? Like, that's weird, right? I mean, it's like, it would be so embedded That, to me, is like the miser brothers. I mean, I know you didn't like the spin off later. Yeah, miser and snow. Miser are two of the greatest characters. I think that came out of this whole rank and bass, in my opinion, right,

Rick Goldschmidt 40:54

right? They are. They might even be more popular than Rudolph, in my opinion, because when I go to shows like The Great Lakes Comic Con, people will come by, and that's what draws their attention. Are those heat miser and snow miser mass. And they just are so they want to take a picture of them with their phone, you know? And they're asking me, is, if that's okay. Now that's another funny thing about the year without a Santa Claus, and that I'll be writing about in my new book is it was based on a story book, just like Rudolph. That was a very short story written by Phyllis McGinley, and it was a Pulitzer Prize winning book, and it did not include heat miser and snow miser. Romeo created that with Paul Coker Jr, and had it not had the heat miser and snow miser, I don't think it would have been as big of a special in people's minds. You know, that's really what draws them in and makes it such a memorable holiday special is the heat miser and snow miser. So by far, they're their most popular and most recognized characters. And when I became the historian and wrote my first book, there was no merchandise out whatsoever on heat miser and snow miser, but there was a guy who made a resin figure of the two. And Arthur asked me to get those and to paint them for Arthur and Jules, which I did, and they were just thrilled to have them, because their memories of everything they did, the heat miser and snow, miser stood out.

Jeff Dwoskin 42:48

It was a combination of the character, but the song, the songs that he saw them sang, the combination was just Yeah, yeah. And, I think the the brotherly gobble, right? I mean, like, right? I just there was this just so memorable, so memorable,

Rick Goldschmidt 43:07

yeah, and the songs were picked by TV Guide in the top 50 most memorable songs of television. So Maury and Jules were proud of that. And I was the one who got the phone call when they were making one of the Batman movies, the one with George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and they wanted to use the snow miser song. And Maureen and Jules were proud of that, you know, that it went into the film, and they also got paid for it. So they were pretty happy about that.

Jeff Dwoskin 43:43

Well, at least there was one good thing in that movie.

Unknown Speaker 43:45

Yeah,

Jeff Dwoskin 43:47

that's cool. That's really cool. I mean, because it's so crazy to think right decades later, like, oh, let's we gotta have this right? Mr. Freeze, obviously we have to have that song right. And it's just like it just speaks so much to Why do you think all of these things still live 6050, years later?

Rick Goldschmidt 44:08

Well, it's such a wholesome, family oriented bunch of specials, and it really takes you back to the core of what great entertainment can be like, just like the classic Disney movies that were made when Walt Disney was living, are totally different than what they do now. So Rankin/Bass, when I did the first book and I put everything together, I realized that they were successful in just about everything that they did, even the shows that Arthur thought weren't very good and he didn't like them. He didn't like Return of the King, and he didn't like the Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, but the. Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, which was their their last AniMagic special, and it was based on a book by L Frank Baum, who wrote The Wizard of Oz. There's a huge following for that one. People love it, even though it's nothing like Rudolph. It has a very different style to it. And other than it's Ana magic, it's not the same kind of thing, but there's people that love it. So I think they were successful, and just about everything that they did because they hired the right people, the artist and Maury laws had a gift for for all this music, and even when they didn't use more, he lost. They got Bernard Hoffer and a few other people that George Wilkins, and they were great orchestrators and wonderful writers and just everything worked. You know, they had really good people working on this stuff. And that's what I do, I kind of shine the light on the people that were behind everything. Rudolph didn't make itself. You know, the people that Arthur and Jules put together and hired. They were lucky. They found these phenomenal people, and they stuck with them pretty much the whole 30 years that they were really busy putting together these classic TV specials. So there's such a quality in it that it's even there's an element in there that you can't even describe, because there's a magic in it. And I think they chose the right word and a magic for the stop motion. There's just a, there's a magic to them that, like you were saying, they can't replicate these things, they can't remake them, because there's that magic to them. That's pretty much my whole take on it. And, you know, I've written these books and I've written articles, and I've done a lot of interviews, and you can describe all the, you know, the actual working people that worked on it, but there was this, this other layer of magic that you just can't describe. You mentioned

Jeff Dwoskin 47:11

you're working on your seventh book. So I mean the enchanted world of Rankin/Bass, a portfolio the making of Rudolph, making of Santa Claus is coming to town. Rankin/Bass mad monster party. Just to name a few of your books. Where can people get these amazing works? What's the best way to keep up with you on the socials and and all the rank and bass that they can handle.

Rick Goldschmidt 47:33

I'm on Etsy slash miser bros, and I'm on Amazon and eBay. Pretty much, I'm going to be doing a lot of conventions too, so you know, you could reach me that way as well.

Jeff Dwoskin 47:47

Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing all this and diving into a couple of these in depth. I really appreciate it. It's amazing talking to someone who knows so much goodness. So I'm glad that you're making all these books and documenting it all and and now I gotta go look for a snow miser and heat miser character to buy an eBay or something, right?

Rick Goldschmidt 48:13

Well, thanks for having me. It was fun.

Jeff Dwoskin 48:17

All right, how amazing was Rick. Such a trip down nostalgia lane, I still love watching all those shows whenever they come on the TV. Ah, so much. Goodness. All right. Well, Rick's got a million books, and when I tell you these books are detailed, they are detailed. I met Rick at a comic con. Any one of these books weighs 500 pounds each, meaning just amazing amounts of content. Photos. If you're into Rankin/Bass, definitely check out my show notes. I'll put links to Rick's books. You gotta, you gotta check those out. Well, that flew by, huh? Yeah, I know. Ah, another interview gone in the books. Thank you, Rick Goldschmidt, for sharing your knowledge with us, and thank all of you for coming back week after week. It means the world to me, and I'll see you next time.

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