Watch Lost 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' Scene

By LORRAINE SWANSON (Patch Staff)

Little did a pair of animators know that the holiday TV special they created to help General Electric hawk appliances would still be airing 51 years later.

“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” has endured as the highest-rated, longest-running special in television history. Its creators, Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass, would go on to create 16 more holiday-themed Animagic TV specials based on American pop standards.

Rick Goldschmidt, who lives in a memorabilia-filled home in Oak Lawn, IL, and is considered the world’s foremost expert on Rankin/Bass, has devoted much of his time to keeping the animators’ Animagic legend alive. (He so endeared himself to the animators, that when Arthur Rankin died in 2014, Goldschmidt was invited to speak at his memorial.)

The deleted Yukon Cornelius scene from the 1964 ‘Rudolph’ broadcast.

“My parents, especially my mom let us know when the shows were on. I really looked forward to watching them,” Goldschmidt said.

According to Goldschmidt, the special that debuted Dec. 6, 1964, on the General Electric Fantasy Hour isn’t the same as the chopped-up version shown on television today. Scenes and parts of the story became lost due to changes in the original ending.

When ”Rudolph” was prepared for a second rebroadcast in 1965, Rankin/Bass created a new ending after parents complained their children were upset over the fates of the misfit toys, left dangling the year before.

The 1964 end credits showed the cast and crew’s names stamped on presents being tossed off Santa’s sleigh by an elf. The next year when Santa flew back to the Island of Misfit Toys, the end credits were switched to defective toys parachuting off Santa’s sleigh with umbrellas. As a result, Billie Mae Richards’—the actress who voiced Rudolph—has been misspelled as “Billy” for decades.

“On earlier end credits we found her name spelled correctly,” Goldschmidt said.

After Hermey the Elf gets fired for putting teeth in dolls because he’d rather be a dentist than make toys, he meets up with young Rudolph, who’s also been rejected by Santa and his peers for his non-conforming nose. Before the pair decides to run away to become “independent,” they sing a defiant “We’re A Couple of Misfits.”

A General Electric executive named Willard Saloff decided he wanted to replace “Misfits” with the more upbeat “Fame and Fortune,” which was added in 1965. “Fame and Fortune” continued to be featured in the annual Rudolph broadcasts until 1998, when it was replaced by “Misfits” again.

Goldschmidt says CBS, which took over broadcasting the beloved holiday special from NBC, today shows a badly edited version of the beloved holiday special.

“When they sing ‘We’re A Couple of Misfits,’ they’re actually using animation from ‘Fame and Fortune,’” Goldschmidt said. “Their mouths are out of sync and the video jumps all over the place.”

Other subplots left dangling after the 1965 changes include prospector Yukon Cornelius, seen throughout the adventure tossing his pick ax into the air and licking it, presumably in search of silver and gold.

In the original broadcast, however, when Rudolph leads cranky Santa’s team into a blinding blizzard on Christmas Eve, it is revealed that Yukon has been searching for a peppermint mine all along.

Goldschmidt says he contacted DreamWorks, which now owns Rankin/Bass’s pre-1974 library of animated works, in preparation for Rudolph’s 50th anniversary and a companion Blu-ray edition.

“I think the color version of the end credits is very important and should have been part of the Blu-ray, which could have been much better than what was released,” Goldschmidt said. “DreamWorks and CBS haven’t bothered to put a true version of ‘Rudolph’ out. It appears they care more about the revenue it generates than the actual classic Rankin/Bass TV Special.”

Here are some more fascinating, behind-the-scenes facts of our favorite reindeer:

1. Arthur Rankin Jr.’s neighbor, Johnny Marks, a Jewish songwriter who specialized in writing Christmas-themed music, convinced the animators to create an animated special based on a poem written by his brother-in-law, Montgomery Ward copywriter Robert L. May. May penned Rudolph as part of a Christmas promotion for the now defunct department store.
2. ‘Rudolph’ went into production in late 1963 with much of videography shot in Japan by Tadahito Mochinaga, considered the father of stop-action animation. The special was produced at Mochinago’s Top Craft Studio.
3. The TV holiday special cost $500,000 to make, $3.8 million in today’s dollars.
4. ‘Rudolph’ debuted on the General Electric Fantasy Hour on Dec. 6, 1964. The special was showcased around the latest GE electrical appliances, many which no longer exist in society today. Most Americans watched the premiere on black-and-white televisions despite the special airing on NBC’s “in living color” network.
5. Rankin and Bass animated three of the commercials for GE, including an iron, hair dryer, toaster oven and teacup clock featuring Santa’s elves, including Hermie’s mean boss elf.
6. Most of the sets for the North Pole covered a tabletop. Goldschmidt says many of the stop-action scenes were shot simultaneously, with Japanese animators in charge of different characters. Rankin stayed in Japan overseeing the production, timing the stop-action scenes with a stopwatch so they could later be synchronized with the voiceovers.
7. ‘Rudolph’ was recorded in Toronto using Canadian radio actors because they were more affordable than U.S. actors. Rankin and Bass paid the actors for two years’ worth of airings. The Canadian actors never saw a penny of royalties after that because nobody dreamed ‘Rudolph’ would still be airing a half century later.
8. The voice of Sam the Snowman—the narrator of Rudolph—was originally voiced by a Canadian radio actor named Larry Mann. Mann was dumped at the last minute when GE decided it needed a star. Actor Burl Ives was a last-minute replacement, who re-recorded Sam’s narration weeks before the special’s debut.
9. Rudolph’s red nose was lit from a wire in his back hoof. His hind legs were frequently broken and repaired during production because he was used in almost every scene.
10. The puppets were actually quite small. Rudolph was 9 inches tall; Santa was the largest, towering over the rest of the figures at 16 inches. Each figure came with interchangeable eyes and mouths, crafted from paper and tempera paint, that were used to convey speech and emotion.
11. Most of the puppets were tossed into the trash after they fulfilled their duty. Rankin’s secretary saved Santa and the young Rudolph with antler nubs. Both were used as Christmas decorations and eventually deteriorated after years of being stored in an attic. Santa and Rudolph were restored in 2006, and are now owned by a collector, who keeps them both locked in a special vault, along with George Reeves’ original Superman costume.

Rick Goldschmidt has penned four lavishly illustrated books about the enchanted world of Rankin and Bass, including his latest tome, “The Arthur Rankin Jr. Scrapbook.” His books are available on his website, Miser Bros. Press or at Amazon.

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