NBC showed Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer for the first time on 6 December 1964. Interestingly, CBS took over the show in 1972. It only came back to NBC last year.
It is my favorite holiday show. I like it even better than How the Grinch Stole Christmas! But it is a strong second.
It was the first Christmas special from Rankin/Bass Animated Entertainment. They did a lot of great stuff, but they never matched Rudolph. Romeo Muller wrote it. He wrote just about everything the company ever did — including the two Tolkien adaptations The Hobbit and Return of the King. It also features a great cast — mostly from Canada. This goes along with the Japanese animation. It is the most American product ever, if you ask me!
But I find it fascinating that thematically, it’s so… woke. Imagine it was released today. The usual suspects would scream about how it was Hollywood trying to propagandize our children. I mean, it teaches acceptance of differences!
Hermey is clearly gay. Even worse, he isn’t doing what his manager tells him to. Rudolph is hardly alpha, which is bad enough. But he turns out to be heroic because he’s different. WTF?! Even alpha Yukon Cornelius is silly and, even worse, accepting of people who weren’t like him. And don’t get me started on the Island of Misfit Toys!
But these are all reasons I think all children should watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. We used to all believe this stuff was good. Today? We are fast approaching the day when people start calling for an end to kindergarten. Better to get those lazy kids working in the coal mines!
But until then, we can all enjoy this incredibly sweet show that teaches us all how to be better people. Merry Christmas!
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) title card via Wikimedia. It is in the public domain.
All of this is quite true — and I’m sure, if I wanted, I could find examples of the usual dingbats hating the thing (the way they hate Fred Rogers). But I don’t want to.
It is a hair above The Grinch, because the Whos are quite boring. But the animation, Karloff and Thurl Ravenscroft are great in that one.
I like that it was copyrighted 1164!
I love the old days when people could lose their copyrights so easily! We should go back to that!
Karloff’s daughter said he came home after recording that and commented that he might have done something that was really special. He’s right! It was such an unusual but brilliant casting idea. I do love it but his treatment of the dog still upsets me. I’ve always most identified with the dog. As you say, the Whos are boring!
Yes, the poor dog! But maybe in cartoon land, dogs live to be 500 and so the dog inherits all the Grinch’s money. Then spends it on an educational program teaching the Whos better taste in music.
Incidentally Mrs. James loved the points you made in this review, too. I’d say you should do a YouTube video about Rudolph, but half the comments would be utter trolls. And who needs THAT?
I love that line about the dog. I posted it on Bsky — mostly just for the snark about music taste.
Thank Mrs James! This all goes back to something I’ve found fascinating. All the YouTube ranters who complain about “woke” cinema love Alien. But Ripley is everything they hate and they would hate the film if it came out today. It isn’t that Hollywood went woke. The only thing that has changed is that they’ve become reactionaries. Teaching children kindness is something the vast majority of people still approve of.
That’s such a strange thing… I remember when sci-fi fans were the biggest geeks around. The nerds, the weirdos, the misfit toys. We loved sci-fi because it could dream of different possibilities.
And now a bunch of sci-fi fans are jerks who aren’t into imagining other worlds, they like Space Weapons. Ugh!
Anyways, thanks for this post. Great insights! I’m gonna spread it around as much as I can…
I thought it was strange that I was always really into science but never science fiction. I think it is because I found most science fiction devoid of good characters. Horror is way better in that regard. But as an adult, I’ve found that science fiction (stories and novels — not films) are way better than they used to be. Something like Star Wars isn’t really science fiction from my perspective. What people who like that kind of stuff are really into are just modern westerns.
When I was looking at writing about a crazy 1958 Czech movie, Invention for Destruction (it is bananas and one of the coolest-looking things I’ve ever seen, based on Jules Verne)…
…I found this new website, Locus Magazine. That’s sci-fi. And it’s about books! And short stories! I don’t really have time to read fiction right now. But it was great to find a sci-fi site that was about WRITING, not Star Wars and Marvel! If I ever get to a place where I can find time to read fiction again, that site seems like a good source!
(They do review the new TV/movie sci-fi crap, and they love all of it. But they do like five TV/movie reviews a year. The rest is all about writing. Compare that to most “sci-fi” sites which have multiple daily posts about Marvel movies.)
I like reading any science fiction by someone smarter/more-creative than I am. And there are a ton of those people out there! It’s a genre that attracts a lot of great people. They make me feel like a failure. But that’s okay!
Oh! I would love to see what you think of the Soviet-era music Rock’n’Roll Wolf. I don’t think the film was ever released on disc, so you won’t find it at the library. But it is an amazing and bizarre film! I happened upon it with a small film distributor that included a bunch of DVDs with trailers and drive-in shorts. Be careful with it. There is an English version with the songs properly translated. When I was obsessed with it, I found the non-English widescreen print and the cropped English print. So it is disappointing regardless. But it really is amazing!
That sounds crazy but kinda fun! Let me know if you’ve found a solid link for it!
“Invention for Destruction” re-creates the look of 19th-century book illustrations. The ones all done with engravings. So you’ve got these goofy impossible Jules Verne machines, looking like illustrations, but there’s a mixture of live action, animation, and set decoration, all in the same shots! It looks INCREDIBLE! And not just “for the period” — it looks like something that’d cost what a “Wall-E” does today. It’s that level of detail. Terrific stuff!