The Three Kings

From 1964 to 1985, there seemed to be only three people who liked Christmas more than anyone else. The producing/directing duo of Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass and the writer Romeo Muller formed a team that has entertained generations of viewers at Christmas time. It started in 1964 with the classic Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and ended with The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. The last Christmas program Muller wrote was the less than satisfactory Pinocchio's Christmas. Anyone who's seen their later works can agree that it was time to stop. The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus is too dark for a young audience.

Still, they produced shows with characters that people can recognize, even if don't know who made them. They made stop motion animation with smiling faces. The cartoons featured kids with bluer eyes than you would find in Japanimation movie.

Early on, they made some good work, such as Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, and The Little Drummer Boy. Then, the tide changed around 1979, when Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July came out. It was a rather long and somewhat hokey mixture of their earlier works. A year later, they produced a non-Christmas program, The Return of the King, an adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkein work that is beyond terrible.

Regardless, every time Christmas rolls around, kids turn and big kids at heart tune in when the shows come on TV to enjoy what these three men had in mind.

Muller died in 1992, but Rankin and Bass are still around to see what they created and it was terrific.