Beloved Rankin/Bass Classic ‘The Year Without a Santa Claus’ Turns 50
Looking back 50 years now, 1974 was a magical time! I was just 9 years old, and my dad was 34, and my mom a few years younger. My brother Chris was 8 and we had our favorite TV shows, and at Christmas, we received many gifts based on our favorite TV shows. To put the television era in perspective, Kung Fu premiered in 1972, The Six Million Dollar Man in 1973, The Planet of the Apes TV series and Shazam! in 1974. My brother and I had many heroes on television, besides the Super Friends on Saturday morning television. Cop shows were all the rage too, so we watched The Rookies, Adam 12, Mannix and Emergency!, and in 1975, S.W.A.T. and Starsky and Hutch hit the airwaves! With my dad joining the police force during this era, these series were extra special to me.
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Rankin/Bass Productions had already been a part of our holidays, since my earliest memories. As I have said many times, when I saw Santa on his sleigh at the end of Rudolph saying “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!” I thought he was on the way to my house. In fact, in 1974, Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass had had successful Christmas TV specials on the three major networks for 10 solid years! 1974 would be the year for two of their very best Christmas specials, and one could say that the specials that followed started seeing a downward arc in ratings and popularity. This isn’t to say that the following specials were bad, but they did start to lose some of the magic (or Animagic) of their most successful productions.
How The Year Without a Santa Claus came to be
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I do remember the premiere of The Year Without a Santa Claus on ABC Television Dec. 10, 1974. It was sponsored by Parker Brothers Games, and later the Pillsbury Company and Burger King joined in co-sponsorship. You have to remember, this was a time for appointment television and ABC-TV did a good job at promoting it during other shows we watched on ABC at the time. Happy Days was a big show during this era, that comes to mind. We could not videotape TV shows, so the whole family would gather around to see Christmas specials as they aired that one time!
Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass had developed a strong friendship with Michael Eisner, who was in charge of programming at ABC. Arthur explained that he sold this special on the basis of a Pulitzer Prize-winning children’s storybook by Phyllis McGinley (who sadly passed away Feb. 22, 1978). “We showed Michael the book and sold it on that. The book was very short and we expanded on that greatly, but this was an easy sell,” said Arthur Rankin.
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Romeo Muller Jr. with two Animagic figures Arthur gave him.
This is where writer Romeo Muller became so important to the Enchanted World of Rankin/Bass! When I became the official Rankin/Bass Productions historian/biographer in the 1990s, there were two funny questions I would always get asked. One was, “What was wrong with the misfit girl doll on the Island of Misfit Toys?” For that one, Arthur always joked and said, “She was cast off by her mistress and was clinically depressed and Prozac did not exist.” In truth, I had three versions of the Rudolph script by Romeo, and Romeo never explained in detail what was wrong with the misfit doll. The second question I would always get asked was, “What was the special with Heat Miser and Snow Miser?” Most fans could not remember the title of the special, but they sure remembered Heat Miser and Snow Miser, who did not exist in the storybook. I also noticed that many fans would call Snow Miser the Cold Miser or the Freeze Miser.
How Heat Miser and Snow Miser Were Created
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Getting back to Romeo, he took a prize-winning story and with what he added, made a magical, enduring television special that will last for generations! The Heat Miser and Snow Miser additions put this television special into the stratosphere of popularity. I have found that they are even more universally known than Rudolph or Frosty.
On the art side of Heat Miser and Snow Miser, it was handled by my dearly departed friend Paul Coker Jr. “When I got a script from Romeo, I could see the magic in his writing! It was very easy for me to conjure up an image of all the characters that would be involved,” said Coker.
Following the development of Heat Miser and Snow Miser, it took a few more things to put them over the top as Christmas icons. First it was the wonderful Rankin/Bass Animagic that was so beautifully done by the Japanese animators like Hiroshi Tabata and Ichiro Kumiro. Without the Animagic, I probably would not have been drawn to the Enchanted World of Rankin/Bass. It was that important.
The songs by Maury Laws and Jules Bass are the other big components! The songs are memorable and so important to the story. Maury Laws explained, “I tried to come up with something that matched the braggart, over-the-top nature of their characters. They were rooted in vaudeville, with all of their show biz minions. I am very proud of those tunes and TV Guide Magazine put it in their Top 50 most memorable television songs.”
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George S. Irving was known to a generation for being the narrator of Underdog. So he did have great success in animation, but his Heat Miser work is perhaps his most famous. For the selection of Snow Miser, Dick Shawn, famed stage comedian and film star, was selected. Prior to this special, Dick had done no voice work for an animated production. He was known to me for his TV guest spots and his appearances in the comedy films It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Way … Way, Out!, both also starring Jerry Lewis. Arthur and Jules heard something in his voice, that was good for animation and they hit gold!
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Without a doubt, Heat Miser and Snow Miser made this production, hands down! The plot was simple: Santa wants to take a holiday, as he thinks people, in particular children, don’t care about him or Christmas anymore. Heat Miser and Snow Miser are the protagonists, but not in the usual way. They fight with each other, but Mrs. C and their mother, Mother Nature, put an end to that by the end of the special. They do fear their mother!
Rick Goldschmidt Archive/Miser Bros Press
The Year Without a Santa Claus will be airing on AMC at the following times:
Sunday, Dec. 8, 1:45pm
Friday, Dec. 13, 6:45pm
Saturday, Dec. 21, 8:45am
Wednesday, Dec. 25, 8:15am
Thursday, Dec. 26, 4:45am
It is also available for rent or purchase on Prime Video.
This was an excerpt from Rankin/Bass historian Rick Goldschmidt‘s latest book “
Remind 
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