Jules Bass, who created an animation empire with his business partner, Arthur Rankin Jr., that produced perennial Christmastime television favorites like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman,” died on Tuesday, October 25th, in Rye, N.Y. He was 87.
His death, at an assisted living facility, was confirmed by Jennifer Ruff, whose mother was Mr. Bass’s first wife.
The Rankin/Bass studio was a major force in animated programming, mostly on television, from the early 1960s to the late ’80s. Some of its TV shows and movies used traditional hand-drawn cel animation, but it carved out a separate specialty in the stop-motion puppet animation familiar to viewers since “Gumby” in the 1950s.
Rankin/Bass’s stop-motion specials included “Rudolph” (1964), featuring the voice of the folk singer Burl Ives as Sam the Snowman; “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” (1970), with Fred Astaire as the narrator and Mickey Rooney as the voice of Kris Kringle; and “Jack Frost” (1979), with Robert Morse voicing the title role.
“Frosty” (1969), narrated by Jimmy Durante, used traditional animation.
To create the stop-motion effect, animators in Japan painstakingly shot thousands of pictures of the tiniest movements and gestures of inches-tall puppets. When run at 24 frames a second, the images generated a whimsical sort of herky-jerky animation that became the Rankin/Bass signature.