Jules Bass, the producer and director who worked with partner Arthur Rankin Jr. to create a still-iconic series of stop-motion-animated holiday-themed TV specials (including Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty The Snowman) and other memorable hand-drawn animated projects (The Last Unicorn, The Hobbit, ThunderCats), has died. The Hollywood Reporter says he had been at an assisted living facility in New York but doesn’t give a specific cause of death. Bass was 87.
Born in Philadelphia in 1935, Bass went to New York University and worked in advertising before he met Alan Rankin Jr. and they went into business together. They founded a company called Videocraft International in 1960 (it later became known as Rankin/Bass Productions) to produce animated movies and TV shows through Japanese animation studios like MOM Production (lead by animator Tadahito Mochinaga, who did the stop-motion “Animagic” work for Rankin/Bass), Mushi Productions, and Topcraft (a studio that went bankrupt in 1984, leaving employees Isao Takahata, Toshio Suzuiki, and Hayao Miyazaki to form Studio Ghibli). Though it took a few years, Videocraft’s first big hit came in 1964 with the release of NBC’s Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer special, which still airs every year (though it’s on CBS now).
That led to other animated Christmas specials like Frosty The Snowman, Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town, The Year Without A Santa Claus, and many, many others that haven’t had quite the same staying power (which is to be expected, since even the most recent of those four is almost 50 years old). Bass also directed Rankin/Bass’ animated adaptations of The Hobbit and The Return Of The King, which remain cool—if odd—incarnations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s saga. Bass co-directed The Last Unicorn, a fantasy movie that has maintained a cult following since its release in 1982, and he was a producer on the animated action show ThunderCats, which (depending on who you ask) may have even transcended “cult following” to just having a regular following.
He stopped actively working in show business in the ‘80s, though he did write books, including the kids book Herb, The Vegetarian Dragon and the novel Headhunters (later adapted into the Selena Gomez-starring film Monte Carlo). Alan Rankin Jr. died in 2014, and Bass’ daughter, Jean Nicole Bass, died earlier this year.