‘Rudolph’ and Christmas stop-motion animator Arthur Rankin Jr dies

One of the men behind the popular animated holiday TV specials have touched generations of fans died Thursday at his home in Bermuda.

Arthur Rankin Jr was 89.

His death was reported by local newspaper The Royal Gazette.

With his partner Jules Bass, Rankin created popular Christmas stop-motion Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer(1964), The Little Drummer Boy (1968), Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town (1970) and The Year Without A Santa Claus(1974).

The Jimmy Durante-narrated Frosty The Snowman (1969) was done in tradition cel animation and was the first of their Christmas specials done as a half-hour rather than an hour.

Holiday specials created by the Rankin and Bass team air every Christmas season and even popular shows like The Voice and Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD this last Thanksgiving season.

In 1977, Rankin and Bass produced a version of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and was a supervising animator on Disney’s Fox and the House as well as The Black Cauldron.

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