Today in 1966 CBS first broadcast a holiday classic, “Dr. Seuss’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas.”
And it came to the small screen largely because a giant in the cartoon industry happened to be an old friend of the author.
That giant/old friend was Chuck Jones, one of the founding fathers of the Looney Tunes shorts that turned Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck and the Roadrunner into household names.
During World War II, he had worked with Ted Geisel, the future Dr. Seuss, on a series of cartoons used for military training.
And in 1964, he proposed that the two work together again, this time on an animated version of Seuss’s book about the Grinch.
Jones said he thought the title character was the best holiday villain since Ebeneezer Scrooge.
Geisel was reluctant: he had long worried that an animation studio would crank out a bunch of cheap, quick adaptations of his stories that didn’t really appreciate his work or his style.
Jones, who was then in charge of MGM’s animation department, assured his old friend that he would take the work seriously.
And he kept his word: his animation team drew way more frames than what was standard for cartoons at the time.
They thought through Grinch anatomy, so they could animate him realistically.
And Jones and Geisel came up with the just the right shade of green for the animated version of the Grinch.
But even after all that work, there was a problem: while narrator Boris Karloff had struck just the right tone in his retelling of the story, the text was only about 12 minutes long, not nearly enough for a half hour TV special.
Jones and Geisel found some ingenious ways around their challenge: first, they added more scenes that featured the Grinch’s dog, Max.
The canine sidekick became a kind of representative for the audience’s point of view in the story.
Next, they added songs, with words written by Geisel himself.
Some words he even invented, like the parts of “Welcome Christmas” that were part of a quasi-language known as Seussian Latin or the “nauseous supernaus” in “You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch.”
After being turned down by dozens of sponsors, Jones eventually got backing from the Foundation for Commercial Banks, fully recognizing the irony of a commercial banking group sponsoring a show whose message was “Maybe Christmas doesn’t come from a store.”
CBS bought the rights to air the show for $315,000, which was a lot for a cartoon in the 1960s.
But any skeptics in the audience soon saw a special winning over millions of viewers that year and every year after.
Pretty much every Who in our proverbial Whoville.
Today in 1998, rocker Alice Cooper opened a rock and sports-themed restaurant and club in Phoenix, Arizona, which ran for about 18 years.
He called it Coopers’town, and the menu included items like “Nightmare Nachos.”
Could a menu like that Feed My Frankenstein?
How Dr. Seuss Stole Christmas (Saturday Evening Post)
Alice Cooper’stown restaurant is closed after 18 years in downtown Phoenix (AZCentral.com)
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