For more than 20 years the Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass partnership produced some of TV's best-loved holiday specials. Below are some of the duo's more famous Christmas shows, all available on DVD ...

The Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians is a 1970 American animated television special produced by Rankin/Bass Productions. After the Christmas special Frosty the Snowman (1969), it was Rankin/Bass' second ...

Rankin and Bass' 1970 masterwork "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town," an origin myth for Santa, is almost as Jewish thematically as the annual Chabad telethon. I used to feel sorry for my Jewish friends ...

Every holiday season, we give thanks for Rankin/Bass, the team behind Christmas TV specials “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town.” The production company formed by ...

Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town (8 p.m., ABC) - This 1970 Rankin Bass stop-motion classic is maybe the greatest Christmas special ever created (my opinion, but I’m right). Fred Astaire explains the ...

Emily St. James was a senior correspondent for Vox, covering American identities. Before she joined Vox in 2014, she was the first TV editor of the A.V. Club. For the most part, American Christmas ...

If you're prone to picturing your favorite Christmas characters as stop-motion puppets, you can thank Rankin/Bass. The production company founded by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass found success in ...

More than five decades ago, Arthur Rankin Jr., a producer-director working in stop-motion animation, had an idea to develop a family-oriented TV special around a popular Christmas song. He hoped a ...

Jules Bass, the co-producer and co-director of such animated classics as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Frosty the Snowman” and “The Last Unicorn,” died Tuesday of age-related illness at an ...

The animation company he ran with Arthur Rankin Jr. gave the world “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Frosty the Snowman” and much more. By Richard Sandomir Jules Bass, who created an animation empire ...