December 17 - 23, 2023
celebrityq&a
BY JAY BOBBIN
Burl Ives OF RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER ON CBS/FREEFORM Chef Gallagher and Chef Lidia Bastianich in “25 Years With Lidia: A Culinary Jubilee”
Q: When actors like Burl Ives and Fred Astaire narrated such holiday specials as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town,” were their characters supposed to look like them? A: Most definitely, though the format also allowed creative liberties to be taken in the seasonal classics made by producers Arthur Rankin Jr, and Jules Bass. When you look at the character Sam the Snowman in “Rudolph” (being shown on CBS and Freeform this season) and you compare that to the actual image of Oscar-winning talent Ives, there’s little question that the character was modeled physically on that actor. That also owes to Ives’ performances of such songs as “A Holly Jolly Christmas” and “Silver and Gold” on the soundtrack, where the image certainly relates to the musical success Ives already had had by the time the special first aired in 1964. Similarly, the mailman who tells the story in the 1970 show “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” (an annual ABC attraction lately) is meant to resemble iconic actor-singer-dancer Astaire, right down to his wiry physical build. Though Mickey Rooney voiced Santa in that program, Father Christmas has such a traditional look, the resulting image was sort of a hybrid of that and Rooney’s own appearance. Other examples of veteran talents whose likenesses were used for their animated counterparts in Rankin/Bass shows included Jimmy Durante in “Frosty the Snowman,” Shirley Booth in “The Year Without a Santa Claus,” Angela Lansbury in “The First Christmas: The Story of the First Christmas Snow,” Ethel Merman in “Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July” and Danny Kaye in the Easter-themed “Here Comes Peter Cottontail.”
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Chef Lidia Bastianich walks down memory lane in “25 Years with Lidia: A Culinary Jubilee,” premiering Monday, Dec. 18, on PBS.
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