dr seuss's how the grinch stole christmas 1966

Geisel always claimed that he never wrote his stories with morals as children could see them coming and be put off, but there’s an unmistakable – and hard to disagree with – message here of how Christmas is more than just materialism. But an unexpected display of love and solidarity among the people of Whoville, who carry on with Christmas regardless, causes The Grinch’s heart to start growing… The special tells the story of The Grinch ( Boris Karloff, who also narrates, gets a “sounds of The Grinch” credit), a green, perpetually miserable creature in line of descent from Ebenezer Scrooge, who lives in a cave high in Mount Crumpit and has a heart “two sizes too small.” He loathes Christmas and as the good people of nearby Whoville prepare for the festivities, he hatches a plan – disguised as Santa Claus and with his dog Max playing the part of a reindeer, he descends on Whoville, stealing presents and decorations. As part of his work for MGM, Jones wanted to team up with Geisel again and the result was How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (co-directed with Ben Washam), first broadcast on CBS on 18 December 1966 and on various channels just about every Christmas since. Warners had shut down their famous animation unit based at “Termite Terrace” in early 1963 and Jones had gone into partnership with Les Goldman, setting up Sib Tower 12 Productions which was later merged into MGM’s animation team.

writing some of the Private Snafu animated training films alongside director Charles M.

Seuss had been entertaining young readers since his first book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, in 1937 and by the mi-1960s was one of the most widely read authors in the world – Horton Hatches the Egg (1940), Horton Hears a Who (1954), The Cat in the Hat (1957) and The Lorax (1971) would all be adapted for film or television in time and his trademark writing style, his stories told in anapaestic tetrameter, would become familiar to readers in more than 20 languages.ĭuring World War II, Geisel had worked with Warner Bros. Of all of the animated Christmas specials made over the decades for American television (and there have been a great many), one of the best loved has long been this seasonal perennial, an adaptation of the equally much-loved 1957 children’s book by Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr Seuss.

Dr seuss's how the grinch stole christmas 1966