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Thursday, July 1, 2021

Show Notes: Episode 9-3: "Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July"

*Christmas in July is not an official holiday in the USA, but feel free to celebrate with us anyway!

*Special thanks again to James and Lucille for supporting the show!

*Our Season 4 episode covering Popeye Meets the Man Who Hated Laughter is right here.

*Frosty's Winter Wonderland debuted December 2, 1976.

*This special premiered November 25, 1979 on ABC at 7:00 P.M, followed by Mork and Mindy and the TV Movie When She Was Bad...  CBS had 60 Minutes, Archie Bunker's Place ("barney and the Hooker"), One Day at a Time, and the theatrical film Oh, God. NBC led off the night with Wonderful World of Disney, followed by an airing of Smokey and the Bandit and Prime Time Sunday.

*Huge Oversimplification Dept.: The "family hour" guidelines for network programming came out of the prime-time access rules which gave network programming time back to local affiliates. The idea was to encourage more "public interest" and family-oriented programming. When that didn't really happen, the networks got "back" the Sunday 7pm-8pm hour with the proviso that it be used for public affairs/family programming.

*Johnny Marks is the songwriter who wrote "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

*Shirley Booth is not in this special, but she appears as Mrs. Claus in The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974). Darlene Conley, a long-running soap star (notable for a long Emmy-winning run on The Bold and the Beautiful as Sally Spectra) took on the role for this one. The Mickster is Santa in Year Without as well as in this one.

*Jack Frost's own special premiered December 13, 1979, or over two weeks after his debut on Christmas in July. As Mike said off air, Rankin-Bass really was ahead of Marvel with this whole "shared universe" thing, introducing the character like this and priming the audience!

One note: Paul Frees voices Frost in this one, but in the actual Jack Frost special, the role is played by...Darlene Conley. No, it's Robert Morse.


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