ABC ran the animated version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas this evening. It was a half-hour special when it first aired in 1966 but nowadays, there are more commercials in a network show so they have a choice: Chop it down or pad it out. They chose to pad the show out to an hour by inserting filler aplenty, including a little documentary on the making of the special.
The documentary was produced in 1994 and its makers were able to interview several folks who worked on the show and have since passed away — director Chuck Jones, composer Albert Hague and voice actor Thurl Ravenscroft. It was also hosted by someone else who's no longer with us…Phil Hartman. In fact, he's not even in the documentary anymore. A few years ago, Warner Brothers redid his sequences and narration, replacing Phil with Tom Bergeron. I suppose we should be grateful they didn't replace Chuck, Albert and Thurl while they were at it.
Even though I have the animated special on DVD, I got hooked watching a little of it on ABC. It still works. Some of Jones's later animated work smacks too much of his own stylistic quirks. He was an overpowering director and when he handled someone else's characters — the Jones-directed Tom & Jerry cartoons, for instance, or his Pogo special with Walt Kelly — everyone came off looking like Wile E. Coyote and twitching their noses. But on Grinch, perhaps because he had Dr. Seuss hovering about or because the Good Doctor's style melded well with the Jones look, there was a unity of style and purpose. The additional story points, which came mostly from a brilliantly mad animation writer named Bob Ogle and an artist named Irv Spector, expanded the Seuss story without wrecking it. It's probably my third-favorite Christmas special, following A Charlie Brown Christmas and Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol.