The Greatest Adventure or The Ballad of The Hobbit
Music by Maury Laws
Lyrics by Jules Bass
Sung by Glenn Yarbrough
The greatest adventure is what lies ahead.
Today and tomorrow are yet to be said.
The chances, the changes are all your s to make.
The mold of your life is in your hands to breaks.
The greatest adventure is there if you're bold.
Let go of the moment that life makes you hold.
To measure the meaning can make you delay;
It's time to stop thinkin' and wasting the day.
The man who's a dreamer and never takes leave
Who thinks of the world that is just make-believe
Will never know passion, will never know pain.
Who sits by the window will one day see rain.
The greatest adventure is what lies ahead.
Today and tomorrow are yet to be said.
The chances, the changes are all yours to make.
The mold of life is in your hands to break.
The greatest adventure is what lies ahead.
I have to confess I have a soft spot in my heart for this gentle tune which wafts its way through the Rankin-Bass production of The Hobbit. This animated version of The Hobbit gets a lot of grief, but I have always rather liked it. The key to appreciating it, is to understand the limitations animation for television (or really anywhere) faced in the 1970's. The costs had forced producers to make all sorts of concessions and there are many in this presentation, but understanding and forgiving that, I have always been entertained by this delightful cartoon. For one thing, the shift to Asia was well underway in animation and Rankin-Bass used seasoned Japanese talent to animate this special. The animation is somewhat better than the Saturday morning TV of the time, but the real strength of this show is the distinctive and memorable character design.
These are some of my favorite versions of Tolkien's characters. Gandalf is ideal, Smaug is cleverly presented as different kind of dragon with something of a feline head, and Gollum is as animalistic as in any rendition I'm aware of. These are all extreme versions and yet they work. The design of Bilbo and the Dwarves is less quixotic, but they work as well. Bilbo has large child-like eyes, but they are fitted on a bizarre squat frame. The Elves are presented not as ideals of human form but as strange bent creatures of Mirkwood. The Goblins (or Orcs in other places) are outlandish monsters as they should be. The art intentionally evokes the feel of Arthur Rackham, a classic illustrator of fairy tales and fantasy.
The low point of the presentation is the "Battle of the Five Armies" which is presented with some few elements of montage and a very unsatisfying image of dots and dust wiggling around on the screen. I can see the budget for the show drying up before my eyes as I watch this "climatic" scene. It does bring the whole effort down a notch, I have to admit.
Much of this cast (Bean, Huston, and Theodore) will return when Rankin-Bass takes another crack at Tolkien. More on that later. In defense of this show, which is much frowned upon now, it won a Peabody for its screenplay and a Christopher for its message, which was uplifting and hopeful, and competed with Star Wars that year for the Hugo. People who crap on this show today don't know or remember what a dearth of material was available for fans of the fantastic in the 70's. Animation was the only viable way to bring a story like The Hobbit to life on the screen at the time and animation was not yet the province of studios brimming with computers but was made up of individual talents drawing and painting each and every image.
The show is limited and has to cut out lots of stuff, but frankly with a few exceptions I thought it trimmed effectively and maintained a good momentum. This Hobbit was too short for sure, but that's better than being too long. At least the audience craves more and is not exhausted. More on that tomorrow.
But before we go, I want to bring up another animated adaptation of The Hobbit. This one is from 1967 and it's only eleven minutes long. Take a look.
This quaint but bizarre adaptation was developed at the last moment because the producer's option on The Hobbit movie rights were about to lapse, and he needed to generate and show a version of the story to retain them. He made the quickie, showed it for one day in NYC and so was able to hang on for another few years before ultimately relinquishing the rights. This one is far from a diligent adaptation of Tolkien's work, but I must confess it has offbeat charms. The next time we feel that maybe Rankin-Bass could've done better, we need to remember what might have been.
To listen to little bits and bobs of the soundtrack of The Hobbit by Rankin-Bass check out this Internet Archive link.
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