The Lord Of The Rings!

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien is the renowned and beloved fantasy of the 20th Century, a carefully constructed epic filled with elegiac romance, sprawling imaginary vistas, and pert memorable characterizations. I've read it a few times over the course of my lifetime, but I might have to say this most recent venture to Middle-Earth might be the best yet. I read the saga in a single volume edition given to me by a good friend decades ago. It's a robust version, known in the circles as the "Red Edition".  Let me discuss the book though as it is most commonly presented, a trilogy of connected novels. 

(Jack Gaughan did all three of the covers for the Unauthorized Ace Editions)

The Fellowship of the Ring is the first installment and is comprised of "Two Books". The first introduces our Hobbit heroes Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Peregrin Took, and Meriadoc Brandybuck, as well reintroducing the enigmatic Gandalf. This saga was begun when Tolkien was not yet committed to an epic and so this early part of the story feels the most like The Hobbit. A group of doughty little people are on a mission and encounter an array of threats as they wend their way through the often-bewildering and sometimes dangerous countryside. As the story develops the seriousness of the mission becomes ever more evident as our heroes are pursed by Black Riders, strange magical creatures in service to Sauron, the Lord of Mordor. They are assisted at different times by the likes of the peculiar Tom Bombadil and later the mysterious man called Strider. Later a "fellowship" of Hobbits, Men, Elves, and Dwarves join forces to help destroy the one thing Sauron craves more than anything, the One Ring which will give him absolute power over Middle Earth. 

In The Two Towers, the "fellowship" of the previous novel has fallen apart and our Hobbit heroes Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee must work by themselves to find an entry into the deadly land of Mordor and take the One Ring to Mount Doom where they can destroy it once and for all. They get the help of Gollum, a strange, debased creature who once had the ring in his keeping before it came to Bilbo. The rest of our cast are likewise searching for one another. The other two Hobbits, Merry and Pippin fall into the hands of Orcs and later meet up with the enigmatic Treebeard, an Ent, one of the oldest races on Middle-Earth. Strider, Legolas, and Gimli search for these two but find an old ally returned from the grave. We meet the Riders of Rohan, a great warrior people and we go with them to Helm's Deep where they and some of our cast fight a great battle against an army of Orcs sent by Saruman, a great and powerful figure who also vies for the One Ring. 

The Return of the King wraps up this grand epic. Our two Hobbit heroes continue their quest to Mount Doom and give the reader a grim tour through a dark and depraved territory. Strider is revealed to be the next king of Gondor and that makes our villain Sauron quite upset who then sends his vast army to besiege the venerable city. The scale of the conflict has been steadily growing throughout the saga and reaches its climax here with a terrible war that even if won will mean little if the One Ring survives to find its way back into the clutches of the necromancer Sauron. The many characters who have been introduced in the novels get their moments to shine and the story winds down to its conclusion. After all the hubbub our Hobbit heroes find that their home the Shire has need of heroes as well as enemies have used the war to plunder. The Hobbits, having been tempered by adventure, danger and war, must fight again for their homes.  

(Barbara Remington)

It is much different reading the novel as Tolkien intended, as a single book. The trilogy we know is a result of the limitations of publishing which balked at issuing a book so massive and opted instead in the early 50's to bring out the saga in three mostly annual volumes, each given a memorable title of its own. I've always preferred The Fellowship of the Ring, but this reading with the focus on a different structure has given me new admiration for The Two Towers and The Return of the King.

(The Brothers Hildebrandt)

If each is seen as a single volume, there is almost inherently an expectation of a rise and fall within the narrative structure. That exists in abundance in the first part, the part of the story which introduces the majority of the characters and the milieu. Those characters follow a story arc which sees them become aware and finally resolved, transformed from bystanders into legitimate heroes. The depth of detail used to build this world, one so very similar to our own, intended to become our own after the passage of many millennia is stunning. Tolkien took a lifetime to create an environment fit for his created languages, and then he chose to tell a grand sweeping tale of heroism and sacrifice in that environment. 

(Frank Frazetta)

That said, neither of the other latter volumes really has a fair chance to recreate the arc seen so wonderfully in the first book, and for the most part don't. But seeing the story as one complete yarn, the latter stages of the epic come more fully into focus and build on the charming and sometimes quaint beginning with robust full-blooded heroic adventure on an every-increasing scale. This sweep works when the story is understood as a single narrative and not three individual ones. This unintended bias ingrained in my own understanding of the tale by its marketing, has limited to some small extent my appreciation of the latter stages. Until now.

Despite the clever marketing by Ballantine Books and others, when I'm thinking of The Red Book of the Westmarch in the future, it will always be one narrative and not three.  

Now it's time to tackle The Silmarillion.   

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The Adventures Of Tom Bombadil!

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil was first published in 1962, eight years after The Lord of the Rings made a splash. I first encountered these poems as part of The Tolkien Reader in the 70's. The book continued the conceit that it was Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam who wrote most if not all of The Red Book from which The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and these poems are derived. In the case of these poems some are suggested to be just lyrics from in and around the Hobbit culture that are included in addition to those written by specific characters. 

"The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" introduces us to Tom and the lovely river maiden Goldberry. They are not yet married as this poem begins and we follow Tom as he gambols in his signature blue coat though the forest. He first meets Goldberry who pulls him into the water of the Withy-windle playfully, then he deals with Old Man Willow and later still the more dangerous Barrow Wight. By the end of the poem, he has married Goldberry. This is one of Tolkien's earliest works, first published in 1934. 

"Tom Bombadil Goes Boating" was composed by Tolkien specifically for the 1962 collection and in this one we go along with Tom as he floats down the Withy-windle River into Brandywine River into Hobbit territory. He has various encounters with animals and spends time with Farmer Maggot and his wife. Both poems are light-hearted merriments and lack the more sinister atmosphere of the novel. 

"Errantry" and "Princess Mee" are two poems about fairies. "The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Late" and "The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon" are both plays on the classic nursery rhyme, the former credited to Bilbo Baggins. "The Stone Troll", "Perry-the-Winkle", "Cat" and "Oilphaunt" are credited to Sam Gamgee. 

"The Mewlips" (about carniverous fairy creatures), "Fastitcolon" (about a monster that pretends to be an island), "Shadow-Bride", "The Hoard" (about a dragon and his loot) and "The Last Ship" (about Elves sailing away) are not connected to any fictional author though details suggest they come from outside the Shire. "The Sea-Bell" or "Frodo's Dreme" follows on with the tradition of Frodo and is likely assumed to be his writing, as it is a rather very somber poem. 

These are soulful little poems, many with more music than meaning in most cases. To hear J.R.R. Tolkien himself read some of these poems check out this link. 

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Music Of MiddleEarth!

The soundtrack composed by Leonard Rosenman for the 70's animated The Lord of the Rings is a moody and atmospheric affair. It evokes the film quite effectively. Ralph Bakshi has said that he prefers the sound in his films to be somewhat spare and not overwhelm the animation, but rather service it. This soundtrack does that rather well. No aspect of it stands out. I sometimes get the idea that Bakshi makes virtues out of limitations he faces in making his films, and that's not a negative when I say it. To listen to the soundtrack check out this link. 

Conversely in the Rankin-Bass The Hobbit the music is very topical and specific songs and motifs underlay every scene and to no small extent define the production. That's as it should be since, The Hobbit is actually a musical in its construction. Sometimes the characters sing the songs (the Dwarves for instance) but often tunes enhance and add details to a scene. This is also true to a lesser extent in the less compelling The Return of the King. Glenn Yarbrough's soulful voice does lend a a nifty folklore quality to the proceedings. To listen to this work check out this link. 

Some of my all-time favorite music is the material Howard Shore composed and directed for the three Peter Jackson films. His music is gorgeous and evokes the people and places and key events of the narrative most effectively. When I first got hold of these recordings soon after the films were first released, I'd listen to them on long drives and it not unlike watching the film which was very much fixed in my memory. I have not had that same experience with the music produced for the later, The Hobbit movies, despite the fact much of it is just as impressive. For The Fellowship of the Ring tracks go to this link. For The Two Towers tracks visit this link. And for The Return of the King music check out this link. 

Rick Wakeman's Songs of Middle Earth is whole other thing entirely. This is music meant to evoke the original Tolkien texts and at the same time be successful purely as music on its own. The movements are based on various locations mentioned in the saga such as the Shire, Lothlorlien, and Rivendell. One oddball mistake was misspelling Minas Tirith as "Minis Truth", which suggested to me someone's handwriting is pretty sloppy. Wakeman's rock roots show through some of the tunes and alas that modernity undermines his intention, if I understand it properly. It's still fun to listen to. To hear it check out this link. 

The first music I ever purchased related to The Lord of the Rings was The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle. by Donald Swann. These are printed scores intended to encourage a reader of the works to take out the guitar and create their own music for Middle-Earth. Since I don't play, I've only ever read the lyrics, but the idea is a delightful one. 

My copy is the second edition, reprinting the original in the mid-70's when the books found a new fanbase. To hear a lecture and to see the music performed go here. 

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The Tolkien Years Of The Brothers Hildebrandt!

That said, with all things Tolkien on my mind, I was moved to finally pick up the relatively recent volume The Tolkien Years of the Brothers Hildebrandt. I was among those fortunate folk who was able to collect up the famous Hildebrandt Tolkien calendars as they appeared in 1976 through 1978.

Sadly, I wasn't prescient enough to hang onto them, but those classic images remained burned into my imagination. So, it's neat to finally have a collection of them to look at and examine alongside a raft of the prepping materials the brothers used.

This cover for Tolkien's Smith of Wooton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham from Ballantine was the Hildebrandt's first foray in Middle-Earth. It was evidently a test they were given, and they passed with flying colors, literally. I picked this paperback up at the time and it's still quite charming. 

Since the untimely passing of Tim Hildebrandt back in 2006, we are left limited insights from him, but his brother Greg is on hand to inject some behind-the-scenes perspective. The bulk of the text though in this volume is by Greg Hildebrandt Jr. who was a mere lad when the classic images were created, and he offers up a novel look at the work itself. Sadly, his perspective is not to my mind worth the space it is permitted in this volume, so I skipped over a lot of it. 

That said, the art is still the point of this book, and all the classic stuff is here presented as they were created for the three calendars and beyond. Looking at the Hildebrandt stuff now, it seems stiff and oddly fixed in time and the attempt at what the Brothers dubbed "Frodorealism" doesn't work as often as I remember. Their renditions of certain characters have been superseded by other artists over the decades, but there is no denying their lasting impact on the overall imagination, at least my imagination.

The Brothers produced the 1976, 1977, and 1978 calendars. The 1976 calendar is regarded as the best-selling calendar of all time. After that, multiple artists were brought in to create these annual celebrations of Professor Tolkien's creations. 

The Brothers were working on a fourth calendar while they were also working on Ushurak, an original fantasy tale they concocted themselves. They thought something had to give in their schedule and they called and backed out of the calendar work. The work done for the proposed 1979 calendar is included in this volume. 

It's nice to have this artwork in my mitts again, reminding me of the first times I traveled to Middle Earth.

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The Art Of The Lord Of The Rings!

Something that has been associated with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings from its earliest days is the art of its author J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien was by no means a great artist, but he knew what he imagined in his head and he used his skills to be best of his ability to translate that to page in both words and pictures. 

The Art of The Hobbit brings together Tolkien's own artwork concerning his tale. He was not a bad artist, with his art possessing a naive charm. Mostly we have sketches in this book, but it is also punctuated by some exceedingly handsome color work from Tolkien which were used in the book itself. 

The Art of The Lord of the Rings is a tome very much like the one dedicated to The Hobbit, but it lacks as many of the compelling color pieces which were actually used in the former as illustrations. What we get here are interesting sketches and maps, but nothing which really ignites the imagination in quite the same way. Still, it's nice thing to have on the shelf. 

Check back in at this particular Hobbit hole later today for more Middle-Earth artwork from some masters. 

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The Extended Hobbit!

Below are three review I wrote over the years for the three installments of The Hobbit as directed by Peter Jackson. I've tweaked them a bit for the sake of some consistency, but for the most part I've left them as they were originally presented. When my opinion has changed, I've indicated. 

December 2012 - An Unexpected Journey

I went to see The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey yesterday morning. Usually Sunday morn is a dandy time to catch flicks as it offers quiet reasonably empty theaters. Not yesterday. Despite a 10 AM start, there and the fact I went to the mundane 2-D presentation, there were still over a one hundred folks enjoying the latest trip to Hobbiton and beyond with me.

I have to confess going this time was more a chore than a joy. I was giddy to see the first of the Peter Jackson adaptations over a decade ago, going opening night and braving giant crowds. This time, I mostly wanted to see it before reviews spoiled it. I've not been happy since I learned there are going to be three of these things. I fear we're going to see a trio of bloated narratives, dragging in all manner of off the rack material. A scrupulous adaptation of the Tolkien classic would make for two reasonably sized flicks and would add nicely to what the New Zealanders have already accomplished.

Hobbiton is beautifully rendered, and it was scrumptious to visit this exceedingly cool mythical hamlet again. The scenes of the group tramping across the countryside astride their ponies were beautifully done, really communicating the essence of Tolkien for me. The balance between the unusual and the beautifully mundane is perfectly balanced in these scenes. Riddles in the Dark is outstanding, precisely true to Tolkien as I remember it at least. I'm not a huge Gollum fan in these movies, finding him at times very tedious, but he works here as well as he ever has. The technology supports the performance here wonderfully. Likewise with the Wargs which look really menacing.

It's not the filmmakers' fault, but thirteen dwarves are a challenge for anyone. It is a downright "avalanche" of dwarves. There's no doubt in my mind that if Tolkien's book was not so beloved, a typical adaptation would lower the number of dwarves to six or seven at best. But stuck with the original mob, Jackson and company try to make them distinctive, though we fail to get proper introductions to many. At least they are visually distinctive. It's almost impossible though to keep track.

Unfortunately for this movie and I fear for the franchise, the development of "performance-capture" has "captured" this movie. For me the triumph of the earlier movies was that it made the world of Tolkien's Middle Earth real. It grounded the fantasy into a place and time, adding some blood and thunder to the proceedings. But that alas is lost in this tale which all too quickly reduces itself to a video game as animated figures cavort and crawl across the screen. The action is sweeping and dashes along spritely, almost too quickly to process. The damage the heroes suffer is epic and alas cartoonish. The realism of the early epics is lost, much to detriment of the heart of the project. The scene with Gandalf, Saruman, Elrond, and Galadriel in the middle of the movie seems downright quaint as we have four normal sized people in a regular real-world room talking. This scene actually jars a bit since so much of the movie before and even more so after is overwrought with special effects. They're exquisitely done I'm sure, but they undermine the reality of the experience for me.

All in all, I'd give first Hobbit movie a middling to low grade. It's got some very strong stuff. A good Bilbo, a great Gandalf, some few interesting dwarves, and some beautiful countryside. But the movie is its own worst enemy ironically since it is technology that is sundering the essence of Middle Earth, the very thing Tolkien moaned about so vehemently in his lifetime. 

December 2013 - The Desolation of Smaug

I was a bit underwhelmed by the first installment of Peter Jackson's epic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, a yarn about the eponymous wandering Hobbit and thirteen dwarves seeking ancient treasure.  Not because it wasn't impressive, but because to my weary eye it came across as more of an animated event than a real- life movie. So, I didn't rush out to see the second installment this past holiday season. I thought I'd wait for the inevitable DVD and just watch it then. That's a far cry from the burning enthusiasm I had for the original Jackson film trilogy which I anticipated with a ripe eagerness.

But with time on my hands and nice warming temperatures and a dry day, I thought I'd take it in at the local discount cinema. With soda and popcorn (each costing more than my ticket) in hand I settled into the well-used theater alongside a few others and watched what surprisingly turned out to be a rousing movie event. The computer-generated elements were surely in evidence, but somehow seemed less apparent to my eye and so failed to draw me out of the adventure which picked up where last year's first installment left off.

Bilbo Baggins and his dwarf companions encounter Beorn the shape-changer, enter the horrible Mirkwood forest and confront the rather grim elves within, and make their way to Laketown, the domain of men at the foot of the Misty Mountain where Smaug came to drive the dwarves out generations before. They raid the dark halls and wake the dragon, a dangerous thing to do.

For a movie which lasts nearly three hours I found time flying by remarkably swiftly and was actually startled when the story ended, leaving me hanging for many months before I can discover the end. Of course, we all know how it will end, but how we'll get there is the challenge Jackson has before him. He's created a rousing thrill-ride with this installment, less dependent on its Tolkien source material, but which does a goodly job of linking this tale to the earlier trilogy.

Good show indeed. I'm eager to see the end now, very eager indeed.

December 2014 - The Battle of the Five Armies

Well, that took long enough. Last week I went to see The Hobbit - The Battle of The Five Armies. It was a long and visually rich film experience, but alas not one that succeeds as it ought. For the first time, I saw one of these new-fangled 3-D movies and frankly while it's a neat curiosity the texture of the movie seemed more like the flatness often translated on video tape; the luster of film was lost and along with it some of the essence of movie magic.

Anyone curious enough to read this review will be familiar with the story and likely the film series which began a few years ago with The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey which re-introduced us to the realms of Middle Earth as first designed by J.R.R. Tolkien so many decades ago. We meet a youthful Bilbo Baggins who is drawn into a wild and weird adventure by the wizard Gandalf as he joins a company of dwarves who want to reclaim their lost kingdom from the deadly dragon Smaug. In the second film The Hobbit - The Desolation of Smaug we finally get to the Misty Mountain and Bilbo meets the charming but deadly Smaug and the dwarves, led by the quixotic royal heir Thorin Oakenshield fight hard to reclaim their kingdom deep inside the mountain, but in the end, they unleash the dragon who flies to destroy the nearby human settlement of Lake Town.

The Hobbit - The Battle of the Five Armies begins with the struggle to bring down Smaug. I'm not ruining too much by saying this happens before the credits have properly finished rolling and that of course points glaringly to the greatest deficiency in this film series...it's just plain too long.

In a somewhat disdainful attempt to extract as much money from Tolkien fans as possible the decision was made rather late in the production to make the movie into three parts deviating from the original scheme to do only two movies. Given the source material, two seems ample and sadly if the original plan had been followed, I don't doubt we'd have had two very tight films which resonated strongly in the imagination. Alas what we have now are three movies with a host of virtues, but which tumble along with overlong and somewhat vapid action sequences which only serve to weary the viewer and drain the characters of their verisimilitude. No dwarf and no human could survive the falls these characters take over the course of the three movies, and that's a pity in the sense we lose interest in their physical fates.

In my earlier reviews of the first two movies, I decried the tendency for the action sequences to have a video game feel and regrettably this third one has even more of that sense. One fatal flaw in this concoction is the utter failure in creating a villain with which the audience can have any connection. Azog is a cartoon from the get-go a creature right out of a superhero comic who feels out of place in Middle Earth and is rendered so heavily that we can hardly ever detect any real human behind the portrayal.

The core of this final film is the fate of Thorin Oakenshield, who has been set up as the Aragorn equivalent in this story. The fact his fate is far less rosy than that which falls to the former Strider is thoroughly expected, but the road there is less emotionally involving than I anticipated. The sequence where he throws off the maddening avarice which threatens his soul doesn't work at all for me and seems a bit too weird. Allowing the actor to showcase the changes on his face without the hindrance of fancy digital visions would've served the story much better.

It's all so tiring in the final analysis. 

And Now for General Comments

And that seems to me to be the nut. For all the blather, most of it I'm sure exceedingly earnest, the director and his team do not trust the source material. In an effort to mostly recreate the highly successful Lord of the Rings trilogy nearly beat for beat they constantly overheat the story elements of The Hobbit to accommodate that understandable but ultimately self-defeating goal.

We are saddled with a forbidden romance between races which never reaches a boil, we are given a journey through the shadows of a dark goblin-infested realm which becomes a frenetic footrace against the enemy but almost never achieves any sense of true peril, we are given a finale which as promised in the title features five armies, but alas armies so vast and clearly digitized that they lack the ability to draw out our compassion. The sub-plot involving Gol Guldur and the Necromancer and his minions searching for the rings makes perfect sense when the flick is seen as a precursor to the later LoTR, but within the immediate story needs of The Hobbit they become distractions, as spectacular as they are. 

Where the movies most often succeed is in those elements of the story which are demanded by the source material and cannot by and large be tampered with. The encounter by Bilbo with Gollum is tense and properly paced, and his later verbal joust with Smaug is the highlight of all three movies. Sadly, the Hobbit himself gets lost in this last movie, despite several attempts to glue him into the proceedings. But in that respect at least it remains true to the novel in which as I recall Bilbo likewise disappears from the narrative as the battles rage, though for a far shorter time.

So ultimately The Hobbit trilogy stands as a remarkable fantasy adventure, with some really fabulous sequences which properly invigorate the creation of Tolkien, but which sadly trade on those creations to do more than they are capable of and remain valid to the spirit of Tolkien. I find I like these movies better on DVD than in the theater where the visual spectacle bewilders as I try to maintain focus on the story. 

It's a shame the movies weren't better, but they are fine and entertaining, nonetheless. Maybe in a few years Jackson will re-cut the movies and make them into a super-tight two-parter which will allow the story to shine even brighter.

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The Animated Hobbit!

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. 

(Arthur Rackham)

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. 

 

But what elevates it up a notch are the fantastic voice performances by Orson Bean as Bilbo, John Huston as Gandalf, Otto Preminger as the Elf King, Richard Boone as Smaug, Hans Conried as Thorin Oakenshield, and Brother Theodore as Gollum. Animation veterans Don Messick, John Stephenson, and Paul Frees are on hand to fill out a cast which sounds great. The key to the success of limited animation shows was the voice acting and The Hobbit hits it out of the park. Richard Boone of Paladin fame is a tremendous Smaug, at once imperious and menacing. Hans Conried stood out to me too this time, his voice was perfect for Thorin who has carry most of the water for the Dwarves, who don't have time to get much distinction. 

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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