# The Hobbit *The Rankin/Bass animated television film* - Work: Film - Date: 1977 (NBC, November 27) - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-hobbit-1977-film/ > Rankin/Bass's 78-minute NBC cartoon of Tolkien's first novel: watercolor goblins, a folk-ballad theme, and the first Middle-earth most American children ever saw. **Why it matters:** The first screen adaptation of Tolkien to reach a mass audience, it put Bilbo, Gollum and Smaug on network television a year before Bakshi's film and quietly linked Middle-earth to the studio that would become Ghibli. ## Quick answers **When was The Hobbit first released?** The Hobbit was first released in 1977 (NBC, November 27). **What kind of work is The Hobbit?** The Hobbit is a film in the Fantasy Television & Animation, Fantasy Film, Children's & YA Fantasy and High / Epic Fantasy tradition. **Why is The Hobbit important?** The first screen adaptation of Tolkien to reach a mass audience, it put Bilbo, Gollum and Smaug on network television a year before Bakshi's film and quietly linked Middle-earth to the studio that would become Ghibli. ## Overview On the Sunday after Thanksgiving 1977, NBC gave American families their first look at Middle-earth. *The Hobbit*, a 78-minute animated special from the New York company Rankin/Bass, compressed [Tolkien](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/j-r-r-tolkien/)'s 1937 novel [The Hobbit](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-hobbit/) into a brisk, song-filled road movie: a comfortable [hobbit](https://www.lanternhall.org/bestiary/halfling/) is swept out of his hole by a wizard and thirteen [dwarves](https://www.lanternhall.org/bestiary/dwarf/), outwits [trolls](https://www.lanternhall.org/bestiary/troll/), [goblins](https://www.lanternhall.org/bestiary/goblin/), giant spiders and a cave creature named Gollum, and ends up in the lair of the [Dragon](https://www.lanternhall.org/bestiary/dragon/) Smaug. It arrived at the height of the American Tolkien boom that had grown out of [the paperback editions of the 1960s](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/the-ace-paperback-affair/) and the campus slogan ["Frodo Lives!"](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/frodo-lives/). For millions of children who had not yet opened the books, this version, with its bulbous-nosed goblins, frog-like Gollum and folk-ballad theme song, *was* Tolkien, and it remains one of the defining artifacts of [Fantasy Television & Animation](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/fantasy-television/) in the 1970s. ## Origins Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass were best known for holiday specials such as *Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer*, most of them animated or puppeted by Japanese partners. For *The Hobbit* they turned to Topcraft, a Tokyo studio, and to a character look first sketched by the Rhode Island illustrator Lester Abrams, whose drawings for an excerpt of the book in *Children's Digest* caught Rankin's eye. The painterly backgrounds drew on the Edwardian illustrator Arthur Rackham, giving the forests and mountains a soft watercolor quality far from the flat look of Saturday-morning cartoons. The rights question was murky. In a 2003 interview Arthur Rankin said *The Hobbit* was still in the public domain in the United States at the time, "despite claims to the contrary" from the copyright holders, an echo of the doubts about Tolkien's American copyrights that had fueled the Ace paperback dispute a decade earlier. Separately, the theatrical film rights to [The Lord of the Rings](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-lord-of-the-rings/) had been sold to United Artists in 1969, a strand of the long [The Tolkien Rights Saga](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/tolkien-rights-saga/). Romeo Muller, Rankin/Bass's house writer, wrote the teleplay; Maury Laws scored it; and Jules Bass adapted Tolkien's own poems from the novel into song lyrics. The one original song, "The Greatest Adventure (The Ballad of the Hobbit)," was sung by the folk singer Glenn Yarbrough. The reported production cost was $3 million. ## The story The film follows the novel's spine closely while trimming its detours. Gandalf, voiced by the film director John Huston (who also narrates), recruits Bilbo Baggins (Orson Bean) as the burglar for Thorin Oakenshield (Hans Conried) and his company, who seek to reclaim their treasure from Smaug (Richard Boone) under the Lonely Mountain. Along the way Bilbo wins a magic ring from Gollum (Brother Theodore) in a riddle contest in the dark, the dwarves are captured by the Wood-elves, and the party is rescued by eagles. At the Lonely Mountain, Bilbo's conversation with Smaug reveals the dragon's weak spot; Bard of Lake-town slays the beast, and the Battle of Five Armies follows. Thorin dies reconciled with Bilbo, who returns home to Bag End. Several of the book's episodes vanish: Beorn the skin-changer is cut entirely, and so is the Arkenstone, the jewel at the heart of Thorin's quarrel with the men and elves. Some critics also objected to the elves, drawn as small green-skinned figures rather than Tolkien's tall, fair folk. ## Reception & impact The special won a Peabody Award for Muller's teleplay and a Christopher Award, and it was nominated for the 1978 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, losing to *Star Wars*. *The New York Times* found it "curiously eclectic, but filled with nicely effective moments." Tolkien specialists were harsher: the critic Baird Searles faulted the omissions and the animation, and the scholar Douglas A. Anderson called it "execrable." Commercially, it was built to be extended beyond broadcast. Buena Vista Records released the soundtrack and dialogue on LP in 1977, and Harry N. Abrams published a large illustrated edition of the book using the film's art. Early home-video releases followed in the 1980s, and Warner Bros. issued a DVD in 2001, the same year [Peter Jackson's trilogy](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/lord-of-the-rings-film-trilogy/) began. ## Legacy One year after the broadcast, [Ralph Bakshi](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/ralph-bakshi/)'s theatrical [The Lord of the Rings](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-lord-of-the-rings-1978-film/) covered the first half of the trilogy and stopped. Rankin/Bass, who had always planned a sequel, stepped into the gap with their own *The Return of the King*, again animated by Topcraft, which aired on ABC on May 11, 1980, after a legal challenge from the Tolkien Estate and Bakshi's producers at Fantasy Films was settled. Together the two Rankin/Bass specials and the Bakshi film form an unofficial, stylistically mismatched 1970s Middle-earth cycle. The Topcraft connection gives the film a second life in animation history. The studio's team went on to make *Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind* and then re-formed as Studio Ghibli under Hayao Miyazaki, so the goblins of 1977 share a lineage with some of the most admired animation ever made. For the generation who met the [High / Epic Fantasy](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/high-fantasy/) canon through television, the special was a gateway: a first glimpse of [dragons](https://www.lanternhall.org/bestiary/dragon/), dwarves and riddling monsters in the very years when [Dungeons & Dragons](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/original-dungeons-and-dragons/) was spreading those same creatures across American kitchen tables. ## Did you know? Orson Bean, the voice of Bilbo here, returned in the 1980 *Return of the King* to voice both the elderly Bilbo and his nephew Frodo, so a single actor carried the Baggins family through the entire Rankin/Bass cycle. ## Facts - It premiered on NBC on November 27, 1977, a Sunday-night television special rather than a theatrical release. - Animation was done in Tokyo by Topcraft, whose team later re-formed as Studio Ghibli under Hayao Miyazaki. - Director John Huston voiced both Gandalf and the narrator; Orson Bean played Bilbo and would voice Frodo in the 1980 sequel. - Romeo Muller's teleplay won a Peabody Award, and the film was a Hugo nominee for Best Dramatic Presentation, losing to Star Wars. - Its only original song was Glenn Yarbrough's "The Greatest Adventure"; the other songs adapt Tolkien's own verses from [The Hobbit](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-hobbit/). - Arthur Rankin later claimed The Hobbit was then in the U.S. public domain, a view the copyright holders disputed. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_(1977_film)) - [Wikipedia: The Return of the King (1980 film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_of_the_King_(1980_film)) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.