Frosty The Snowman will be returning to television via NBC at 8:30 PM on Thursday, December 5. The change in broadcaster comes after more than five decades on CBS during the holiday season. This year, it will air after the classic Dr. Suess cartoon, How The Grinch Stole Christmas.
On June 20, 1950, the year in which he broke into television on Tallulah Bankhead’s NBC comedy-variety series The Big Show, 57-year-old Jimmy Durante went into MGM’s recording studios in Hollywood to record his first version of “Frosty the Snowman.” That orchestrated version was arranged and conducted by Roy Bargy, a pianist who had worked with jazz legend Bix Beiderbecke.
Listen to “Frosty The Snowman” now.
The single, released as a 10” shellac and 78rpm, featured a B-side called “(Isn’t It a Shame That) Christmas Comes But Once a Year” and his raspy-voiced version proved a hit for MGM after it was pressed at their own record manufacturing plant in Bloomfield, New Jersey and released in December 1950 for the Christmas rush. The most popular pressing featured a cartoon illustration of Durante in a bow tie standing behind the snowman.
By 1950, Durante was already one of America’s most famous entertainers. But most didn’t regard him as a singer. He was more famous for his vaudeville shows and film acting – he appeared in dozens of movies, including with Buster Keaton – even though he had started out as a jazz singer in the 1920s. One of Durante’s most distinctive features was his nose. (He was given the nickname The Great Schnozzola, and used to joke that “my nose was born first, I arrived on the scene two weeks later.”) Durante said he liked Frosty so much because the snowman also had “a big red Schnozzola.”
Nearly two decades later, when Arthur Rankin Jr. was directing the famous television special based on the “Frosty the Snowman” lyrics, he said he wanted Durante to voice the narrator and sing the title song “in that strange Jimmy Durante voice.” The 25-minute animated film, featuring Jackie Vernon as the Snowman, was broadcast on CBS on December 7, 1969. The show quickly became a festive classic and Durante’s new version of the song, scored by Maury Laws, became popular again when the soundtrack was released. This version had him relating the story of Frosty to a young child who calls him “Uncle Jimmy.” In the film, Durante, who was a big supporter of children’s charities, also appeared as an animated caricature of himself.
Listen to “Frosty The Snowman” now.