Jules Bass, the host, producer, director and songwriter who partnered with Arthur Rankin Jr. on the stop motion holiday television specials Rudolph the red nosed reindeer, Frosty the Snowman and Santa Claus is coming to town, is dead. He was 87 years old.

Bass died Tuesday at an assisted living facility in Rye, New York, publicist Jennifer Fisherman Ruff said. The Hollywood Reporter.

Rudolph the red nosed reindeerbased on the song popularized by Gene Autry and featuring the vocals of Burl Ives, debuted in 1964. Frosty the Snowmanwith Jackie Vernon and Jimmy Durante, lost in 1969, and Santa Claus is coming to townstarring Fred Astaire, premiered in 1970. All three have remained strong TV draws over the decades.

Rankin/Bass Productions’ stop-motion animation features were done by Japanese animators and were laborious to make, with thousands of stills of their characters’ incremental movements stitched together at 24 frames per second in a process called “Animagic”. ”

Bass also directed and produced crazy monster partya 1967 feature film starring Boris Karloff and Phyllis Diller.

Born in Philadelphia on September 16, 1935, Bass attended New York University and worked at an advertising agency before joining former ABC art director Rankin at his film production company Videocraft International (later known as Rankin/Bass Productions name).

Said Rankin in a 2005 interview: “We sort of complemented each other. He had some talents that I didn’t have, and I had some talents that he didn’t have. I was fundamentally an artist and a creator; he was a creator and a writer and a lyricist.

The duo’s first production was the syndicated television series The New Adventures of Pinocchiowhich debuted in 1960. They offered a total of 130 five-minute chapters, which made a five-chapter, 25-minute episode series.

The couple shared an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Children’s Special in 1977 for their work on The Little Boy Drummer Book II and received a Peabody a year later for their animated version of The Hobbit. They also managed an adaptation of another JRR Tolkien property, The king’s returnin 1980.

Their other TV projects included 1966 The Ballad of Smokey the Bear1967 The wacky world of Mother Goose1968 The little boy drummerthe 1971 Easter special This is Peter Cottontail1974 The year without Santa Clausthe 1971-72 series Jackson 5ivethe 80s series Thundercats and the 1983 animated film conical heads.

He and Rankin co-directed The last unicorn (1982), with the voices of Jeff Bridges, mia farrow, Angela Lansbury, Alan Arkin and Robert Klein and songs composed and arranged by Jimmy Webb and performed by America.

Rankin deceased in January 2014 at age 89.

Bass wrote the children’s books Grass, the Vegetarian Dragon and cooking with herbsand his 2001 novel, Headhunterswas adapted for the 2011 film Monte Carlofeaturing Selena Gomez.

His daughter, Jean Nicole Bass, died in January at the age of 61.