HOW DR. SEUSS STOLE CHRISTMAS!
In early 1964, Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel received a note from an old friend who wanted to discuss adapting a Dr. Seuss book into an animated cartoon. It wasn’t the first time such an entreaty had been made. “Everybody wanted to make a series,” said Geisel, but he was skeptical: most television producers, he said, wanted to “bat ’em out fast and use up my whole life’s work in a year.” But this plea was different from the others.
It came from someone Ted Geisel knew and respected — someone he’d worked with during World War II, and who knew exactly what he was doing. “Maybe you don’t think I can draw your character,” said the note, under which was a nearly perfect rendering of the Cat in the Hat to prove otherwise. And underneath that was the author’s crabbed signature: Chuck Jones.
Jones, then 51, had recently been let go from Warner Bros. after more than 30 years of turning out one iconic cartoon for the studio after another. Now he was in charge of MGM Animation, where he was revamping the shopworn series. Knowing Geisel as he did — and well aware of his penchant for perfection — Jones knew it was going to be a tough sell and decided to take on the task in person. “Unsurprisingly, Dr. Seuss was not eager to have more of his books made into film,” Jones said later. Jones drove from Los Angeles to Ted’s home in La Jolla, and as he came up the winding road, Ted was standing at the end of their long driveway to greet him. Jones, who hadn’t seen Geisel since 1946, thought
