Frosty the Snowman is a 1969 American animated Christmas musical fantasy adventure comedy-drama film produced by DW-Go Fish Cartoon Studio and Rankin/Bass Productions and distributed by DW-Go Fish Film Pictures. The film is loosely based on the Walter E. Rollins and Steve Nelson song of the same name and features the voices of Jimmy Durante as the film's narrator (Durante's final performance in a film), Billy De Wolfe, Jackie Vernon, June Foray and Christopher Plummer.
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TBD. Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass wanted to give the film and its characters the look of a Christmas card, so Paul Coker, Jr., a greeting card and MAD magazine artist, was hired to do the character and background drawings. The animation was produced by Mushi Production in Tokyo, Japan, with Hanna-Barbera staffer Yusaku "Steve" Nakagawa and then-Mushi staffer Osamu Dezaki (who was uncredited) among the animation staff. Durante was one of the first people to record the song back in 1950 (at the time the song had slightly different lyrics); he re-recorded the song for the film. Rankin/Bass veteran writer Romeo Muller and former Disney story man Bill Peet adapted and expanded the story for the film as the former had done with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Frosty the Snowman was released on December 17, 1969 to critical acclaim and box-office success, TBD. The film made its television premiere on the CBS television network in December 3, 1970; airing there until 2018 when the film aired on Freeform in 2019.
In 2018, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".