TV URBAN LEGEND: Chuck Jones was inspired by the color of his rental car to have the Grinch be colored green.

Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, worked in film during World War II (he even won an Academy Award, which I wrote about in an old Movie Legends Revealed), but after he returned from the war and returned to his then-nascent career as a children's book writer/artist (Geisel had already released And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street and the first book in the Horton series before he entered the military's film division), Geisel did not wish to see his works adapted for films or television series.

A big part of this was because Geisel had actually written and directed a film in 1953 that did not do well and had seemingly permanently soured him on the concept. However, a lot if came down to the fact that Geisel was a perfectionist and he didn't see how anyone could possibly live up to his standards. In addition, he felt that the hacked out work would then be what people think about when they think about his work. It's honestly a reasonable enough concern, right? The cartoon adaptations of books really ARE more famous than the books themselves, for the most part.

Anyhow, in 1964, he was approached again to develop one of his (by then, extremely popular) books into a cartoon and Geisel was still of the mind of saying no instantly. However, he was intrigued by two things. One, the guy approaching him had worked with him on his World War II films for the military and so was a friend and two, the guy was just as meticulous as Geisel. "The guy" in this instance was famed animator, Chuck Jones. He knew that Geisel was worried about others living up to Geisel's high standards and so he helped break the ice by drawing a near-perfect depiction of Geisel's famous creation, The Cat in The Hat, and giving it to Geisel with a note saying that he knew that Geisel didn't think anyone else could draw his characters, but, well, Jones could.

It was enough for Geisel to accept a meeting with Jones and Jones rented a car and drove from Los Angeles to Geisel's home in La Jolla, California. Eventually, Jones managed to convince Geisel to let him adapt one of his books (getting Geisel's wife, Nancy, on board, helped a lot). Since it was early in 1964, Jones felt that the best bet was to do How The Grinch Stole Christmas, since if they started production then, they could get it ready by Christmas 1966.

An issue, though, was that all of the networks were planning to go to full color TV by 1966 and so that was a bit of a problem since the Grinch was basically a black and white character in the actual book...

Geisel didn't want to make any changes, but Jones insisted that they had to color the character and amusingly enough, Jones used as his inspiration the color of the rental cars he would rent when he drove out to La Jolla to visit Geisel to discuss the project. Jones noted that they were a sort of sickly green and so that became the color of the Grinch...

The other problem with the production was that Jones knew that just the book itself would not take up the entire time needed for the special, so they came up with some songs and musical numbers to pad the story out and obviously, the end result was a TV masterpiece and Geisel was much more willing in the years to come to trust his characters to be adapted into cartoons.

And the Grinch has been green ever since!

The legend is...

STATUS: True

Thanks to Brian Jay Jones and his brilliant new book, Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination, for the information.

Be sure to check out my archive of TV Legends Revealed for more urban legends about the world of TV. Click here for more legends specifically about Christmas.

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