So a man named Bill Snyder came across a 1937 British children's book and saw at once its potential; he acquired the film rights in 1964 for a fairly small amount because no one knew the author yet. The only condition was that the rights would revert if no motion picture were made by June 30, 1966. That book was The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien. He got a young screenwriter to work up a screenplay on it. By this point The Lord of the Rings had been published, but very few people even knew that, and certainly not the people involved here. Because of this, the screenwriter, whose name was Gene Deitch, did what people do with children's books when they want to make them movies: he modified some of the storyline to make it easier to follow, added some characters for interest, and, in short, ignored the greater background of the book for the simple reason that he had no idea that it existed. He did, eventually, manage to read LOTR, and started revising his script to take it into account (to avoid shutting down the possible sequel, of course). But at first nobody knew Tolkien yet! Try as they might, Snyder, Deitch, and others struggled to find anyone who would want to back the movie. This ate up precious time and the clock was ticking. And then, with the publication of the paperback LOTR, Tolkien exploded into public recognition as the clock was ticking. Suddenly the film rights held by Snyder were much more valuable, and he wasn't going to risk losing them. But there was a loophole: the Tolkien lawyers had been a little sloppy in their language, and thus all Snyder had to do to keep the rights was produce some kind of full-color motion picture. So he made Deitch cut down his script to a short short and in thirty days had the very first film version of The Hobbit thrown together, all twelve minutes of it. Because of it Snyder was able to keep the rights long enough to sell them back for much more than he had paid for them.
Behold it now in the splendor of its sublime awfulness! (ht) But be prepared for the strangeness....
