You’d think landing the role of one of the holidays’ most beloved characters would be the kind of part actors dream about. For Jackie Vernon, the original voice of Frosty the Snowman, it was a quick paycheck he almost turned down — and a job he assumed would vanish from his résumé as fast as a snowman in July.
During the Thursday, December 4 episode of Nostalgia Tonight, host Joe Sibilia kicked off his new “Voices of the Past” segment by zeroing in on the man behind Frosty. Fifty-six years after the special first aired, most people know the jolly snowman. Very few know the "sweaty," deadpan comic who brought him to life.
Jackie Vernon #JackieVernonVoice of: Frosty the SnowmanBio: t.co/SdQkBiKreqIMDb: t.co/G1guYOmxYg#frostythesnowman pic.twitter.com/QOgHpBN9Yz
— The Voice Artist's Spotlight (@vas_90s) December 16, 2023That’s where Jackie’s son, writer David Vernon, comes in.
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In the episode, Sibilia plays a clip of Jackie himself from an old radio interview with Bob Barry. In it, Jackie sounds almost amused by how low-stakes the whole thing felt at the time. He explains that he was working in Las Vegas when he got the call to fly to Los Angeles — in the summer — to record something. He didn’t even realize it was a Christmas special.
He thought he was doing a commercial.
Jackie flew in, stepped into a studio, and knocked out the entire performance in about an hour and a half. No big contract, no table read, no long animation schedule. Just a comedian between gigs, reading lines for a cartoon he assumed would air once and disappear.
“It turned out to be a Christmas classic,” he says in the old interview.
According to David, his dad didn’t just underestimate Frosty — he actively didn’t want to do it. He tells Sibilia that his dad “kind of thought that it was a little beneath him. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it also wasn’t a lot of work. He didn’t have a lot of confidence in it. I think somebody else had dropped out, and he had the time to do it. He didn't really prep much for it. He didn't think about it. He barely told us about it.”
Sibilia then asks if it’s true Jackie once joked, “Guess all the other fat guys were out of town,” when people asked how he landed the part — and David confirms, “Yeah, that’s absolutely what he said. He had no illusions that they had designed or written the part for him.”
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From there, the conversation continues, touching on family memories, personal battles, and the surprisingly complicated man behind the holiday icon.
FROSTY THE SNOWMAN (CBS, 1969) dir. Arthur Rankin Jr. & Jules Bassstarring Billy De Wolfe, JackieVernon, Paul Frees and June Foray pic.twitter.com/cmbqlzKI9K
— Classic Movies & TV Shows (@ClassicFilmTV) December 19, 2024Since its CBS debut on December 7, 1969, Frosty the Snowman has remained a holiday staple. The special pulled the No. 1 Nielsen rating its first week on air and has returned every December since — a 55-year run on CBS before NBC picked up the rights in 2024. Jackie, who died in 1987 at age 63 after a heart attack, never expected any of that. But according to David, his dad eventually grew proud of the snowman he once shrugged off.
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