Jump Jump and the Ice Queen
November 22, 1948 – December 24, 1948 · 25 broadcasts
A Christmas countdown serial from 1948, sold to local stations on transcription discs by the New York syndicator Harry S. Goodman and built around a character children already knew: Jump Jump, a three-inch elf from the daily storytelling program Jump Jump of Holiday House. Twenty-five chapters, about a quarter of an hour each, meant to be played one a day from late November until the last of them landed on Christmas Eve. Tim is an orphan who cannot get an answer out of Santa Claus, so he sets off to follow the North Star and put the question in person. Jump Jump finds him on the way and takes him home to Holiday House, and the whole household comes along north: Mary Holiday; a circus clown whose hair keeps changing color to suit whatever he is feeling; a lion, Sleepy Slim, who spends most of the serial unconscious; and a character known only as the Poet, who has to fish his rhymes out of the open sky. At the Pole they learn that the Ice Queen has stolen Santa's reindeer, and the rest of the serial is the long walk to her palace -- through ice forests, a split in the ice, a stampede, and an army of snowmen. The production is tiny: three performers covering every part, an organ, and simple effects. The intimacy is the charm, and it is a world away from the orchestra-and-all-star-cast approach of The Cinnamon Bear a decade earlier. Jump Jump's chirp was manufactured -- an actor recorded speaking slowly, then played back fast.
Episode Spine
1948
A Christmas countdown serial from 1948, sold to local stations on transcription discs by the New York syndicator Harry S. Goodman and built around a character children already knew: Jump Jump, a three-inch elf from the daily storytelling program Jump Jump of Holiday House. Twenty-five chapters, about a quarter of an hour each, meant to be played one a day from late November until the last of them landed on Christmas Eve. Tim is an orphan who cannot get an answer out of Santa Claus, so he sets off to follow the North Star and put the question in person. Jump Jump finds him on the way and takes him home to Holiday House, and the whole household comes along north: Mary Holiday; a circus clown whose hair keeps changing color to suit whatever he is feeling; a lion, Sleepy Slim, who spends most of the serial unconscious; and a character known only as the Poet, who has to fish his rhymes out of the open sky. At the Pole they learn that the Ice Queen has stolen Santa's reindeer, and the rest of the serial is the long walk to her palace -- through ice forests, a split in the ice, a stampede, and an army of snowmen. The production is tiny: three performers covering every part, an organ, and simple effects. The intimacy is the charm, and it is a world away from the orchestra-and-all-star-cast approach of The Cinnamon Bear a decade earlier. Jump Jump's chirp was manufactured -- an actor recorded speaking slowly, then played back fast.