The Snowman is a children’s picture book without words by English author Raymond Briggs, first published in 1978 by Hamish Hamilton in the U.K., and published by Random House in the U.S. that November. In Britain it was highly commended runner up for the Kate Greenaway Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year’s best children’s book illustration by a British subject.[a] In the U.S. it was named to the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award list in 1979.
===========================================
The Guardian David Bowie
Jude Rogers
Thursday 22 December 2016 13.00 GMT
In summer 1984, Iain Harvey was in Londonâs Charlotte Mews, behind the offices of the animation company TVC. He was wondering how, in four years, he had gone from being finance director at publisher Hamish Hamilton and being interested in doing something with a remaindered childrenâs book, to being a film producer about to see David Bowie, his teenage pop hero, in his movie. âWhen he came, he was so modest and unshowy,â recalls Harvey. âI remember him talking about his Brixton days, quite naturally, when Iâd said about seeing him at Brixton in the 70s. He was an absolute gem.â
A man with ice-blond hair walks into an unlit, gloomy attic, snow falling outside, dusty memories in his mind. He kneels down by a rocking-horse and tells us of his childhood, of holidays by the seaside, of winters returning home, of being around the fire, and of making snowmen. âOne year, I made a really big snowman,â says Bowie, pulling a blue scarf out of a drawer; it is dotted with snowmen, green-hatted and coal-eyed. âHe got me this scarf. You see,â he says tenderly, âhe was a real snowman.â
For millions of us, Christmas TV wouldnât be the same without the animated adaptation of Raymond Briggsâs The Snowman, made in 1982. For those of us who remember Bowieâs introduction, where he frames himself as the boy who made and loved and lost a special friend, this dreamlike detail of the season takes on new poignancy now.
Watch David Bowieâs introduction to The Snowman
Scour the Bowie books, however, and details of how he got involved prove hard to find. Itâs not that he shied away from kidsâ projects. He was a father before fame really hit, and he narrated Prokofievâs Peter and the Wolf in 1977, saying he did it for his son, Duncan Jones. Nine years later, he introduced a generation of kids to frightwigs and latex in Jim Hensonâs Labyrinth. But The Snowman came during an odd period in Bowieâs creative life, when grownup film roles were taking him into darker, stranger places, while his 1983 album, Letâs Dance, and the Serious Moonlight Tour, took him to his international commercial peak.
Several members of The Snowman team remember Bowie well, though. His section was not part of the original film, which began with Briggs introducing his story to viewers. Bowieâs involvement came after the public had already seen and fallen in love with the film.
The story of The Snowman, like Bowieâs, is surprisingly slow-burning. First published in 1978, it sold well initially, but a second print run stalled. âWe had a basement of 50,000 books, basically, until the film came out,â says Harvey, then at Hamish Hamilton, before he became executive producer of the film version. Producer John Coates, of TVC, took out an option on the book for a year in 1980, making an animated storyboard of it only when the year was nearly out. In March 1982, new TV network Channel 4 offered to fund the film, which was broadcast on Boxing Day that year, beginning with Briggs walking through a snowy field near his rural Sussex home, the opening that was used for the first two years.
In January 1983, The Snowman was nominated for the Oscar for best animated short film, but it didnât win. The growing popularity of home video pushed its appeal, though, and US networks became interested. However, they didnât understand the appeal of Briggsâs introduction. âWe didnât realise that in the US programmes were sponsored, and to be sponsored you needed a big name,â Harvey says. Then along came Bowie.
Bowie first met a Snowman team member during its production in 1982: its soundtrack composer, Howard Blake, was simultaneously musical director of The Hunger, Tony Scottâs erotic vampire thriller, in which Bowie starred. âYou couldnât imagine two different films,â Blake says, laughing. He was having daily lunches with Bowie at the White Elephant in Mayfair, preparing him for his mimed cello scenes in The Hunger, where they âmust have talked about the Snowman projectâ. Bowie was already a fan of Briggsâs nuclear war fable from that year, When the Wind Blows, which TVC also had in development.
By early 1984, Blakeâs Snowman soundtrack was starting to sell well, driven by the song Walking in the Air. The US label CBS was also involved in the effort to take The Snowman to America.
âPeople such as Laurence Olivier and Julie Andrews were being suggested [for a new introduction], but the Americans were going, it must be a rock star,â Blake says. ââLike Mick Jagger?â I remember saying. And they were all, âThat would be great!ââ Blake talked to Coates about Bowie; the singer had already got in touch with Coates offering his services for When the Wind Blows. Harvey also had a connection to Bowie through Jeremy Isaacs, producer of the prisoner-of-war drama Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, in which Bowie starred in 1983. âJeremy said we should push our luck, although we were fairly nervous to do it,â Harvey remembers. âIt quickly became clear Bowie was happy to do it.â
The script for the new introduction span off from Briggsâs original, which talked about a snowy day full of âlight and silenceâ. Harvey doesnât remember who adapted it for the film, but he thinks part of it might have been improvised. Briggs was also on-set on the day, not minding that his introduction was being superseded; he admits now that the story about a snowy day inspiring the book âwas total rubbish, of courseâ. He never saw the results of Bowieâs work, but he has warm memories of meeting him.
âI remember us all lining up to shake his hand like he was the Queen,â Briggs says. âHe was wearing these amazing pink shoes, and his face was wonderful to look at â those different-coloured eyes. A charming bloke.â Bowie shook Briggsâs hand firmly and said he liked his work; two years later, he contributed the title track to the film version of When the Wind Blows, releasing it as a single in June 1986 (he had intended to do the whole soundtrack, but under pressure from EMI to focus on the follow-up to 1984âs Tonight, he had to withdraw).
Snowman storyboard artist Joanna Harrison also animated Bowie for the video to the single; she had been at TVCâs offices in London when Bowie came in to film. She was responsible for the chunk of The Snowman set in the North Pole, in which Father Christmas adds the name James to the tag on the present the boy receives there. It was the name of Harrisonâs then-boyfriend, who became, and still is, her husband.
In summer 1984, they were dating. âJames was a huge Bowie fan, and Iâd taken his copy of Station to Station along to be signed, with a big, black felt-tipped pen. We were all hanging out in reception, desperately overexcited.â But then Bowieâs security arrived; only the top TVC team were allowed in. This was especially unfair, Harrison felt, as she had contributed something important to the singerâs scene: the hand-stitched green hats and coal eyes on the machine-knitted snowmen dotting Bowieâs blue scarf. There had actually been two scarves, she says. âBernard Cribbins got the other [he recorded the audiobook], but he left his in the back of a taxi. We heard that Bowie gave his to his son.â
Another dreamlike detail remains with Harrison, too. On returning to work the day after filming, she discovered that Bowie had, after all, signed Jamesâs copy of Station to Station with her felt-tip. After Bowieâs death, the couple dug it out, recalling a dusty old memory.
In the great array of Bowieâs work, a short introduction to a 26-minute animation isnât one of the key pieces. Itâs hardly Ziggy Stardust or Low. But it is proof of his willingness to work on the unlikeliest of projects, and the sprinkling of magic he could bring to them. It would have been easy for the massive star to overshadow The Snowman, but that wasnât what happened. Instead, Harvey remembers a man âclever enough and modest enough not take The Snowman away from what it was, which was this perfect little film, this timeless momentâ.
.