ENDORA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (6)
By:
July 23, 2025
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of our favorite sympathetic villains. Series edited by Heather Quinlan.
PROFESSOR HINKLE
Frosty the Snowman (1969) was the fourth holiday special produced by Rankin/Bass (following Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, The Cricket on the Hearth, and The Little Drummer Boy). It has always occupied a hallowed place in the hearts of kids from my generation, even at this late date, when we are all drawing nigh the abyss of senior citizenship.
It is astounding how much is crammed into the 25-minute running time of that little show: birth, death, brewing conflict, budding friendship, and even musical numbers by Jimmy Durante. A bunch of kids find a top hat, put it on their snowman, and he magically springs to life with the voice of Borscht Belt comic Jackie Vernon. Then a hitch emerges. A cranky, inept magician who styles himself Professor Hinkle (voiced by Billy De Wolfe) starts harassing them, trying to get his hands on the hat. The kids and Frosty flee, for they know that unless he’s sporting the topper, Frosty is just a snow sculpture decorated with castoffs. We root for our heroes as they make their getaway, and boo and hiss the villain on their trail.
There’s just one problem with all this: it’s Hinkle’s hat! This fact is established from the show’s very first moments, as the would-be Houdini fumbles his way through a bunch of bungled illusions for a classroom full of kids. The children know it’s the magician’s lid. When the wind blows it away, the urchins pick up Hinkle’s property put it on Frosty, who springs to life and declares “Happy Birthday!” to himself.
Finders, keepers? Isn’t that what bullies say? The hat is this hacky magician’s livelihood! It’s wonderful that it possesses supernatural animating properties, but along with all its magic, it belongs to its rightful owner. The magician may be an ass, a jerk, ill-tempered, nasty and all the rest of it — but he is still the legal proprietor of that hat. Robbing him of his most valuable possession and running away with it because you think you deserve it more is anarchism, lawlessness, a breakdown of order. What will these punks get up to next? Beat the crap out of Mr. Hooper on Sesame Street? “I’ll have an orange soda, mister — a CLOCKWORK orange soda!”
I was quite a middle-aged man when all this occurred to me, around the same time I began noticing how mean those kids were to that nice, hard-working Mr. Banks in Mary Poppins. Ever since I’ve watched Frosty the Snowman annually with a jaundiced eye and furrowed brow. In my version, Hinkle is an action hero, tracking down the gang of thieves who took what’s his. And when he finally catches up to them, all I can say is that there’s going to be some puddle of water on the greenhouse floor.
ENDORA YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Heather Quinlan | Kathy Biehl on DR. FRANK-N-FURTER | Catherine Christman on ALEXIS CARRINGTON | Crockett Doob on M3GAN | Nick Rumaczyk on AURIC GOLDFINGER | Mariane Cara on MIRANDA PRIESTLY | Trav SD on PROFESSOR HINKLE | Alex Brook Lynn on TOM POWERS | Lynn Peril on ENDORA | Adam McGovern on EDDIE HASKELL | Mimi Lipson on SUE ANN NIVENS | Heather Quinlan on HAROLD SHAND | Tom Nealon on SKELETOR | Matthew Hodge on BARRY LYNDON | Josh Glenn on JOEL CAIRO | Dan Reines on WALTER PECK | Mark Kingwell on HARRY LIME | James Scott Maloy on CLARENCE BODDICKER | Nikhil Singh on LOCUTUS | Carolyn Campbell on CARSON DYLE | Tony Pacitti on DENNIS NEDRY | Gordon Dahlquist on WALKER | Colin Campbell on RUTH LYTTON | Marc Weidenbaum on THE XENOMORPHS | Alycia Chillemi on TBD | Micah Nathan on TBD.
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