Art Carney

Question: I'm looking for a movie I loved as a kid in which a family lives at the North Pole and is involved with drilling for oil. They find that they're right next to Santa's workshop and that the drilling is killing the North Pole; there may be no more Santa or elves if they can't stop the destruction. It isn’t animated and was always aired on one of the networks 10 or so years ago, but the movie itself might be older.

Answer: That sounds like the made-for-TV movie The Night They Saved Christmas (1984), directed by Jackie Cooper, in which professional oil rigger Paul Le Mat is warned by someone who claims to be Santa’s head elf (Paul Williams) that if he doesn't stop dynamiting the ice fields, th read more

Question: What was the first prime-time cartoon?

Answer: Assuming you mean the first prime-time animated network series, Ralph, that would be ABC's legendary Flintstones, which ran for six years beginning in September 1960 (and has been repeated in more places and at more times than I could begin to count). The show pioneered the half-hour animated comedy on network TV, and enjoyed a wave of merchandise sales decades before anyone ever threw on a Bart Simpson "Don't have a cow, man!" T-shirt.

The Flintstones was the fourth animated series created by William Hanna and Joe Barbera (after Ruff and Reddy, Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw, all of which were either Saturday-morning or syndicated offerings). And according to Barbera, read more