Frosty the Snowman (Found Original 1969 Airing with Karen's June Foray Voice)

The cast of "Frosty the Snowman", with deuteragonist, Karen.

Frosty the Snowman is an animated Christmas special that first aired on CBS on December 7, 1969. This special, written by Romeo Muller and produced and directed by Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass, is based on the holiday song of the same name, originally written by Jack Rollins and Steve Nelson and first performed by Gene Autry in the 1940s. The special involves a discarded silk top hat becoming the focus of a struggle between a washed-up stage magician named Professor Hinkle, and a group of schoolchildren after it magically brings a snowman to life. Realizing that newly-living Frosty will melt in Spring unless he takes refuge in a colder climate, Frosty and a young girl named Karen, who he befriends stow away on a freight train headed for the North Pole. Little do they know that the magician is following them, and he wants his hat back.

June Foray originally recorded the part of Karen, but was replaced by an unknown actress, a year after Frosty first aired; Foray recalled her experiences in the book The Enchanted World of Rankin/Bass: "I was called in to voice the little girl Karen. I was disappointed to learn later that my work for the Karen character was replaced by another actress. To this day I am unsure of the reason, but I still enjoy the special." Foray's voice can be heard on the Rhino Records soundtrack.

The original airing of the special with Karen's original voice is currently impossible to find on the internet.

However, when the special was re-released on Blu-Ray in 2014, it restored something else. Instead of restoring Karen’s original lost voice, it restored an original audio portion from 1969 where one of the children, a boy in the orange sweater, says “Yeah, Frosty it is! Frosty the Snowman.” An example can be found on here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FThhQQq_C8I

Eventually, on December 25th 2016, a fellow YouTuber finally bought the CD, restored the original audio track with the Blu-Ray footage and uploaded it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY9bwL3YOAA

As a result, the extended version of the instrumental score that plays during the train scene is more rare than most of June Foray’s original voices, including Karen’s, and it can be heard on the some of the international redubbed versions, including the Japanese version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUA_zgQGtts