Arthur Rankin Jr.

Rankin was born in Baltimore, the son of actors Arthur Rankin and Marian Mansfield. His paternal grandmother was actress Phyllis Rankin, and his paternal step-grandfather, who adopted his father, was actor Harry Davenport, who played Dr. Meade in the film Gone with the Wind.

Rankin began his career as an art director for the American Broadcasting Company in the 1940s. In 1955, he and Jules Bass formed the production company Videocraft International to produce television commercials. In 1960, they moved into the area of animation, and in 1968, changed the name of their company to Rankin/Bass Productions. The two worked closely together for many years, co-directing and producing a wide array of stop motion animated features and cartoons, which Rankin had referred to as "Animagic".

In addition to directing, Rankin primarily created the script and sketched the character concepts, which would be made into the wooden puppets by Japanese artists, including head supervisor and partner, Tadahito Mochinaga. Maury Laws, a musical director for Rankin/Bass, stated that Rankin was inspired by the film King Kong, and that Rankin "wanted every detail right" in creating these shorts. Some of the most famous features were the holiday-themed TV specials, such as Willy McBean and His Magic Machine, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town, Rudolph's Shiny New Year, The Year Without a Santa Claus, Frosty the Snowman, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, and Jack Frost. Many of these holiday-themed works are now considered "perennial favorites", according to The New York Times. He is also credited with devising the story for many Rankin/Bass productions, including the feature films The Daydreamer and Mad Monster Party?.

In 1977, Rankin and Bass produced a version of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, for which they were awarded the Peabody Award. The pair also teamed on a wide variety of animated TV series, including ThunderCats and SilverHawks. The pair last teamed on the 1987 TV special based on The Wind in the Willows. Rankin's last producing credit was on the 1999 animated version of The King and I.