I thought I was finished with this series, but there’s just too much good material, and a few book covers I overlooked. So let’s proceed.
First of all, it occurred to me I never included pictures of non-Russian hobbits to serve as comparisons. So here’s the first ever, drawn by Tolkien.
And isn’t it amazing how Bilbo bears a resemblance to the artist himself! An in-joke, maybe?
That said, it’s nicely drafted, but the sizes of the furniture aren’t consistent, and the whole hole (pun not intended) seems too large for tiny Bilbo, especially given how he’s in the foreground. That entrance would easily be six times his height. How in Arda would he light the lamp that’s hanging overhead or change the hands on that cuckoo clock to the right?
However, I can’t mock the artist too much, because figure drawing was never his forte. If we remove Bilbo (whose hairy feet we can’t see) we have a nicely rendered, personally conceptualized picture of what a well-to-do hobbit hole would look like.
Frodo from the Peter Jackson movies. Like it or not he’s the most widely known hobbit depiction these days. His large bare feet are furred on the top, most heavily over the arch. No fur creeping up his ankles and shins or hairy hands.
For a fantasy fan who was born prior to 1990, however, the animated Bilbo to the left would have been the introduction to hobbithood. It’s from a 1977 TV special by Rankin-Bass.
With his rotund torso and woodland critter teeth, he’s not so far off from some Russian versions, is he? But his feet are different: large, clean, and luxuriously hairy on the tops, like an icelandic sheepskin rug or the shag carpets popular earlier in the decade.
Rankin Bass used the same character type for their later animated special of Return of the King. The Two Towers was skipped because Ralph Bakshi held the rights at the time, leading to an awkward lack of continuity. Luckily I had read the whole of the trilogy before it aired so I was not confused. Meanwhile, Bakshi’s Two Towers went unmade.
So let’s talk about Bakshi’s hobbits.
Bakshi’s animated hobbits in his version of The Lord of the Rings went off in a different, more realistic direction that greatly influenced Peter Jackson. Bakshi’s hobbits are childlike, with big skulls and small faces. They have thick legs and feet that are hairy, but not excessively so — they are not caricatures as the Rankin Bass hobbits seen to be. Well, except for Sam, whose gapped teeth and big nose make him look like a country bumpkin.
A hobbit luncheon, courtesy of Ralph Bakshi. From left to right: Frodo, Sam, Pippin, Merry.
Bakshi’s film was released in 1978 and though it disappointed many fans it was immensely hyped and helped float along publishers’ interest in releasing new editions of Tolkien’s work. If you were a fantasy fan then it was an exciting time.
Now let’s do a 180. Here’s the first Romanian version of The Hobbit.
My fault for not including in Part 5. (The title threw me off. Romanian language is Latin-based so at first I took it for Spanish.) There’s a lot to analyze here — a wig-wearing, decorative Smaug, for one thing. But it’s Bilbo with his pointy hat — that has a useless buckle — and thick black sideburns that draws the eye and makes the experienced hobbit fan mistake him for Gandalf.
But as far as children’s book artwork goes, I like a lot, especially Bilbo’s cautious, trepidacious look that suggests he’s a thief and is invisible to Smaug, even though the viewer can see him. Child me would want to read this book.
Russia made live-action TV versions of both The Hobbit and the complete LOTR trilogy. Both are available on YouTube to watch; they have been described as charming, atrocious, hilarious, and hallucinogenic. I’ll leave it to you decide.
The first ever broadcast, live-action Bilbo is portly and deadpan. He wears a knitted gray skullcap, a collared pink dress shirt, and knitted arm warmers. No hairy feet that I remember, but the quality of the videotape is not good.
The hobbit gang from the Russian Lord of the Rings. A somber bunch and certainly NOT childlike and carefree. Frodo stands at center holding a spittoon (?) with pipe-smoking Sam at his back wearing a peasant hat. Merry and Pippin to Frodo’s right and left, who look older than him and certainly not his peers. Eighties spiky-haired wigs on all of them. Frodo’s hair is red, which denotes the Russian ideal of the troublemaker, or the character that stands out the most. Their costuming is in line with Tolkien’s original drawing — that of the tweed-jacketed country gentleman.
Now I’ll look a quick look at Russian versions of Tolkien’s elves and dwarves.
Oh my god, this one is so bad it gives me secondhand embarassment for the fictional characters it depicts. The blonde pageboy haircuts on the elves! And their Robin Hood getups! That’s so wrong.
Not sure if the dwarf below was made by a Russian artist, but he certainly looks Russian or Slavic.
Truly a magnificent being.
