Short answers, pulled from the story.
Fritz the Cat, directed by Ralph Bakshi and released on the 12th of April 1972, was the first animated film to receive an X rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. The distributor, Cinemation Industries, used the rating for promotional purposes. The film remains the most successful independent animated feature of all time.
Ralph Bakshi was born on the 29th of October 1938 in Haifa, Mandatory Palestine, and grew up in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn after his family migrated to the United States in 1939. He briefly lived in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in 1947 before his family returned to Brownsville.
Bakshi was hired as a cel polisher at the Terrytoons television cartoon studio in New Rochelle, commuting four hours each day. He was promoted through cel painter to animator, and eventually became a director at twenty-five. His first directing assignment was the series Sad Cat.
Bakshi received the Golden Gryphon at the 1980 Giffoni Film Festival for The Lord of the Rings, the 1988 Annie Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Art of Animation, and the 2003 Maverick Tribute Award at the Cinequest Film Festival. In 2021 he received the Animafest Zagreb Lifetime Achievement Award.
On the 6th of June 1988, Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association alleged that a scene showing Mighty Mouse sniffing the remains of a crushed flower depicted cocaine use. Despite the sequence having been approved by CBS's standards and practices department and the episode having aired without controversy in October 1987, CBS canceled the series following the resulting media attention.
Bakshi shot live-action base footage in Spain and then applied rotoscoping to animate it, with additional cel animation and straightforward live-action sequences. The $8 million budget was funded by Saul Zaentz. John Hurt voiced Aragorn. Released on the 15th of November 1978, the film cost $4 million to produce and grossed $30.5 million, but United Artists refused to fund a sequel covering the remainder of Tolkien's story.