Josie and the Pussycats (TV series): Difference between revisions

Josie and the Pussycats
Created by	Dan DeCarlo Richard Goldwater Joe Ruby Ken Spears
Starring	Janet Waldo Sherry Alberoni Casey Kasem Jackie Joseph Jerry Dexter Barbara Pariot Don Messick
Theme music composer	Hoyt Curtin William Hanna Joseph Barbera
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	16
Production
Running time	21 minutes
Original release
Network	CBS
Release	September 12, 1970 – January 2, 1971

Josie and the Pussycats (formatted as Josie and the Pussy Cats in the opening titles) is an American animated television series, based upon the Archie Comics comic book series of the same name created by Dan DeCarlo. Produced for Saturday morning television by Hanna-Barbera Productions, sixteen episodes of Josie and the Pussycats aired on CBS during the 1970-71 television season, and were rerun during the 1971-72 season. In 1972, the show was re-conceptualized as Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, sixteen episodes of which aired on CBS during the 1972-73 season and were rerun the following season. CBS reran the original episodes, replacing the Outer Space shows in January of 1974. Beginning in September of 1974, ABC aired reruns of the original series for that entire year. To make it a third network,Josie and the Pussycats was then rerun on NBC Saturday mornings during the 1975-76 television season.^[1] This brought its national Saturday morning TV run on three networks to six years.

Josie and the Pussycats featured an all-girl pop music band that toured the world with their entourage, getting mixed up in strange adventures, spy capers, and mysteries. On the small-screen, the group consisted of level-headed lead singer and guitarist Josie, intelligent tambourinist Valerie, and air-headed blonde drummer Melody. Other characters included their shady manager Alexander Cabot III, his conniving sister Alexandra, her cat Sebastian, and muscular roadie Alan M.

The show, more similar to Hanna-Barbera's successful Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! than the original Josie comic book, is famous for its music, the girls' leopard print leotards (replete with "long tails and ears for hats," as the theme song states), and for featuring Valerie as the first regularly appearing female black character in a Saturday morning cartoon show.^[2] Each episode featured a Josie and the Pussycats song played over a chase scene, which, in a similar fashion to The Monkees, featured the group running after and from a selection of haplessly villainous characters.^[1]

See the Josie and the Pussycats comic book article for a detailed description of each character

• Josie McCoy (speaking voice by Janet Waldo, singing voice by Cathy Dougher)
• Melody Valentine (speaking voice by Jackie Joseph, singing voice by Cheryl Ladd [credited as Cherie Moor])
• Valerie Brown (speaking voice by Barbara Pariot, singing voice by Patrice Holloway)
• Alan M. Mayberry (voiced by Jerry Dexter)
• Alexander Cabot III (voiced by Casey Kasem)
• Alexandra Cabot (voiced by Sherry Alberoni)
• Sebastian (cat, voiced by Don Messick)
• Bleep (only in Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, voiced by Don Messick)

During the 1968-69 television season, the first Archie-based Saturday morning cartoon, The Archie Show, was a huge success, not only in the ratings on CBS, but also on the Billboard charts: The Archies' song "Sugar, Sugar" hit the #1 spot on the Billboard charts in September 1969, becoming the number one song of the year. Animation studio Hanna-Barbera Productions wanted to duplicate the success their competitors Filmation were having with The Archie Show. After a failed attempt at developing a teenage-music-band show of their own called Mysteries Five (which eventually became Scooby-Doo, Where are You!), they decided to go to the source and contacted Archie Comics about possibly adapting one of their remaining properties into a show similar to The Archie Show. Archie and Hanna-Barbera collaborated to adapt Archie's Josie comic book into a music-based property about a teenage music band, adding new characters (Alan M. and Valerie) while dismissing others. ^[3]

In preparation for the upcoming cartoon series, Hanna-Barbera began working on putting together a real-life Josie and the Pussycats girl group, who would provide the singing voices of the girls in the cartoons and also record an album of songs to be used both as radio singles and in the TV series.

The Josie and the Pussycats recordings were produced by La La Productions, run by Danny Janssen and Bobby Young. They held a talent search to find three girls who would match the three girls in the comic book in both looks and singing ability, and, after interviewing over 500 finalists, settled upon casting Kathleen Dougherty (Cathy Dougher) as Josie, Cherie Moor (actress Cheryl Ladd) as Melody, and Patrice Holloway as Valerie.

Janssen presented the newly formed band to William Hanna and Joseph Barbera to finalize the production deal, but was in for a surprise. Hanna-Barbera wanted Janssen to recast Patrice Holloway, because they had decided to portray "Josie and the Pussycats" as an all-white trio and had altered Valerie, who had been conceived as African-American and was already appearing as such in Arche's revamped Josie and the Pussycats comic book, to make her white. Janssen refused to recast Holloway and threatened to walk away from the project. After a three-week-long stand-off between Janssen and Hanna-Barbera, Hanna-Barbera finally relented and allowed Janssen to keep Holloway, and changed Valerie back to being African-American.

The Valerie character was the first African-American female character on a regular Saturday morning cartoon series. The Hardy Boys drummer Pete Jones had been the first African-American male to appear on Saturday mornings a year earlier, and Hanna-Barbera also introduced a Harlem Globetrotters series, which featured an African-American drummer named Pete Jones (portrayed by real-life session drummer Bob Crowder in live segments), and it aired in 1969, a year before Josie and the Pussycats. However, Valerie was the very first female African-American cast member on a regular Saturday-morning cartoon.

The show’s theme song, titled "Josie and the Pussycats", was written by Hoyt Curtin, William Hanna (under the pseudonym "Denby Williams"), and Joseph Barbera (under the pseudonym "Joseph Roland"). Patrice Holloway, the singing voice of Valerie, sings the lead vocal on the recording. The theme song was based on melodies from a incidental tune played on various Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

A cover of "Josie and the Pussycats", performed by Juliana Hatfield and Tanya Donelly, is included on the 1995 tribute album Saturday Morning: Cartoons' Greatest Hits, produced by Ralph Sall for MCA Records.^[4]

Josie and the Pussycats debuted on the CBS Saturday morning lineup on September 12, 1970, with the episode "The Nemo's a No-No Affair." The animated version of Josie was an amalgam of plot devices, villain types, settings, moods, and tones from other Hanna-Barbera shows such as Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, Jonny Quest, Space Ghost, and Shazzan.

Like Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, Josie and the Pussycats was originally broadcast with a laugh track. Later home video and DVD releases omit the laugh track.

Every episode of the show would find the Pussycats and crew en route to perform a gig or record a song in some exotic location. Somehow, often due to something Alexandra did, they would accidentally find themselves mixed up in an adventure/mystery. The antagonist was always a diabolical mad scientist, spy, or criminal who wanted to take over the world using some hi-tech device. The Pussycats would usually find themselves in possession of the plans for an invention, an item of interest to the villains, a secret spy message, etc., and the villains would give chase. Eventually, the Pussycats would formulate a plan to destroy the villain's plans and bring them to justice, which result in a final chase sequence set to a Pussycats song.

The Pussycats would succeed in capturing the villain and get back to their gig/recording session/etc. The final gag always centered around one of Alexandra's attempts to interfere with/put an end to The Pussycats' performance and/or steal Alan away from Josie.

In September 1972, a spin-off series titled Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space debuted on CBS. This version of the series launched the characters into outer space; the opening credits sequence shows Alexandra accidentally knocking the cast into a spaceship and launching it into deep space. Every episode centered on the Pussycats encountering a strange new world, where they would encounter and often be kidnapped by various alien races before escaping and attempting to return home.

Musical numbers and chase sequences set to newly recorded songs were featured in this spin-off series as with the original. Josie in Outer Space also added the character of Bleep, a pet-sized fluffy alien adopted by Melody, who was the only one who could understand the creature (who only says "Bleep") and numerous other alien animals encountered.

The 16 episodes of Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space were re-run for the 1973-1974 season until January 26, 1974, when CBS canceled it and ordered no more new Josie episodes from Hanna-Barbera. Like its predecessor Josie and the Pussycats, Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space contained a laugh track as well, though this time around, an abridged, inferior laugh track was utilized.

Josie and The Pussycats made a final appearance as animated characters in a guest shot on the September 22, 1973 episode of of The New Scooby-Doo Movies, "The Haunted Showboat." Early production art for Hana-Barbera's 1977 "all-star" Battle of the Network Stars spoof Laff-A-Lympics featured Alexandra, Sebastian, Alexander, and Melody among other Hanna-Barbera characters as members of the "Scooby Doobies" team, but legal problems prevented their inclusion in the final program.

In 1976, Rand McNally published a children's book based on the Josie TV show, Hanna-Barbera's Josie and The Pussycats: The Bag Factory Detour.

The original Josie and the Pussycats series was re-run on NBC Saturday morning for the 1975-1976 season. In the mid-1980s, both series, along with a number of other 1970s Hanna-Barbera cartoons (including Monster High) were on board USA Network's Cartoon Express; they would next appear on Cartoon Network in 1992, where all 32 episodes were run in the same timeslot.

In 2001, Cartoon Network began airing a Josie and the Pussycats short, called "Musical Evolution", featured the Pussycats performing their theme song through the various eras of pop music, including pop, disco, punk, Kiss-like heavy metal, country, and techno dance. Different animation styles are used for each era. The same year, Josie and the Pussycats was adapted into a live action motion picture. The film, produced by Universal Pictures, featured a punk rock cover of the theme song during the end credits.

The 2004 - 2007 Comedy Central animated TV series Drawn Together featured a character named Foxxy Love. An African-American mystery-solving musician, was a direct parody of the Josie and the Pussycats character Valerie Brown. ^[5]

A VHS videocassette of Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space containing 3 episodes was issued by Worldvision Home Video in 1980. A second videocassette, Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, Volume 2, was released in 1985.

Two VHS volumes of Josie and the Pussycats, each containing four episodes of the original 1970 series, minus the laugh tracks, were released by Warner Home Video (Hanna-Barbera had been sold to Turner Broadcasting in 1991, with Turner merging with Time Warner six years later) on April 10, 2001 to coincide with the release of the live-action film. A Josie and the Pussy Cat episode 'Warriors Women of Amazonia' was featured in a clip/episode collection of Hanna-Barbera on VHS, released in the UK. This video also includes episodes from Scooby Doo, where are you?, The Addams Family, and The Flintstones.

A Josie and the Pussycats: The Complete Series two-DVD box set was released in Region 1 (the United States, Canada, and Japan) on September 18, 2007.^[6] All sixteen episodes, again minus the laugh tracks, were included, as well as a half-hour documentary on the life and career of Dan DeCarlo.

On October 19, 2010, Warner Bros. released Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space: The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1 via their Warner Archive Collection of Manufacture-on-Demand (MOD) releases. Josie in Outer Space is available exclusively through Warner's online store and only in the US.^[7]

The first episode of the original 1970 series, "The Nemo's A No No Affair", is featured on the DVD compilation Saturday Morning Cartoons: the 1970s Volume 1 released on May 26, 2009.

Josie and the Pussycats was named the 100th best animated series by entertainment website IGN, which referred to Josie as an amusing show for how it combined elements from The Archie Show and Scooby-Doo.^[8]

• Josie and the Pussycats (the Archie comic)
• Josie and the Pussycats (the music group put together in conjunction with the show)
• Josie and the Pussycats (the live action movie)

This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please help improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (April 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

• Burke, Timothy and Burke, Kevin (1999). Saturday Morning Fever: Growing Up With Cartoon Culture. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-16996-5.
• Charles, Don (March 2003). Long Tails and Ears for Hats: The Story of Josie and The Pussy Cats. Cool & Strange Music #28. Text available at http://lpintop.tripod.com/oldiesconnection/id17.html.
• Josie and the Pussycats: Stop Look and Listen: The Capitol Recordings [CD Set]. Burbank: Rhino Handmade. Text available at http://www.geocities.com/antlion7/josie.htm.

• http://www.dandecarlo.com Creator Dan Decarlos Website
• Josie and the Pussycats at IMDb
• Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space at IMDb
• Archie Comics' Josie and the Pussycats homepage
• Template:Tv.com
• Template:Tv.com
• Josie and the Pussycats at Toonopedia
• JOZINE: unofficial Josie/DeCarlo fan site
• Big Cartoon DataBase (BCDb): Josie and the Pussycats
• Big Cartoon DataBase (BCDb): Josie and the Pussycats In Outer Space