Suspended Animation #407
The 1970-1971 Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning sixteen episode television series Josie and the Pussycats that aired on CBS about an all-girl pop music band was the result of the success of Filmation’s The Archie Show and Action for Children’s Television wanting less violent cartoons on Saturday morning.
Josie and the Pussy Cats featured an all-girl teenage pop music band that toured the world with their entourage visiting exotic locations and getting mixed up in strange adventures, spy capers and mysteries. The final chase scene would have one of the Pussycats’ songs as the background music.
The group consisted of red-headed lead singer/guitarist Josie (Janet Waldo), intelligent bassist Valerie (Barbara Pariot) and air-headed blond drummer Melody (Jackie Joseph). Other characters included their shady manager, Alexander Cabot III; his conniving sister, Alexandra; her cat, Sebastian and roadie Alan Mayberry.
The Josie characters came from an Archie comic book created and drawn by artist Dan DeCarlo. In 1956, DeCarlo was developing several ideas for possible newspaper comic strips. His wife Josie, a former French born model, came home with a brand-new bouffant hairdo complete with a little black ribbon and DeCarlo decided to use her as a basis for a strip called Here’s Josie.
DeCarlo put together samples for a newspaper strip called Here’s Josie with the character but it didn’t sell to a syndicate so he offered it to Richard Goldwater who took it to his father who was publishing Archie comics. She was originally called Josie Jones (or sometimes Josie James) but is now officially known as Josie McCoy. The comic book series started in 1963.
When it came time for the character to be a member of a rock’n’roll band, DeCarlo once again used his wife for inspiration. As she recalled, “We went on a Caribbean cruise, and I had a [cat] costume a girlfriend had made for me for carnival night on the cruise, and that’s the way it started.” She originally had a mask but Dan felt it obscured her face too much and changed it to just the ears.
On the television series, even though DeCarlo is given a “created by” credit (along with Richard Goldwater, Joe Ruby and Ken Spears), he never received any additional payments or royalties.
When the comic book was optioned by Hanna-Barbera, the Archie company dropped Dan DeCarlo’s credit in the Josie comic books and used just “Dick and Dan” instead. Dick referred to Richard “Dick” Goldwater.
Hanna-Barbera wanted to change Valerie to a Caucasian even though she was already established as African-American in the Archie comics, so they wanted to fire African-American Patrice Holloway who had been cast as Valerie’s singing voice.
But Danny Janssen who was producing the real-life group’s Capitol album, refused to fire Holloway and Hanna-Barbera relented after three weeks. A full album and two 45-RPM singles were released by Capitol/EMI Records in connection with the show as well as four Kelloggs cereal premiums 45s.
It was the first Saturday morning animated series to feature a regularly featured female black character. Holloway was the sister of Motown singer Brenda Holloway. Patrice sings the lead on the theme song. She was the only member of the cast to appear as an actual member of the live group and on the album cover.
The singing voice of Melody was done by Cheryl Ladd (credited as Cherie Moor) and it was her first television project. Cathy Dougher did the singing voice for Josie. The original plans were to feature a short live action segment at the end of every show with the live band.
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”). The song proclaimed: “We’re involved with this and that, everywhere the action’s at.” Check out Greg Ehrbar’s always outstanding column about the Pussycats on records.
Because Filmation owned the rights to the Archie characters, the Pussycats series had to be divorced from that Archie universe and its characters and locations.
“Dan DeCarlo, a freelancer, was kept unaware that Josie and the Pussycats had been sold to CBS until he was invited to have lunch with Archie Comics’ owners on a Friday, the day before the show’s premiere,” stated animator, writer and cartoonist Scott Shaw!
“He eagerly complied, since his bosses implied that they had good news for him. Before lunch, Dan was plied with cocktails until he was quite inebriated, then was told of his creation’s animated incarnation. Dan was aghast that he wasn’t informed about the deal and even angrier that he wasn’t receiving a cent from it, but was too drunk to respond appropriately.
“Years later, when he tried to sue for a portion of the profits of a live-action Josie and the Pussycats movie, the 80-year-old cartoonist (but still churning out artwork for Archie featuring the characters) was blacklisted by the wonderful folks at Archie Comics.
“Photos exist of Josie DeCarlo and her cartoonist husband at a shipboard costume party; Dan is dressed as a big game hunter while Josie is wearing a leopard costume, complete with those trademark ‘pussycat’ ears.”
Writer and artist Norman Maurer, who was story editor at Hanna-Barbera told me he had once written a scene for Josie and the Pussycats where Sebastian the cat escaped from some sort of menace and hides in a dish of spaghetti. CBS disallowed it. “Kids’ll put their cats in spaghetti” Maurer was told.
Fred Silverman was vice president of CBS and loved the show. According to legend when he was once listening to a promotional tape for the show that included dialog, he abruptly stopped the tape and said, “Josie wouldn’t say that!” so the offending line was not only removed from the promo but re-recorded for the episode itself.
In 1972, the show’s characters and concept was transformed into Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, sixteen episodes of which aired on CBS Saturday morning during the 1972–73 season. While taking a promotional photo at the launch site of a new spaceship, Alexandra pushes everyone aside and they accidentally end up in the spaceship and trigger the launch cycle.
In the sixteen episodes they explored strange new worlds, often captured by aliens, while trying to find their way back to Earth. Melody adopts a cute little alien named Bleep voiced by Don Messick.
Melody, Alexander, Alexandra, and Sebastian were originally intended to appear in the animated series Scooby’s Laff-A-Lympics (1977) as members of the Scooby Doobies team as shown in an early promotional art for that show.
But licensing difficulties with Archie Comics prevented Hanna-Barbera from using them, so instead Cavey, Dee Dee, Brenda and Taffy from Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels (1977) were used instead.
In 2001, DIC Entertainment and Riverdale Productions announced an agreement to co-produce, distribute and merchandise a new animated television series based on the Josie and the Pussycats comic book. Supposedly it was going to be influenced by the upcoming live action film featuring the characters. The film flopped and I suppose that put the kibosh on the proposed animated series.
Jim Korkis is an internationally respected animation historian who in recent years has devoted his attention to the many worlds of Disney. He was a columnist for a variety of animation magazines. With his former writing partner, John Cawley, he authored several animation related books including The Encyclopedia of Cartoon Superstars, How to Create Animation, Cartoon Confidential and Get Animated’s Animation Art Buyer’s Guide. He taught animation classes at the Disney Institute in Florida as well as instructing classes on acting and animation history for Disney Feature Animation: Florida.
I preferred the original series. The girls showed a lot less leg when they went to outer space. Also, it was stupid.
One might say that Josie and the Pussycats were pioneers of a genre that is still going strong. The French anime series “LoliRock” has a similar dynamic between its three female leads, who are not only in a band, they’re also princess superheroines! “Totally Spies!”, another French series, features a redheaded leader, a ditzy blonde, and a smart black girl in form-fitting outfits; but I don’t recall any episode where the trio formed a band. A missed opportunity. The Winx Club, however, did form a band in Season 4, creating a lucrative recording arm to their juggernaut of a franchise. The less said about Gwen Stefani’s girl band cartoon, “Kuu Kuu Harajuku”, the better.
There must be hundreds of animated music videos of Japanese pop songs sung by cute anime girls in sexy cat costumes.
If a Josie and the Pussycats series were made today, the girls would be played by 35-year-old actresses with tattoos and nose rings, they’d all wear black, and they’d be shape-shifting demons who could turn into bloodthirsty panthers at the least provocation, which would have a deleterious effect on their love lives. Oh, and they wouldn’t play in a band, and there wouldn’t be any music.
In a bizarre instance of network synergy, Walter Findlay and grandson watch Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space (while an altered version of the theme song plays) on the adult sitcom Maude (“Maude’s Facelift Part 2”).
I have read stories/interviews about Dan DeCarlo finding out about the Josie series a day before the premiere. However, DeCarlo drew the cover & interior art for J&TPC #50 that features the cast visiting the Hanna-Barbera studios. The story features Joe and Bill as well as Ken Spears and Joe Ruby. Josie and her friends get a tour of the studio, the animation process & discuss the upcoming series. The comic hit the stands in August 1970, but had to be drawn at least back in May or June of 1970. Did Dan DeCarlo think he was drawing an imaginary story where Josie gets her own Saturday morning series and then found out it the night before the premiere that the cartoon was happening for real? 🤔
Or the anecdote is obviously fake
After listening to the Josie theme song again, I realised that it’s essentially a slightly sped-up, harder-rocking version of a musical cue that Hoyt Curtin had composed for The Flintstones, one that generally stood in for the youth-oriented pop music of the early 1960s.
To clarify, according to Danny Janssen’s recollections in his liner notes for the Rhino compilation CD, when he submitted his suggested studio singers, he was unaware that all three characters in the Archie comic book were caucasian. But Hanna-Barbera’s art and animation elements were already in production, so there was concern about going back and changing the character — not because of race but because of time, budget, and most of all, approvals. Janssen said that he could not return to Patrice Holloway and take her out of the trio so his only alternative was to leave the project.
“They were very nice about it,” Janssen said, but they agreed that he could happily return for another project in the future. However, in the meantime, Hanna-Barbera, which would not have made such a change in the midst of production without consulting with Archie Comics (who controlled the characters), CBS (who approved the series), and Kellogg’s (the sponsor), did indeed replace Pepper with a new character named Valerie.
Pepper disappeared from the comic book, and African-American Valerie took her place in December 1969. The timeline of her debut in the comic book bears out the production of the series and the development of the merchandise design guides, which include Valerie.
Hanna-Barbera initiated this — they did not prevent it — in order to replace Pepper with African-American Valerie to keep Patrice Holloway. They then hired African-American Barbara Pariot as Valerie’s speaking voice. Danny Janssen wasn’t aware that this had happened until weeks later when he was brought back as the music producer and made the records.
The Valerie character was the first black female character on a regular Saturday morning cartoon series. The Hardy Boys drummer Pete Jones had been the first black male to appear on Saturday mornings a year earlier, but Pete’s voice was not spoken by an African-American. Hanna-Barbera did cast Valerie’s speaking voice accordingly and Danny Janssen cast her singing voice, setting the historical precedent.
Thanks for this clarification! I’ve interviewed Danny Janssen in the past, and his description of events had more to do with race, which didn’t seem right to me. His leaving the project was in protest. I’m glad to read that the real issue was time/budget etc. It also clarifies my chicken/egg question, as far as when/how Valerie was introduced to the comics and/or series.
Once again a creator is screwed out of money owed to him. Oh well. at least he knew that his creations brought great joy to generations of people. I hoped that gave him some comfort.
I remember reading the story about the network’s objection to the scene with Sebastian jumping into a plate of spaghetti in Gary Grossman’s book on SatAM TV. Kind of ridiculous, especially in hindsight, that any grownup would actually believe such a scene would influence impressionable yet sensible kids to dunk their own pet cats into a plate of spaghetti deliberately. But then, this is the Peggy Charon era of TV we’re talking about, when parents were (allegedly) hypersensitive to any depictions of inappropriate activity on TV, even and especially if the subject matter was of a fictional nature.
Hoyt Curtin sure got mileage out of his music. He reworked a Jetsons cue (J-221) and turned it into the Josie theme.
Josie and the Pussycats received homage in one of the Cartoon Network “Groovies” titled “Musical Evolution,” which takes the theme-song from the original through disco, punk, country & western, arena rock and technopop versions, with animation to match. It can be found on YouTube.
I remember that! They used to play it all the time on Boomerang in the 2000s. Such a fun video.
I was busy with the U.S. Army’s basic training, and after moving on from Fort Knox (Kentucky) only learned about the “Josie and the Pussycats” cartoon to be TV-released when I was sent down to Fort Gordon (Augusta, Georgia) in June of 1970. Due to Saturday’s calling for cleanup details before we could take off on weekend passes, cartoons –which were watched; after work and supper, the “Banana Splits” was surprisingly very popular, as was “Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines” (also, Hanna-Barbera productions) weren’t available on Sat. mornings. Unless you were away from the post and in town; after I joyously learned (in late October ’70) I had orders cut to be permanently stationed at Schofield Barracks (Hawaii) and celebrated in downtown Augusta at a motel near the bridge over the Savannah River into South Carolina. naturally, I watched whatever T wished, making certain I didn’t miss “Josie” that happy weekend–my final one at Ft. Gordon or in Georgia itself! The episode I relished was “Never Mind a Master Mind” (set in Amsterdam, Holland). later in the islands, I stayed with cartooning (as we had much more free time and running a teletype (pre-internet and digital communications) and not only followed “Josie.’ Even that “Outer Space” variation that emerged in 1972 wasn’t that bad, but I still prefer the “globe-trotting” episodes of the first season, finding myself with enough spare time to write up reviews for each “Josie and Pussycats” story.
I’m glad that it was Hanna-Barbera that did this series–and not that wretched “Filmation”; while they had decent designs, any actual movement was annoyingly repeated 10-12 times in the same cartoon. “Archie” was even worse–one of the most over-rated and poorly-executed cartoons ever–and it got unwatchable every year(they were simply re-running cartoons in 1971 from the original, 1968 “Everything’s Archie”).
I later got into teaching and instructed a mini-course for adults on the creation of American comic books (I don’t like that term, “graphic novels”) in 2014 at West Lafayette’s (Ind.) St. Andrew’s Church. Far more credit needs to go to what the creator Dan DeCarlo did in coming out with Josie–rather than praise what little the Goldwaters did (a pox on “John G.”with his “Comics Code” treachery), and even more so– to “Dick,” his coattail-riding, credit-swiping offspring!) in their “peanut-bowl”, initially amusing but time-weary Archie offerings. My comic-book exhibition at Boswell’s (Ind.) School and this later course gave special attention to DeCarlo, Marvel’s and DC’s Jack Kirby ( his world of superheroes, especially Marvel’s “the Fantastic Four” and “the Avengers”) , and Carl Barks’ Dell /later, Gold Key-distributed stories through printer Western (carrying Disney’s “Donald Duck” and Uncle Scrooge” adventures–now recognized as classics!).This exhibit that featured Golden and Silver Age comics was labeled as “Barks, Kirby, and DeCarlo: Three Comic-Book Giants of the 20th Century.” (I’ll gladly send a free copy of the course’s syllabus to whoever is interested.)
Very good what you have here; I only hope I live to see at least a reduction in electronic-communicative “drugs” and a return to quality comics–and not only for the younger crowd!
Best regards, John Edgerly, Otterbein, Indiana.