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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. 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 the first regularly appearing female black character in a Saturday morning cartoon show. 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.
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.
A cover of "Josie and the Pussycats", performed by Juliana Hatfield and Tanya Donelly, is included on the 1995 tribute album , produced by Ralph Sall for MCA Records.
Like Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, Josie and the Pussycats contained a laugh track which was later removed for DVD releases in the U.S.
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.
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 Spectra They would next appear on Cartoon Network in 1992, where all 32 episodes were run in the same timeslot. Josie and the Pussycats 2''
In 2001, Cartoon Network began airing a Josie and the Pussycats Bratz Cloe, 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 and Barbie Summer, 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, My Scene Madison was a direct parody of the Josie and the Pussycats character Valerie Brown.
Two VHS volumes of Josie and the Pussycats, each containing four episodes of the original 1970 series, minus their 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. All sixteen episodes, again minus their laugh tracks, were included, as well as a half-hour documentary on the life and career of DanDeCarlo.
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.
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.
Category:CBS network shows Category:NBC network shows Category:Hanna-Barbera and Cartoon Network Studios series and characters Category:Animated musical groups Category:Television programs based on Archie Comics Category:1970 television series debuts Category:1976 television series endings Category:1970s American animated television series Category:American children's television series Category:Television series by Warner Bros. Television Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space
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