Josie and the Pussycats (cartoon)

This article is about the Josie and the Pussycats Saturday morning cartoon. For other versions of the property, see Josie and the Pussycats.

Creation and development

Josie Gets a Band

During the 1968 - 1969 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. 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 Comics responded by offering to re-develop their comic Josie into a comic about a teenage music band, allowing Hanna-Barbera to adapt it into an music-based Saturday morning show.

Related Topics:
1968 - 1969 - Archie - The Archie Show - CBS - Billboard - The Archies - Hanna-Barbera Productions - Filmation - Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! - Josie

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The Music and the Controversy over Valerie

Main entry: Josie and the Pussycats (music)

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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 cut an album. The songs on the album would be used in the cartoon as well.

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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 Cathy Dougher as Josie, Cherie Moor as Melody, and Patrice Holloway as Valerie.

Related Topics:
Josie and the Pussycats - Cherie Moor - Patrice Holloway

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Janssen presented the newly formed band to William Hanna and Joseph Barbera to finalize the production deal, but was in for a major 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, an African American in the comic book, to make her Caucasian. 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 an African-American.

Related Topics:
William Hanna - Joseph Barbera - African American - Caucasian

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Valerie was actually the very first African-American regular cast member on an animated television show (in 1969, Bill Cosby's Fat Albert appeared in a one-shot animated prime-time special, but would not get his own show until 1971). Interestingly enough, Valerie only holds this position in history thanks to the CBS scheduling department: Josie and the Pussycats debuted at 9:30 AM EST on September 12 1970, while another new Hanna-Barbera show, The Harlem Globetrotters (on which all but one of its major human characters were African-American) debuted on the same day—but at 10:00 AM.

Related Topics:
Bill Cosby - Fat Albert - September 12 - 1970 - The Harlem Globetrotters

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