Here are five more and these may be the last of them here. Or they may not. You never know with this blog…
In 1971, the Rankin-Bass studio made the deal that gave us Jackson 5ive — that was how it was spelled — featuring the adventures of what was then one of the hottest rock acts out there. Actual records of the Jacksons, including Michael, were used but the brothers were too busy performing (I guess) to record the speaking parts. Voice actors did that, though Diana Ross reportedly supplied her own voice in one episode in which she appeared as a character.
Many years later, I worked on a proposed Saturday morning cartoon that was to feature Michael and his little menagerie of pets. I never quite understood how this deal was made because Michael really didn't want to do it. He did not have fond memories of the 1971 show and really did not want to be a cartoon character, lest it tar his self-proclaimed title as The King of Pop for all ages. The show never happened and I assume he was happy that it didn't. So here's his one turn as a cartoon character…
Mister Magoo was developed in and around the U.P.A. cartoon studio in 1949. His cartoons were often pretty funny, thanks in large part to the voicework of Mr. Jim Backus who, it is said, would not (or maybe could not) record a track without several alcoholic beverages in him. The studio fell on hard times in the late fifties, stopped making cartoons and sold off its library and characters to a producer named Henry G. Saperstein.
Mr. Saperstein began marketing the library — mainly the nearsighted Magoo — to television and below is the opening title for a syndicated show that featured the best of that library. Eventually new Magoo cartoons were made for TV, most notably the 1962 special, Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol and a prime-time weekly series that was covered in an earlier list here. At one point around 1997, there was going to be a Magoo animated feature and I was going to write it but that went away when Mr. Saperstein died in 1998. Still, I like the opening to the syndicated series…
The characters on The Linus the Lionhearted Show (1961) all originated on boxes of Post cereals. Linus — voiced by Sheldon Leonard — was the mascot for Post Crispy Critters, an awful cereal (I thought) with good commercials (I thought). Post had the clout to get this show on Saturday morning — new shows for one year, reruns thereafter. It was a pretty good series with voice work by, among other celebs, Carl Reiner, Jonathan Winters, Ruth Buzzi, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, and a few others whose names you won't see in the credits here.
I always thought the big unbilled cameo was in the opening song. One of the singers you'll hear is Thurl Ravenscroft, the voice of that other big cat from a cereal box — Tony the Tiger on Kellogg's Sugar Frosted Flakes. I don't think they've changed the recipe since then but they took "Sugar" out of the product's name.
As the long-running Mighty Mouse Playhouse on CBS Saturday morning lost audience in the mid-sixties, the Terrytoons studio sought to stave off extinction by introducing a new segment — The Mighty Heroes, created by animator-producer Ralph Bakshi. In 1966, the show became Mighty Mouse and The Mighty Heroes and Bakshi's super team more or less squeezed the mouse out. This is not the complete mini-main-title for the team because, as you'll see, it doesn't give the title. But it was something fresh on a somewhat stale schedule…
The Amos 'n' Andy radio show was very popular in the forties and fifties. It starred two white guys playing two black guys — Freeman Gosden as Amos and Charles Correll as Andy. Eventually, a character named George "Kingfish" Stevens (also voiced by Gosden) became more popular than Amos or Andy. In the early fifties, the program was turned into a TV series with black actors playing those roles — and Kingfish becoming the real star of the proceedings. It was a funny show but various groups found it racist and eventually, CBS (which owned it) canceled the show and later on, buried the reruns.
In 1961, someone got the idea that the show could be revived as a prime-time animated series with the characters turned into animals. Andy (voiced by Correll) became a bear named Calvin, Kingfish (voiced by Gosden) became a fox and Calvin and the Colonel went on the air in October of 1961. It was an immediate flop. It was yanked off the air, then it came back with a new opening and closing, then it moved to Saturday morning and syndication where it was around for a while.
I liked the theme song so here's the original opening and closing in color followed by the second opening and closing in black-and-white…
And that's it for now…I think. But maybe not.