The Archie Show

***The Archie Show*** (also known as ***The Archies*** or ***The Archie Comedy Hour*** or ***Archie's Funhouse***) is an American musical animated sitcom television series produced by Filmation for CBS. Based on the Archie Comics, created by Bob Montana in 1941, *The Archie Show* aired Saturday mornings on CBS from September 1968 through 1969. The show featured the main characters from the *Archie* series, including Archie Andrews, Betty Cooper, Veronica Lodge, Reggie Mantle, and Jughead Jones.

In 1969, the show was expanded to an hour and retitled ***The Archie Comedy Hour***, which includs half-hour featuring Sabrina the Teenage Witch. In 1970, the show became ***Archie's Funhouse***, and featured live-action segments. After three seasons, *The Archie Show* stopped airing on CBS in 1971.

Filmation continued to produce further *Archie* television series until 1978, including *Archie's TV Funnies* (1971-1973), *The U.S. of Archie* (1974-1976) and *The New Archie and Sabrina Hour* (1977-1978).

## Overview

The show revolves around 17-year-old vocalist/rhythm guitarist Archie Andrews and his teen-age pals from Riverdale High School including: his best friend and food fiend drummer Jughead Jones, wise-cracking bassist Reggie Mantle, beautiful, spoiled-rich girl vocalist/keyboardist Veronica Lodge, and attractive, blonde, girl-next-door tomboy vocalist/lead guitarist/percussionist Betty Cooper. On the show, the friends appeared as a bubblegum pop band featuring Archie on lead guitar. *The Archies* had a real-life No. 1 hit single in 1969 with their song, "Sugar, Sugar", written by Jeff Barry and Andy Kim.

*The Archie Show* utilized a laugh track, the first such example of the colloquially-titled Saturday morning cartoons. Owing to the success of *The Archie Show*, most animated series would begin using laugh tracks until the early 1980s. Previous animated series that used laugh tracks, such as *The Flintstones* and *The Jetsons*, were broadcast during prime time with the target audience being adults.

A typical episode started with the first Archie story, introduced by Archie and occasionally a different character. Next was a "dance of the week" segment starting with a teaser, then after the commercial break Archie introduced the dance, followed by the song of the week performed by The Archies. After that was a short joke followed by the second Archie story. All 17 episodes of the first show were presented in this format.

## Formats

The show was broadcast in different formats and under different titles. Some material are believed to be completely lost or destroyed after Hallmark Entertainment bought Filmation's library in 1995.

* *The Archie Show* (1968–69)
* *Archie and his New Pals* (TV special; 1969): Big Moose and Reggie compete against each other for Class President; Sabrina is introduced as a new Riverdale High student.
* *The Archie Comedy Hour* (1969–70): all-new material, now in an hour-long format, contained two Sabrina segments, one at the beginning of the show and one at the end, with a new "The Funhouse" joke segment in the middle that was loosely based on *Laugh-In*, and also contained regular segments such as Sabrina's Magic Trick and Dilton Doily's Inventions. There was a "Side Show" segment of one-liner jokes, followed by an Archies music segment.
* *Archie's Funhouse* (1970–71): an expanded version of the previous series' "Funhouse" format, now featuring an audience of live action kids and the "Giant Jukebox"; a music-heavy incarnation of the series, originally padded to one hour with repeats of segments from *The Archie Show*.
* *Archie's TV Funnies* (1971–73): Archie and the gang run a TV station, presenting a selection of cartoons within the series featuring characters from classic newspaper comic strips.
* *Everything's Archie* (1973–74): repeats of previously released material.
* *The U.S. of Archie* (1974–76): Archie and the gang re-interpret various events from American history.
* *The New Archie and Sabrina Hour* (1977–78): new Archie and Sabrina episodes, plus repeats of earlier material. The series was then divided into two separate 30-minute shows: *The Bang-Shang Lollapalooza Show* (Archie) and *Super Witch* (Sabrina).

*The New Archie and Sabrina Hour* was subsequently divided into *The Bang-Shang Lalapalooza Show* and *Super Witch* during its original network run. While the earlier Archie programs were broadcast by CBS, the last series was on NBC.

*Hero High* (1981) was planned to be part of *The Kid Super Power Hour with Shazam!* featuring Archie and the gang as superheroes; however, this series was altered at the last minute because Filmation's rights to the "Archie" characters had expired during production and was not renewed.

*The Groovie Goolies and Friends* (1978): syndication package, also featuring episodes from other Filmation series.

## Voice cast

* Dallas McKennon – Archie Andrews, Hot Dog, Mr. Weatherbee, Pop Tate, Mr. Lodge, Coach Kleats
	+ Ron Dante – Archie Andrews (singing voice)
* Jane Webb – Betty Cooper, Veronica Lodge, Miss Grundy, Big Ethel
	+ Toni Wine – Betty Cooper, Veronica Lodge (singing voice)
* John Erwin – Reggie Mantle
* Howard Morris – Moose Mason, Jughead Jones, Dilton Doiley
* Don Messick – Jughead Jones, Hot Dog ("Beauty Is Only Fur Deep")