The Beatles Saturday Morning Cartoon

The logo that would appear in title cards.

### Production company

King Features Syndicate, TVC London, Artransa Park Studios, Graphik, Canawest Studios, Cine-Centrum, Los Dibujos Animados, Group Two

### Language

English

The Beatles (also known as "The Beatles Saturday Morning Cartoon", but mainly referred to as "The Beatles Cartoon") was a Saturday morning animated television series featuring representations of the popular English rock band of the same name. It was created by Al Brodax, and was originally broadcasted from September 25, 1965 to October 21, 1967 on ABC in the United States, with reruns airing until September 7, 1969.

## **Production**

After Al Brodax saw the band perform on The Ed Sullivan Show, he went to the band's management with the vision of creating an animated TV show starring the Fab Four. Despite them appearing in the show, The Beatles had little to no involvement with the production of the show besides letting King Features use their music for episodes.

### Animation

Animation for the show was mostly done by George Dunning's company TVC. Five other companies, being Artransa, Graphik, Canawest, Cine-Centrum, and Group Two also animated episodes, and another company by the name of Los Dibujos Animados did the animation for Season 1 and 2's intro's, Sing Along host segments, and Commercial Break Sketches.

### Voice Acting

The Beatles didn't provide the voices for themselves in the show. Instead, Paul Frees does the voices for John Lennon and George Harrison, and Lance Percival does the voices of Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. There were also two voice actresses in the show, those being Julie Bennett and Carol Corbett.

### Music

The music used in episodes has songs from every Beatles album up to "Revolver", with singles up to "Penny Lane"/"Strawberry Fields Forever", "Bad Boy", literally just "I Want to Hold Your Hand" but in German, and songs from the EP "Long Tall Sally" thrown in as well. It is not known who the music composer is for the original music used for the show.

Season 1's theme music is the guitar riff from "A Hard Day's Night" mixed with "Can't Buy Me Love", Season 2's theme music is "Help!", and Season 3's theme music is "And Your Bird Can Sing".

## **Episodes**

Each episode has 2 five minute segments and the Sing Along segment, with host segments featuring Paul, John or George and Ringo. Episodes marked with an \* DON'T have sing along equivalents.

### Season 3 (6 Episodes, 1967)

As the show delve further into The Beatles' later music, the writers found it hard to make the plots for episodes kid friendly.

## **International Dubs**

Like a lot of other media, The Beatles Cartoon also had dubs during its run. There are only two known dubs for the cartoon as of now.

### Japanese Dub

The Japanese dub of The Beatles Cartoon (or otherwise referred to as "アニメ・ザ・ビートルズ") was mostly aired during the 70's and 80's, and has almost no full episodes online. The only things that survived from this specific dub are clips.

#### JP Cast

Instead of the voice actors having two Beatles per role, four different people voiced them.

* John Lennon is voiced by Masato Ibu.
* Paul McCartney is voiced by Kenji Obata, making it his ONLY voice acting role.
* George Harrison is voiced by Hideyuki Tanaka.
* Ringo Starr is voiced by Kazuyuki Sogabe.

### Latin American Dub

The Latin American dub (or otherwise referred to as "Los Beatles animados") is also scarce with any information and full episodes. The dub aired in four latin american countries.

#### ES Cast

Like the JP dub, most of the voice actors each played one Beatle for the show. However, the cast is switched around for some episodes. This is the official list from the Dubs Wiki (NOTE: The page is entirely in Spanish)

* For most episodes, John Lennon is voiced by Antonio Passy. He is also sometimes voiced by Salvador Najar.
* For most episodes, Paul McCartney is voiced by Luis Bayardo. He is also sometimes voiced by Víctor Mares.
* For most episodes, George Harrison is voiced by Jorge Arvizu. He is also sometimes voiced by Ángel Aragón.
* Ringo Starr is voiced by Jorge Arvizu.

## **Legacy and Reception**

The Beatles originally didn't like the cartoon because of its poor production value, though reports say that they eventually did warm up to the show. King Features and Al Bordax would later go on to create the Beatles film "Yellow Submarine" in 1968, where the band appeared in a live action epilogue. Lance Percival would also voice the character Fred in the movie.

In 1986 and 1987, MTV had its own run of The Beatles Cartoon, with Mark Hamill as a host in the 1987 run. In 1989, The Disney Channel also had its own run, airing episodes at 5 PM.

Sometime in the early 90's, Apple Corps bought the rights to the series, and it has been sitting in their vaults ever since. There has been a popular demand to release the series officially on DVD.

In 2004, McFarlane Toys released action figures based off of the cartoon, featuring the Fab Four with their instruments. In 2005, a deluxe set was created, featuring the Fab Four with their instruments, with an alligator figure, speakers, and a radio.

In 1972, John Lennon admitted: "I still get a blast out of watching the Beatles cartoons on TV."

In 1999, George Harrison admitted: "I always kind of liked [the cartoons]. They were so bad or silly that they were good, if you know what I mean, and I think the passage of time might make them more fun now."

## **Trivia**

* The Beatles Cartoon is known to be the first ever animated TV show based off of real people.