‘Josie and the Pussycats’
‘Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp’
‘The Jackson 5ive’
In the comics, Josie was the female Archie — a red-headed teen with colorful friends. And, as with Archie, Josie’s gang reinvented itself as a pop band, which television soon made the focus of an animated series. But at heart, the leopard-print-wearing Josie and the Pussycats did not mirror the Archies so much as the “Scooby-Doo” gang: hip girls and guys, with no (apparent) romantic entanglements, righting wrongs on the road. An important distinction: the Scooby-Doo gang traveled randomly, while the Pussycats were cruising from gig to gig. The Pussycats were a trio with scant instrumentation. Pretty much, the whole group was guitar (Josie), tambourine (Valerie) and drums (Melody). Valerie beat Fat Albert as the first regularly appearing black character on a Saturdaymorning cartoon series. Sexybut-dimwitted Melody was akin to Marilyn Monroe in “Some Like it Hot.”
Simply put, “Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp” was a 007 parody starring chimpanzees. Besides being a superspy working for A.P.E. (the Agency to Prevent Evil), Lancelot fronted a rock band: the Evolution Revolution. The organist played a wicked Hammond B3. The tambourine player put Davy Jones to shame. The attention to detail was remarkable. The monkeys were precisely dubbed, impeccably styled and, it must be said, talented. There were ingeniously utilized exteriors, vehicles, props — anything to make this planet of the apes believable. But the musical “performances” were the big draw. For these sequences, the show’s creators went full-on psychedelic, with wigs, costumes and accoutrements that made you swear these chimps were plucked from an allnighter in the Haight. There was even a Lancelot Link album, from ABC Records. But unlike the Archies, the Evolution Revolution never had a real-life hit.
All sorts of wonderful collisions happened with “The Jackson 5ive.” Pop met soul. Real life met animation. And Motown met children’s television. Even the companies that collaborated on the series were strange bedfellows. Rankin/ Bass were the animators behind “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman.” Motown Productions was a subsidiary of the record company that brought us the Miracles, the Four Tops, the Supremes . . . and the Jackson 5. Bolstered with the Jacksons’ pop confections such as “I Want You Back,” “ABC” and “The Love You Save,” the series followed the fictional exploits of Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael Jackson, who then ranged in age from 13 (Michael) to 20 (Jackie). The credits implied that the Jacksons provided their own voices, which was too good to be true. However, Diana Ross indeed provided the voice for her likeness in the debut episode.
Josie and the Pussycats and the Jackson 5ive. © Archie Comics; © Hanna-Barbera Productions; © Filmation Assoc.