Jackie Joseph

We are winding up our blog theme for October, “Get Animated.” I think II saved the best for last. When I remember watching cartoons as a kid, I was fairly neutral on most of them. I liked Tom and Jerry and The Jetsons. I did not like the Dudley Do-Right/Penelope Pitstop group of characters. I was indifferent to most cartoons until I was ten and a new one debuted. I loved Josie and the Pussycats. I couldn’t really relate to Foghorn Leghorn, but I got Josie.

Dan DeCarlo created “The Archies,” and in 1970 he came up with “Josie and the Pussy Cats.” He later found out that in addition to the comic books, a cartoon was being given to Hanna-Barbera and he was not getting any of the profits from the sale.

Carlo discussed how he came up for the idea: “I went to United Feature with . . . Josie. . . They asked for more . . . [it was too much] . . . I shoved Josie, and concentrated on Willie Lumpkin . . . When the strip ended, I quickly submitted the Josie strip back to Publishers and Harold Anderson, and he sent it back to me . . . I took it to Archie to see if they could do it as a comic book. I showed it to Richard Goldwater, and he showed it to his father, and a day or two later I got the OK to do it as a comic book.”

Sixteen episodes ran the first season, and they were repeated the next year. Season three moved to outer space and that didn’t do much for me. This group was rerun again in season four. The final two years, 1974-76, just continued to show these same 32 episodes. Oddly during these final two years, you could catch the cartoon on ABC, CBS, and NBC.

The reason I loved this show is because it was all about girl power. Josie and the Pussycats was a teen pop band who toured the world. Somehow, they managed to get into the same types of mysteries the Scooby Doo gang did; they even had their own van. Josie was the lead singer, songwriter and guitarist for the band. Her co-band members were Valerie who played the tambourine and drummer Melody. Valerie was the first Black character to be a regular member of a Saturday morning cartoon.

Rounding out the cast were roadie Alan and twins Alexandra and Alexander. Alexander was their manager, but he was not the brave boy leading the women; he was more cowardly and afraid of his sister who caused a lot of trouble for the band. Alexandra also had a cat Sebastian.

Like The Partridge Family or The Monkees, a song was featured each episode usually during a chase scene. And like The Partridge Family, they wore special costumes, usually leopard print ones. Don’s wife shared a story about the inspiration behind the costumes. In 2002, she told Blake Bell that “we were going on a cruise. I had a friend . . . she made me a costume and that was the pussycat costume. . . I brought the costume . . . Dan . . . decided it should be made a little bit sexier. I had a hat with a point on the forehead, cut around the eyes . . . he thought we would just use the ears. When we had the whole costume together that’s when Josie was created actually [based] with the style of this costume.”

Each episode had a formula with the band on their way to their next performance when they get mixed up in an adventure, often caused by Alexandra. They might meet a mad scientist or villains like The Wild Wild West featured where they wanted to take over the world or use some terrible invention to harm a lot of people. Alexandra also wanted to steal Alan away from Josie, so that was often behind her mischievous plots.

Josie was voiced by Janet Waldo, but her singing was done by Kathleen Dougherty. She was the redhead of the group. Valerie’s words were voiced over by Barbara Pariot and her singing by Patrice Holloway. She was a brunette. Melody, the blonde, was voiced by Jackie Joseph and her singing was done by Cheryl Ladd. It was Ladd’s first television project. Alan was played by Jerry Dexter. Alexander had the distinct voice of Casey Kasem and his sister was Sherry Alberoni. We also heard Don Messick as Sebastian during the episodes.

The only thing I didn’t love about the show is that Melody was portrayed as the stereotypical dumb blonde. She was naïve and easy to confuse. Her ears wiggled when danger was near.

Hanna-Barbera put together a real-life girl group to not only provide the singing voices but to record an album. There was a talent search to find singers who looked like the cartoon characters.

The theme song was titled, what else, “Josie and the Pussycats.” It was written by Hoyt Curtin, Hanna, and Barbera. It was based on a tune that had been used briefly on The Jetsons. Capitol/EMI Records released an album and two 45-RPMs in 1970. The two songs that were most popular were “Every Beat of My Heart” and “Stop, Look, and Listen.” Kellogs, the sponsor of the show, also offered four 45s, if consumers sent a form in from the back of a cereal box.

The outer space episodes from season 3 were based on the band taking a promotional photo in front of a new spaceship. Alexandra pushes the group aside, accidentally triggering the launch sequence which sends them all into outer space. For some reason, Valerie knew how to fly the spacecraft. In this version, which is similar to the original 16, the wacky people they encounter are from other planets rather than cities on Earth.

A complete DVD set was released in 2007. The group has made a few encore performances. In 2001, there was a live action movie which I don’t remember at all. In 2016 a comic book was released, and in 2017, Riverdale, a live-action show, featured the trio as students at Riverdale High.

Josie and the Pussycats was never meant to be the mainstay The Archies was. I did love The Archies as well, with a poster on my wall and comic books on my bookshelf. However, Josie was just what I was looking for as a ten-year-old in 1971. I could easily imagine myself on tour, solving mysteries, and outwitting Alexandra. I thought about revisiting the original sixteen episodes for this blog, but I could not bring myself to do it. The ten-year-old is content remembering how fun these cartoons were, and I didn’t want to disappoint her by revealing how well they do or don’t hold up today. If you decide to take a trek back in time, let me know what you think about the show.

We are winding up a blog series about Supportive Women. One of the women I wanted to include was Jo Anne Worley. I didn’t know much about her apart from her appearances on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In and being in my favorite made-for-television movie, The Feminist and the Fuzz.

Jo Anne was born in 1937 in Lowell, Indiana. Her loud voice was not an acting tool. She always felt she was loud. She said, “I have a big mouth, and I’m sorry to say I’ve always had one. When I was young, in church, I never sang with everybody else. I only mouthed the hymns, so I wouldn’t drown anyone else out. I have my quiet moments. But I don’t have many.” She was named school comedienne at her high school.

In one interview with a Lowell reporter, she said “I’ll never forget the place I’d work every summer while in high school. It was called Robert’s Hotel, Gas and Café, and it was at the intersection of US 41 and Highway 2. They had an old juke box in the café where I worked, and I’d sing and joke around whenever the business was slow, which seemed like most of the time.”

After graduation, Worley moved to Blauvelt, New York to work with the Pickwick Players. She was later offered a scholarship to Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas. After two years at the school, she moved to Los Angeles City College and enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse. Her first musical role was in “Wonderful Town.”

In 1961 she was in the off-Broadway musical show “Billy Barnes Revue” with Charles Nelson Reilly and Larry Hovis (who was Carter on Hogan’s Heroes). The original show in 1959 featured Bert Convy, Joyce Jameson, Patti Regan, Ken Berry, Ann Guilbert, Jackie Joseph, and Len Weinrib.

Jo Anne was in two episodes of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis in 1961-2. During the rest of the sixties, she was offered several big-screen roles.

In 1964 she was given a role in “Hello, Dolly.” A year later she developed her own comedy and singing act in Greenwich Village where she was discovered there by Merv Griffin.

Griffin encouraged her to appear on his show which she did forty times. Like Marcia Wallace, who we learned about last week, her appearance on Merv Griffin was seen by someone who recommended her for a new show. In this case, George Schlatter cast her in Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.

Worley left the show in 1970. She made guest appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. She also appeared on several game shows, including Super Password, Hollywood Squares, and many versions of Pyramid.

In 1971 she made the television movie I discussed above, The Feminist and the Fuzz. It starred David Hartman, Barbara Eden, Farrah Fawcett, Worley, Julie Newmar, and Henry Morgan. I would love to see it again.

For most of her career, Worley would be providing voices for animation. However, she appeared in a handful of shows during the seventies and eighties, including Adam 12, Love American Style, Hawaii Five-0, CHiPs, Murder She Wrote, The Love Boat, Mad About You, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and The Middle.

In 1975, Worley married Roger Perry. They would stay together for 25 years, divorcing in 2000. Perry has 95 acting credits and appeared in many popular shows in the seventies, eighties, and nineties. He was also in The Feminist and The Fuzz. After divorcing Worley, he would marry actress Joyce Bulifant.

During the seventies and eighties, Worley did a lot of regional theater in Milwaukee and several cities in California.

In the 1990s she got involved with Disney and provided her voice for Beauty and the Beast and A Goofy Movie. She also was on several Disney series including Kim Possible and the Wizards of Waverly Place.

She was in a limited run of a musical production of “The Wizard of Oz,” playing the wicked witch of the west in 1999. In 2007, she appeared on Broadway as Mrs. Tottendale in “The Drowsy Chaperone,” and she reprised the role in 2015 at The Cape Playhouse. She was also cast in “Wicked” as Madame Morrible in 2008.

Jo Anne Worley once said, “my goal in life is to be the kind of person my dog thinks I am.” That seems to be good advice for all of us. It was fun getting to know a little more about this funny woman. We love her as much as her dog did.

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How pop culture influences us

Josie and the Pussycats: On Every Network At the Same Time

Jo Anne Worley: What a Character