70’s
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Will The Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down
Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down is a 1970 animated showcase for various caricatured Jerry Lewis characters, all based on characters from the Lewis film, The Family Jewels and styled in a fashion similar to Archie’s TV Funnies and the Groovie Goolies. The title is a variant of the deciding question on the game show To Tell the Truth: “Will the real __________ please stand up?”. Like most 1970s-era Saturday morning cartoon series’, Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down contained an adult laugh track.
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Josie & The Pussycats
Josie and the Pussycats (formatted as Josie and the Pussy Cats in the opening titles) is an American animated television series, based upon the Archie Comics comic book series of the same name created by Dan DeCarlo.
Produced for Saturday morning television by Hanna-Barbera Productions, sixteen episodes of Josie and the Pussycats aired on CBS during the 1970-71 television season, and were rerun during the 1971-72 season. In 1972, the show was re-conceptualized as Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, sixteen episodes of which aired on CBS during the 1972-73 season and were rerun the following season.
CBS reran the original episodes, replacing the Outer Space shows in January 1974. Beginning in September 1974, ABC aired reruns of the original series for that entire year. To make it a third network,Josie and the Pussycats was then rerun on NBC Saturday mornings during the 1975-76 television season. This brought its national Saturday morning TV run on three networks to six years.
Josie and the Pussycats featured an all-girl pop music band that toured the world with their entourage, getting mixed up in strange adventures, spy capers, and mysteries. On the small-screen, the group consisted of level-headed lead singer and guitarist Josie McCoy, intelligent tambourinist Valerie Brown, and air-headed blonde drummer Melody Valentine. Other characters included their cowardly manager Alexander Cabot III, his conniving sister Alexandra, her cat Sebastian, and muscular roadie Alan M.Mayberry
The show, more similar to Hanna-Barbera’s successful Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! than the original Josie comic book, is famous for its music, the girls’ leopard print leotards (replete with “long tails and ears for hats,” as the theme song states), and for featuring Valerie as the first regularly appearing female black character in a Saturday morning cartoon show.
Each episode featured a Josie and the Pussycats song played over a chase scene, which, in a similar fashion to The Monkees, featured the group running after and from a selection of haplessly villainous characters
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JOT
JOT (also known as JOT the Dot) was an American animated children’s television program. The series consisted of 30 four-minute episodes, which were syndicated between 1965 and the 1980s. JOT was produced by the Southern Baptist Radio and Television Commission (RATC) as a Baptist version of Davey and Goliath.
The series was created by Ruth Byers, a graduate of Baylor University, and Ted Perry a writer at the RATC. Both had a background connected to the Dallas Theater Center, with Byers having been director of children’s productions. The pair was commissioned by Dr. Paul Stevens, president of the RATC, to develop a television show that would provide simple moral lessons for young children. Production of the first episodes began in 1959, with the first episode released in 1965.
The style of the show was kept deliberately simple, both as a cost-cutting measure (the budget for the early episodes was never more than $25,000, and that amount dropped over time), and to prevent the design from interfering with the delivery of the message. The main character, JOT, is a white circle with simple facial features (similar to a smiley face), hands and feet. JOT’s color and shape would change in response to the struggles presented. This was meant to represent changes in a child’s temperament or emotional state, “somewhat like a thermostat,” according to one critic.[1] His hands and feet are only seen when he is still; when he is in motion, they disappear. Jot would sometimes be accompanied by Tug (voiced by Ed Ruth), a “bad” character who would learn a moral lesson in the end.
The voice of JOT was provided by two different women, Lou Kelly (1965–1967, 1968 and 1981), and Colleen Collins (1967). The series premiered on Peppermint Place, a Sunday children’s show produced locally at WFAA-TV in Dallas, and later on The Children’s Hour on WBAP-TV (now KXAS-TV) in Fort Worth. The episodes were eventually sydicated throughout the world, translated into 19 different languages. They were also a favorite of Sunday School programs. The response to the program was a volume of over 175,000 letters from children, requiring a volunteer group from 22 churches to write responses.
The series remained in regular production until 1974. In 1981, several additional episodes were produced.
Episodes of the series can currently be seen on some episodes of Joy Junction, and JOT featured in the opening of the show. Joy Junction can be seen on Smile of a Child TV and other networks.
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