The Beatles Saturday Morning Cartoon Show (1965–1969)

We’ve become so accus­tomed to think­ing of the Bea­t­les as Seri­ous Artists™ that it’s easy to forget—at least for those of us who weren’t there—how high­ly com­mer­cial a fran­chise they were in the mid-six­ties. It’s no won­der Joe Strummer’s line about “pho­ny Beat­le­ma­nia” in the Clash’s “Lon­don Call­ing” res­onat­ed so strong­ly for those dis­af­fect­ed with the reign of the Fab Four. The real thing was over­whelm­ing enough, but the slew of offi­cial, unof­fi­cial, and boot­leg mer­chan­dis­ing that fol­lowed it, much of it aimed at chil­dren, makes the band’s dom­i­nance seem, well, kin­da juve­nile. Before they escaped pop star­dom and retreat­ed to the stu­dio to record their psy­che­del­ic mas­ter­pieces, the Bea­t­les received every pos­si­ble com­mer­cial treat­ment, from lunch­box­es and cere­al bowls to jig­saw puz­zles, lamp­shades, and a Ringo Starr bub­ble bath. Perus­ing an online auc­tion of Bea­t­les merch is a bit like tour­ing Grace­land.

There’s one arti­fact from the height of Beat­le­ma­nia that you won’t find, how­ev­er. Instead, you can watch it for free on Youtube. I refer to The Bea­t­les, a half-hour Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon show that ran on ABC from Sep­tem­ber, 1965 to Sep­tem­ber 1969 and pro­duced a total of 39 episodes. The band them­selves had almost noth­ing to do with the show, oth­er than appear­ing in an odd pro­mo­tion. Trad­ing entire­ly in broad slap­stick com­e­dy of the Scoo­by-Doo vari­ety, the show saw the four mates tum­ble into one goofy sit­u­a­tion after anoth­er, some super­nat­ur­al, some musi­cal, some the­atri­cal. Although all nat­ur­al per­form­ers them­selves, no Bea­t­le ever voiced his char­ac­ter on the show. Instead, Amer­i­can actor Paul Frees, as John and George, and British actor Lance Per­ci­val, as Paul and Ringo, imi­tat­ed them, very bad­ly. The Bea­t­les car­toon show aired at a time when the kids TV land­scape was just begin­ning to resem­ble the one we have today, with ABC com­peti­tor CBS run­ning super­hero shows like Space Ghost, Super­man, and Mighty Mouse, but the sur­re­al plots and musi­cal num­bers on The Bea­t­les were an attempt to reach adults as well. Watch clips from Sea­son 1 above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to the Bea­t­les’ Christ­mas Records: Sev­en Vin­tage Record­ings for Their Fans (1963 – 1969)

The Bea­t­les Per­form a Fun Spoof of Shakespeare’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream (1964)

Peter Sell­ers Per­forms The Bea­t­les “A Hard Day’s Night” in Shake­speare­an Voice

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness


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Comments (8)
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  • Patric Stillman says:

    Fun arti­cle! At that time, car­toons and music were the rage. The Bea­t­les, The Osmonds, The Jack­son Five … all had car­toons while reg­u­lar shows like The Archies, Sab­ri­na the Teenage Witch, HR Puffin­stuf, and many oth­ers had music seg­ments. Even ‘bug music’ hit the Flint­stones which was seen in the evening with an episode fea­tur­ing the music of The Four Insects. It was def­i­nite­ly for the kids. I was only 7 when this show ran but remem­ber them clear­ly. Mean­while, my old­er sib­lings were def­i­nite­ly not into it at all. They were too busy play­ing their 45s and jump­ing around the AM radio dial on their portable radios.

  • Patric Stillman says:

    Fun arti­cle! At that time, car­toons and music were the rage. The Bea­t­les, The Osmonds, The Jack­son Five … all had car­toons while reg­u­lar shows like The Archies, Sab­ri­na the Teenage Witch, HR Puffin­stuf, and many oth­ers had music seg­ments. Even ‘bug music’ hit the Flint­stones which was seen in the evening with an episode fea­tur­ing the music of The Four Insects. It was def­i­nite­ly for the kids. I was only 7 when this show ran but remem­ber them clear­ly. Mean­while, my old­er sib­lings were def­i­nite­ly not into it at all. They were too busy play­ing their 45s and jump­ing around the AM radio dial on their portable radios.

  • BrucePayne says:

    Screw The Clash.

  • Robert Hunt says:

    This was just one of the hun­dreds of mar­ket­ing deals that Bri­an Epstein worked out and while the band mem­bers them­selves had absolute­ly no inter­est in it, it had at least two inter­est­ing after-effects. One was that the car­toon’s pro­duc­ers retained an option to pro­duce a fea­ture film, result­ing in the far supe­ri­or “Yel­low Sub­ma­rine”. The oth­er, prob­a­bly even more finan­cial­ly reward­ing, was that since the car­toon series con­sist­ed of two episodes, each based on a record­ing, with “filler” musi­cal seg­ments in between, the entire Bea­t­les cat­a­logue was being exposed to a very recep­tive audi­ence. While most pop acts were known only for their few hits, their b‑sides and album tracks gen­er­al­ly ignored, the Bea­t­les were the only band to get air­play for near­ly every track they record­ed.

  • Chris says:

    Itu2019s no won­der Joe Strummeru2019s line about u201cphony Beatlemaniau201d in the Clashu2019s u201cLondon Callingu201d res­onat­ed so strong­ly for those dis­af­fect­ed with the reign of the Fab Four. nnnnUh, no. Strum­mer was refer­ring to the late-70’s Broad­way and West End Bea­t­les musi­cal pro­duc­tion “Beat­le­ma­nia” that had per­form­ers imper­son­at­ing the Bea­t­les on-stage. It was poor­ly regard­ed but it did big busi­ness.

  • Beatletoons says:

    For more info on the Bea­t­les car­toons, check out my book, “Beat­le­toons — The Real Sto­ry Behind The Car­toon Bea­t­les.”

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