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UPDATED:  5th May 2001


An unofficial look at the Beatle Cartoons series from a humble fan.

THE BEGINNING....

A Word With Richard Jones

I was fortunate enough to get into contact with Richard Jones, and artist from the ARTRANSA studio in Sydney. Richard detailed what he knew about the tunes, a few stories behind the scenes, and what ended up happening to ARTRANSA. Here are his answers to some fairly broad questions:

1. Where did the cartoons originate?
I was never sure. Some attributed the idea to the Beatles themselves, though I suspect that they probably originated in the bowels of King Features during one of their "How do we make more bucks?" meetings.

2. How did I become involved?
At the time I was 18 years old and living in a small country town called Quirindi in northern New South Wales. The only thing I wanted to do was to animate.
I had been pestering ARTRANSA PARK TELEVISION in Sydney about a job for 2 years. Sending letters, gags, drawings, cells made out of plastic shirt box topes, finally I wore them down and they agreed to give me a job for their next television series.
I received a telegram from Graham Sharpe, "Starting Beatles series - need you Sydney next week".
When I arrived in Sydney, Artransa was putting the finishing touches to the Beetle Baily and Krazy Kat cartoons. I remember it was several months before we started on the Beatles. I punched a hell of a lot of paper cell in that time!

3. Who proposed the idea?
No idea. (Actually it was Al Brodax.)

4. Sources for modelling Beatles characters.
We watched interviews with the Beatles. We had discussion meetings with Abe Goodman as to what he required from us. We watched the film A Hard Days Night. We drew and discussed mannerisms and movement from model sheets supplied from the states. We discussed guitar types and Ringo's rings. We also did some pencil tests.

5. Procedures for making the cartoons.
As I remember, we worked two animators on a title with an inbetweening. Cel paints were imported from the US, as they were unobtainable here and there had to be colour continuity.

We received storyboards, voice and music tracks from the US.

I do not remember if the tracks were read, direction timed and charted here.

The layout backgrounds commenced

Animation

Inbetweening

Trace and paint in one area, about a dozen girls headed by Zora Janjic.

Oxberry 35mm animation camera, one main operator.

Rushes and reshoots.

Editing, added canned music and FX.

Answer print

Release prints.

6. The cartoons were made at ARTRANSA PARK TELEVISION, French's Forest. I believe there was some subcontracting to Ron Campbell and Zoran Janjic.

7. The scripts were written and storyboarded in the States by King Features, or associates, subject to Beatle representative approval. I have no proof of this; it is what I was told.

8. We did not have any say in the scripts, they were taken as read by the time we had received them. Sometimes we were allowed to draw incidental characters.
I remember one episode where an animator had drawn a bosomy flying bat lady. There was some discussion about the shape of the offending creature and androgyny was decided on. My friend had to take to his scenes with an eraser. He was not amused.

9. Do I have any favourite episodes?
I don't remember half the episodes. I guess A HARD DAYS NIGHT. It was my first animation. The song is one that was popular at the time and easily identified with the Beatles.

10. Was there to be four one-hour Beatles specials?
There were always rumours around the studio and I seem to remember one about specials. Abe Goodman was the consummate businessman and everyone’s uncle, he would always tell us about the great year we would have next year. ARTRANSA lived a hand to mouth existence; it needed US specials to survive. There was dissent among animators in America because work came to Australia, this maybe one of the reasons much of the work we were promised did not eventuate.

11. Why didn't the cartoons last longer?
The cartoons were for the time, I do not think they had any lasting value, apart from collectors like yourself (Darren English). The stories, design and animation were adequate, but crude. As animators, we were all pretty green. I believe as with most animation, it was a case of 'make a buck while you can'. It was fun while it lasted.

Richards full interview will be published in the upcoming Beatle cartoons book.

BEATLES MONTHLY STORY ON CARTOONS

The Beatles Monthly magazine recently featured a new item on the Beatles cartoons stating that Apple now owns the rights to the series. Apple is looking at releasing a video compilation of the cartoons. The date of this release is unclear.

MOJO STORY ON BEATLES CARTOONS

The October 1996 edition of Mojo magazine included a 40 page Beatles special. Included was an interview with Neil Aspinal, the complete words to Revolution #9, an interview with Ron Nasty (from the Rutles), and an interview with Paul McCartney.

Most importantly, for me anyway, was an article the magazine did on the Beatles Cartoons.

Mojo states that Apple now owns the Copyrights for the series. Fans can only hope that Apple would buy the series so that they could release it in some format.

Tragically someone at Kings features sanctioned the incineration of many of the scripts from the series a few years ago.

Featured within the article are character templates of the Beatles. My scanner is down and out, so if someone can scan this for me, that would be cool!


The original design of the Beatles cartoons.

TELEVISION CHRONICLES STORY ON BEATLES CARTOONS


The "Television Chronicles" magazine article on the Beatles Cartoons series shows that there is still a lot of interest in the series. It is noteworthy that the article also details the background of the actors that provided the voices to John, Paul, George and Ringo.

Paul Frees (John and George) also provided voices to Boris Badenov in the Rocky and Bullwinkle series. Paul Frees recorded his voices in America, while Lance Percival (That was the weeks that was) recorded the voices of Paul and Ringo in England.

The article also features a photo of Paul Frees with Ringo taken circa 1965.

The article details many more little known facts about the series. It also explains how the cartoons series influenced later acts like the Monkees.

A link to the "Television Chronicles" can be found on my links page. Back issues of this edition (number 3) can still be ordered from Bill Groves.

Below is a quick synopsis of the Beatle cartoons made by King features from 1965-1968. For those that are unaware, King features made a cartoon series around the Beatles that featured our heroes in cartoon form. The real Beatles really had little to do with the series, apart from the fact that original music was used for the soundtrack; this usually gave the episode its title. Each cartoon went for approx. 8-10 min, followed by a two song sing along, then followed again by another cartoon. I feel that the BEATLE CARTOONS are greatly overlooked by fans and Beatle historians alike. I know from my own experience that many Beatle fans got their first impressions of the band watching the cartoons. From here we got to know the music.

SEASON 1, 1964-65

FIRST SCREENING

The Beatle cartoons premiered on ABC-TV on Saturday September 25, 1965 at 10:30am in America. The first two episodes were 'A Hard Days Night' and "I want to hold your hand". It became an immediate hit with a 13 score and a 52 per cent share (which up to that time was unheard of). Each cartoon contained a song title, which told you something about the songs story line. Realizing ABC had a hit; Al Brodax set plans to do four Beatles prime time specials. Nothing came of these. Brodax (the shows producer) also had plans to do a cartoon series around Herman’s Hermits, & Freddie and the Dreamers. The Beatles cartoons got a number of Beatle's mannerisms down pat. I.e. John's legs-apart, guitar-playing/singing stance, Paul's left-handed bass playing, George's Gretch guitar & foot-tapping etc. During production in Australia of the Beatle Cartoons, civil rights groups threatened to boycott the show because of Australia's "White Australia" policies.

THE FALL OF THE BEATLE CARTOONS

When "Batman" premiered on ABC's prime time line-up in January 1966, and became an instant hit, CBS decided to overhaul their Saturday morning line-up.

CBS were to focus on superheros, Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles, Space Ghost, Mighty Mouse & The Mighty Heroes, and Superman. Space Ghost was slotted opposite the Beatles, and while the ratings for the Beatles were reasonable, at 7.7 a 36% share, Space Ghost was hot, at 9.66 a 44% share. Despite the fact that new episodes were made for the Beatles series, it was obvious that a trend had been set.

In the fall of 1967, seven more weeks of new episodes were made for the Beatles series which now aired on ABC at 12 noon (Eastern time) opposite TOP CAT on NBC and the second half of the SUPERMAN/AQUAMAN hour on CBS. The 1967 Beatles episodes were more surreal, meant to reach more than just kids as an audience. But CBS's strategy had paid off. JOHNNY QUEST was CBS's hit, and its lead-in of SUPERMAN/AQUAMAN prompted ABC to begin phasing out the Beatles series by scheduling it at 9:30 am Sunday mornings in the fall of 1968. ABC's Sunday morning clearance rate was and still is very low. The Beatles last telecast was Sunday, September 7, 1969. Regarding the cancellation of the Beatles show, Fred Silverman (then of CBS) told TV Guide, "Kids get tired of shows quickly. They would rather watch new shows than repeats of old ones."

LIFE AFTER THE END OF THE BEATLES CARTOONS

The cartoons were viewed for a year on WNEW-TV in New York City in 1970. Very few stations have shown or still show the series. KPLR-TV in St. Louis and WATL-TV in Atlanta has shown them in the past, while Los Angeles based KCOP-TV showed them up to the mid-eighties.

In Australia, ATV 10 in Melbourne showed them quite regularly up to about 1984. They were aired at 6:40 to 7:00 without commercials weekday mornings. They were later put on 9:30 to 10:00 with commercials on Tuesday mornings. I used to skip computer class to watch them.

GTV 9 in Melbourne used to show them Saturday mornings in the early 1970's, when "Hey Hey It's Saturday" used to show cartoons. Southern Cross Channel 8, in Traralgon, Australia used to show them during the mid-eighties as a part of their holiday programming. I know this because I used to stay home and watch them.

Gold Key Entertainment should be questioned (by readers of this article perhaps?) as to why this show hasn't been released on video! Up until the time these cartoons are released, fans can only rely on bootleggers and pirates to get them. Anybody got an Internet address to contact these people?

The Beatles cartoons became a syndicated property of Gold Key Entertainment in 1970.

The Beatles Cartoons feature occasionally on cable TV throughout the world even still today. Recently they featured in Canada, and on MTV in the States about 5 years ago.

It is surprising to note that the series didn't have its debut on British television until 1980 when they featured on early morning TV on Granada. It wasn't until 1988 that the full series was featured on British television on ITV's Night Network magazine show. It has been reported that the Beatles themselves blocked the screening of the series on British television. Now that Apple owns the rights to the series, a video compilation is planned.

Beatles Cartoons Opening Titles

There were three of these, one for each series. Can't Buy Me Love, Help and "And Your Bird Can Sing".

Cant Buy Me Love: The Beatles are trying to get to a concert venue. They are about to leave their hotel room, when they open the door a mob of girls are waiting for them. The Beatles slam the door and run in terror. The girls kick in the door as the Beatles dive down the fire escape. Ringo gets caught on the fire escape and has to hide in a rubbish bin. He pops his head back up just as the girls get to him. A long arm pulls Ringo out of the bin to safety. The Beatles make their gig, and all is well.

Help: The Beatles are in disguise, and are caught by a group of female fans that are also in disguise. Very "James Bond" in style. Even starts with the typical "James Bond" type of orchestra introduction.


And Your Bird can Sing: The best opening credits in my opinion. The Beatles are shown in their real form and change into cartoon form. A tapestry of photos and segments from cartoons are used to create a great little clip.

You're the Propman?

Apart from the two cartoons per episode, the Beatles cartoons comprised of two singalongs and occasional fillers. The fillers were basically small skits that were a few seconds long.

 

One memorable filler was when John Lennon trying to escape a lion (or tiger?), climbs a tree. He disturbs a nest of bees and is furiously attacked by the swarm. He falls out of the tree when Ringo and George happen along. Ringo says "The things a bee will eat!” The singalongs were an original Beatles song with a small cartoon clip to go along with it. Generally these clips were pretty basic. The words of the songs were displayed, so the audience could get to learn the songs, and sing with the Beatles.

 

The most memorable singalongs for me graphically were "Rain" and "Devil in her heart". The singalongs had the cartoon Beatles introducing them. John, George and Paul would all take turns to introduce the songs with Ringo substituting as the prop man (the permanent prop man was always sick or on holiday).

 

One singalong George tells Ringo that the next song has a lot of mood, and Ringo should set the stage up appropriate for mood. Ringo brings in a cow. George asks, "What is that?” Ringo replies "You wanted something appropriate for mood, and that's what she did; she "mood". The singalongs were a special part of the show. There were 76 in all.

 

The Beatle Cartoons: The Sing-A-Longs continued……

 

Sometime, many years ago, someone sent this sing along review to me to add to my page. I do not know who this was (sorry) but they did have an MS Word macro virus. In anycase, below is the review they sent me. To this nameless hero we salute you.

 

Each Beatles show contained two sing-a-long segments in which John, Paul, and George would encourage the viewing audience to sing along with their latest hits. Ringo would always fill in for the vacationing or ill prop man and try to provide the proper atmosphere for the audience at home to sing.

 

The sing-a-long segments were very limited animation pieces, which showed The Beatles, most of the time, in "mini adventures" while the song lyrics were shown on the screen below.

 

Most of the sing-a-long segments had songs that matched their episode counterparts, but not every episode song had a corresponding sing-a-long segment, and vice versa.  There were nine sing-a-long songs that were not used in any full-length episodes.  They were: "Yesterday,"  "Girl,"  "The Night Before,"  "Michelle," “And I Love Her,"  "Rain,"  "Here, There, And Everywhere,"  "She Said, She Said," and  "She's A Woman."

 

There were a total of eighteen different introductions produced for the sing-a-long segments of the show.  For the first and second seasons, there were twelve segments in which John, Paul, and George would come out on a stage to coax the singing. The third season sing-a-longs were introduced from The Beatles' apartment. There was no more prop man to speak of.  Ringo would just interrupt each introduction and try to set the mood for the song. There were six different segments for the third season.

 

The following are brief descriptions for each of the eighteen sing-a-long introductions:

 

1) John introduces a song with "a lot of punch in it." Ringo brings out a kangaroo wearing boxing gloves.

2) John introduces a "romantic ballad." Ringo comes out in a voting booth (ballot).

3) John introduces a "real jump tune." Ringo dresses up as a paratrooper.

4) John introduces a song "that'll make the folks at home want to join in." Ringo comes out as an Army recruiter.

5) George asks for something for the appropriate mood. Ringo brings out a cow (she MOOED!).

6) George introduces a song that's a "real swinging, ringer, dinger." Ringo brings out the Liberty Bell.

7) Paul asks Ringo to bring out the sing-a-long sign.  Ringo keeps dropping the "g" sound at the end of his words ending in "ing." Finally, the "g" on the sign drops and hits Ringo on the head.

8) Paul gets interrupted by Ringo learning to "pronunciate" and makes him promise to help him learn the proper English.

9) George introduces a song that's "really wild and comes on like gangbusters." Ringo comes out as a gangster.

10) George asks Ringo to provide the proper atmosphere for the folks at home to "sing up a storm." Ringo brings out a rainmaking machine.

11) Paul introduces a "romantic love song." Ringo comes out dressed as Cupid.

12) Paul introduces a real "torch song." Ringo comes out dressed as the Statue of Liberty.

13) Paul introduces a "really swinging number." Ringo decorates the room for a trapeze act.

14) Paul introduces a song that "really rocks." Ringo brings in a truck from the "Starr Sand and Gravel Company."

15) George introduces a song that "starts off with a bang." Ringo brings in a cannon.

16) George introduces a song that "really takes off." Ringo builds a plane and flies around the room.

17) John introduces a "really wild rhythm." Ringo decorates the room with a jungle scene.

18) John introduces a song that's "an absolute knockout." Ringo builds a boxing ring and gets knocked out by a child.

 

 



Closing Titles

The Beatles are seen finishing a concert. George, John and Paul pull out the power cords that run to their guitars. Ringo pulls out the power cable to his drums, and the drums deflate. The Beatles open the exit door and are greeted by a mob of girls. They slam the door in terror. Next we see four strange looking characters leaving the building. No girls are around, and suddenly John, Paul and George appear out from under their disguises. There is a man dressed in an Indian costume who has a large nose. Paul assumes it is Ringo and pulls on his nose. The nose stretches and snaps back. IT WAS A REAL INDIAN. Furious he pulls out an axe to get Paul. He lifts the axe above his head just as Ringo leaves the building. The axe hits Ringo on the top of his head and stuns him. The Indian lets the axe fly, an it shaves the hair off the top of John, Paul and George's heads. Suddenly the crowd of girls appear again, with Ringo still stunned John, George and Paul pick him up and carry him away. The girls are in hot pursuit. Next we see a family taking a baby for a walk in the park. The crowd of girls rush by screaming for the Beatles. Again we see John, Paul and George rip off their disguises. George (?) grabs Ringos hand (he was pretending to be the baby in the pram) and tries to run off. But Ringo has the dummy in his mouth, and the dummy gets caught in the pram. The rubber dummy stretches out, George loses his grip, Ringo is thrown back into the pram along with Paul, John and George, all of whom were trying to grab Ringo. The pram speeds away, with the Beatles in it, and runs onto a jetty. The pram runs off the jetty into the water, where the Beatles are joined by some mermaids (who also appear to be fans). Next we see a Beatles billboard. The female fans are running around looking for the Beatles. The fans disappear and the Beatles faces disappear from the billboard (they were hiding behind it). They appear around the front and start shaking each others hands. Again the fans appear, The Beatles are last seen running off into the distance followed by the mob of girls, and the mermaids. SIMPLY BRILLIANT !

The people behind the Beatles Cartoons:

TVC-London Staff: (English Production)

Canawest Staff: (Canadian Production)

Artransa/Graphik Staff: (Australian Production)

Should anyone have any contacts to these people, I'd be interested in interviewing them.

The scripts were done by Dennis Marks who was head of Marvels cartoon studio in the eighties. Voice recordings were done in Los Angelas before being shipped to the overseas studios.

In 1965 Al Brodax (the shows execuctive producer) got the idea to save money on production by handing out great chunks of "The Beatles" production to Australia, England, Mexico and Canada. It took four weeks to animate each film.

TVC-London (who made the Yellow Submarine film in 1968), had a backlog of cartoons to make in the first season, so several cartoons were handed to Canawest studio in Vancouver, Canada. In all about 70-72 cartoons were made plus 35-36 singalong segments.

Paul Frees

Born June 22, 1920, in Chicago, Illinois.
Died November 2, 1986, in Tiburon, California, of heart failure.

Highly successful voice actor in radio, film (e.g. dubbing 16 German characters in A Time to Live and a Time to Die), television (e.g. The Millionaire), and Disneyland (e.g. The Haunted Mansion).

Appeared in:

The Bearys
The Adventures of Bullwinkle and Rocky
Fractured Fairy Tales (substitute)
Peabody's Impossible History
Bullwinkle's Corner
Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties
The Adventures of Hoppity Hooper
Fractured Flickers
George of the Jungle
Super Chicken
Tom Slick, Racer
General Mills cereal commercials
Quaker cereal commercials

THE SONGS HAVE BEEN BUTCHERED

It is a sad fact that the songs sometimes had to be butchered to meet time constraints that the series format had to take.

An example of this can be heard on the "If I fell" singalong where the guitar outro is repeated after the song finishes. Other examples are where versus, solos and choruses were dropped, repeated and swapped around. In the "I'll follow the sun" singalong the song has been edited so that Paul keeps on repeating the same lyric to finish the song.

The "Hard days night" singalong has lost its famous intro, and is edited quite severely.

Another butchering can be heard in the "Slow Down" episode where Ringo gets taken away by a runaway horse. The main guitar solo seems to go for half the episode.

I would like to hear other opinions about this butchering. Some are quite funny.

Want to be able to draw John? These original King Features designs were the first rough drafts of how John would look. Other examples of this early work are scattered through this page.

A Beatles Cartoons Book

My homepage is the first to cover the Beatle cartoons story.

I now have a commitment from an Australian publisher to print the Beatle Cartoons book should I have enough people saying that they are interested in buying it.

I am looking at putting together a 1000 names of people who are interested in buying the book. The cost of the book will be around $15 plus postage.

In the book will be a detailed account of all episodes and singalongs and details of the stories behind the cartoons. Also included will be screen shots from each episode.

I am not after any money, just a commitment from people saying that if the book is available that they would consider buying it.

Sign the Beatle Cartoons Guestbook.

Read the Beatle Cartoons Guestbook.

If you would like to email me press here.

If you'd like to request MTV to repeat the cartoons be my guest!

Back to index.

Have a look at the first series of cartoons.

Have a look at the second series of cartoons.

Have a look at the third series of cartoons.

Selected screen images provided by: Mitch McGeary



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