Cattanooga Cats
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Cattanooga Cats was a Saturday morning cartoon produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions for ABC. The show premiered on September 6, 1969 and ran until September 4, 1971, when it was cancelled. The show was a package program similar to the Hanna-Barbera/NBC show The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, except that it contained no live-action segments. The show was produced and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Mike Curb was hired as musical director and he co-wrote all the songs performed by the Cattanooga Cats, including the show's theme song. Ted Nichols composed the background music.
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[edit] Segments
During the 1969–1970 season, Cattanooga Cats ran one hour and contained four segments. During the 1970–1971 season, the segments It's the Wolf! and Motormouse and Autocat were spun off into their own half-hour shows. Around the World in 79 Days remained a part of Cattanoga Cats, which was reduced to a half-hour. Motormouse and Autocat ran concurrently with Cattanooga Cats until both met their demise at the end of the 1970–1971 season.
[edit] Cattanooga Cats
Cattanooga Cats depicted the adventures of a fictitious rock band similar to The Archies and The Banana Splits populated by anthropomorphic hillbilly cats: lead singer/guitarist Country (voiced by Bill Callaway), singer/dancer Kitty Jo (voiced by Julie Bennett), bassist Scoots (voiced by Jim Begg), and drummer Groove (voiced by Casey Kasem). (A fifth member, a mouse keyboardist named "Cheesie", was storyboarded but cut out of the series.) The singing vocals for The Cattanooga Cats were performed by Michael Lloyd and Peggy Clinger, and an album collection of the songs was released in tandem with the series.
Cattanooga Cats showed a strong psychedelic influence. Only nine cartoon story segments involving the characters were produced:
- Witch Wacky
- Geroni-hoho
- The Big Boo-Boo
- Wee Greenie Goofie
- Mummy's Day
- Zoo's Who
- Autograph Hounded
- Caribbean Kook
- Ghosting a Go-Go
The Cats were primarily featured in various "in-between" segments and performed musical numbers.
[edit] Around the World in 79 Days
Loosely based upon the novel Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne, this was an adventure segment involving balloonist "Phinny Fogg" (concieved as the son of the main character Phileas Fogg in the novel, voiced by Bruce Watson) and teenagers Jenny (voiced by Janet Waldo) and Happy (voiced by Don Messick), who set out on a globetrotting adventure to sail around the world in 79 days and beat the original record set by Phinny's father. The trio are in competition for both the record and a US$1,000,000 prize against the sinister Crumden, who supposedly was the butler of the original Phileas, aided by Phileas' chauffeur, the idiotic Bumbler, and Crumden's pet monkey, Smirky. Unlike the other segments, Around the World in 79 Days was a serial with a continuing story, however, as with many shows made during this period, it has no specific ending.
(Note: in the original novel, Phileas never had a butler named Crumden or any other name. He had a valet named "Passepartout". However, no one questions that.)
[edit] It's the Wolf!
It's the Wolf! followed the comic exploits of a wolf named Mildew (voiced by an uncredited Paul Lynde), who aspires to catch and eat a sure-footed little lamb named Lambsy (voiced by Daws Butler), but is always thwarted in this plan by the dog Bristle Hound (voiced by Allan Melvin). Bristle would apprehend Mildew, pound him, and toss him sailing into the air, with Mildew screaming a phrase such as "Spoil Sport!" as he flies into the horizon and lands with a thud.
[edit] Motormouse and Autocat
Essentially a motor-racing version of Tom and Jerry, this segment involved the antics of a race car-driving cat and a motorcycle-driving mouse. Dick Curtis provided the voice of Motormouse, and Marty Ingels voiced Autocat. Much of the segment's appeal lay in the bizarre cars that Autocat devised in his attempts to catch Motormouse.
[edit] Epilogue
Hanna-Barbera had high hopes for Cattanooga Cats to be a hit program, like The Banana Splits, but the show failed to attract a large audience during its original run. Mildew Wolf, the most popular character on the program, resurfaced six years after the cancellation of Cattanooga Cats as the co-host, with Snagglepuss, of Laff-a-Lympics, this time voiced by John Stephenson.
Reruns of Cattanooga Cats were not seen until the program began airing as part of the Boomerang programming block on the Cartoon Network, which later became a spin-off network of its own. For several months the UK Boomerang channel ran the musical interludes from the show, all of which ran to exactly 1 minute 45 seconds, as short (and unidentified) fillers before closing down at midnight. When the channel expanded to 24 hours, these interludes were dropped. The complete show has not been seen in the UK in recent years.
The cartoon and its music exist today as cult classics of the 1960s era.
