The New Scooby-Doo Movies

Infobox Television
show_name = The New Scooby-Doo Movies


caption = The opening title from "The New Scooby-Doo Movies"
format = Animated Series
Mystery
Comedy
camera =
picture_format =
audio_format =
runtime = 40 minutes
creator = Joe Ruby
Ken Spears
developer =
executive_producer =
voices = Don Messick
Casey Kasem
Frank Welker
Nicole Jaffe
Heather North
narrated =
opentheme =
endtheme =
country = USA
language = English
network = CBS
first_aired = September 9, 1972
last_aired = October 27, 1973
num_episodes = 24
list_episodes =
preceded_by = "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!" (1969–1972)
followed_by = "The Scooby-Doo Show" (1976–1979)
website =
imdb_id = 0068112
tv_com_id = 3322

"The New Scooby-Doo Movies" (sometimes called "The New Scooby-Doo Comedy Movies") was the second incarnation of the long-running Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning cartoon "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!". It premiered on September 9, 1972 and ran for two seasons on CBS as the only hour-long "Scooby-Doo" series. Twenty-four episodes were ultimately produced (sixteen in 1972 and eight more in 1973).

Overview

Each of the episodes of this series featured a special guest star, who would help the gang solve the mystery of the week. Some of these guest stars were living celebrities who provided their own voices (Don Knotts, Jonathan Winters , Sandy Duncan, Tim Conway, and Sonny and Cher, among others); some were dead celebrities whose voicing was done by imitators (The Three Stooges and Laurel and Hardy), and the rest were present or future Hanna-Barbera characters: the characters from "Harlem Globetrotters" (1970), "Josie and the Pussycats" (also 1970), "Jeannie" (1973), and "Speed Buggy" (also 1973) all appeared on the show during or after their own shows' original runs; "The Addams Family" and "Batman and Robin" both appeared on the show a year before they were incorporated into Hanna-Barbera shows of their own -- "The Addams Family" and "SuperFriends," (both 1973).

After the cancellation of "The New Scooby-Doo Movies" in August 1974, repeats of "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!" aired on CBS for the next 2 years. No new "Scooby-Doo" cartoons would be produced until the show defected to ABC in September 1976 on the highly-publicized "The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour". When the various "Scooby-Doo" series entered syndication in 1980, each "New Movies" episode was halved and run as two half-hour parts. Beginning in September 1990, on the USA Network "Cartoon Express", the "New Movies" returned to their original broadcast format; they were rerun on Sunday mornings until August 1992. In 1994, Turner restored the episodes of "The New Scooby-Doo Movies" from the original negatives for broadcasts on TNT, Cartoon Network and Boomerang.

DVD releases

Upon attempting to release a Complete Series set of "The New Scooby-Doo Movies" on DVD in 2005, Warner Home Video was unable to negotiate agreements with several of the episodes' guest stars to have those episodes included in the DVD set. As a result, the DVD was released under the title "The Best of the New Scooby-Doo Movies", and features only 15 episodes culled from both seasons.

Furthermore, the images of The Addams Family, Batman & Robin, The Globetrotters, The Three Stooges, and Laurel & Hardy were voluntarily removed from "The New Scooby-Doo Movies"' opening titles, as their rights were controlled by their copyright owners. In Batman and Robin's case, this is despite the fact that they and their comics publisher, DC Comics, are part of the same Warner Bros. family as "Scooby-Doo" and the Hanna-Barbera library.

Notes

* The voices of the Three Stooges and Laurel & Hardy are provided by voice actors for the episodes in which they appear, not the actual comedians. At the time of production and broadcast, Laurel & Hardy were both deceased. Although the Three Stooges were on hiatus after Larry Fine suffered a stroke in 1970 (impairing his speech), Moe Howard was available to provide his own voice. (Daws Butler filled in as the voices of both Larry and Curly-Joe DeRita, who was also unavailable.)

* "Scooby-Doo Meets The Addams Family" features the actual voices of the 1964-66 "Addams Family" television series cast members John Astin (Gomez), Carolyn Jones (Morticia), Ted Cassidy (Lurch) and Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester), though Astin and Jones would not return for the "Addams Family" cartoon produced by Hanna-Barbera a year later. The Addams Family was drawn to the specifications of the original cartoons by Charles Addams, rather than how they appeared on their television series.

* The Harlem Globetrotters appear as the animated versions of themselves from Hanna-Barbera's 1970 "Harlem Globetrotters" animated series. The Harlem Globetrotters were also the most frequent guest stars on "The New Scooby-Doo Movies", appearing three times in the series. The only other guest stars to appear more than once were Don Knotts, Batman and Robin, and the Three Stooges, who all appeared twice.

* For the episodes in which they appear, Davy Jones and Jerry Reed both perform songs originally recorded as "chase songs" for the second season of "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!".
**In "The Haunted Horseman in Hagglethorn Hall", Jones performs "I Can Make You Happy", originally from the "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!" episode "Mystery Mask Mix-Up".
**In "The Phantom of the Country Music Hall", Reed repeatedly performs "Pretty Mary Sunlite", originally from the "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!" episode "Don't Fool with a Phantom".

* Batman and Robin were voiced by Olan Soule and Casey Kasem respectively, both reprising their roles from the Filmation-produced "The Adventures of Batman & Robin".

References

*"Hanna-Babera Studios" (and subarticles). "The Big Cartoon DataBase". Retrieved from http://www.bcdb.com/cartoons/Hanna-Barbera_Studios/index.html on September 3 2005.

See also

*The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie "(another Saturday morning "movie" series, on ABC)"

External links

* [http://web.archive.org/web/20000303015435/www.cartoonnetwork.com/doc/newscoobydoo/ Cartoon Network: Dept. of Cartoons: The New Scooby-Doo Movies] - cached copy from Internet Archives