Harlem Globetrotters is a Saturday morning cartoon produced by Hanna-Barbera and CBS Productions, featuring animated versions of players from the famous basketball team of the same name. Broadcast from September 12, 1970, to September 2, 1972 on CBS Saturday Morning, repeated from September 10, 1972 to May 20, 1973 on CBS Sunday Morning, and later re-run from February 4 to September 2, 1978 on NBC as The Go-Go Globetrotters, the show featured Meadowlark Lemon, Freddie "Curly" Neal, Hubert "Geese" Ausbie, J.C. "Gip" Gipson, Bobby Joe Mason, and Paul "Pablo" Robertson, all in animated form, alongside their fictional bus driver and manager Granny and their dog mascot Dribbles. The series worked to a formula where the team travels somewhere and typically get involved in a local conflict that leads to one of the Globetrotters proposing a basketball game to settle the issue. To ensure the Globetrotters' defeat, the villains rig the contest; however, before the second half of the contest, the team always finds a way to even the odds, become all but invincible, and win the game.
History
22 episodes of Harlem Globetrotters were eventually produced: 16 for the 1970-71 season, and six more for the 1971-72 season. Harlem Globetrotters has a place in history as being the first Saturday morning cartoon to feature a predominately African-American cast. Filmation's The Hardy Boys was the first to feature an African-American character the previous year, and Josie and the Pussycats, another Hanna-Barbera series which premiered 30 minutes earlier on the same day and network, was the first to feature an African-American female character. Like many other Saturday morning cartoons of the era, the first season utilized a laugh track. By Season Two, the full laugh track was replaced by an inferior version created by the studio. After cancellation, the animated Globetrotters made three appearances on Hanna-Barbera's The New Scooby-Doo Movies in 1972 and 1973. Dribbles, who did not appear on the show, was in the theme song sequence; several references were also made to Granny, who also did not appear. Hanna-Barbera produced a second animated series starring the Globetrotters in 1979 called The Super Globetrotters, this time featuring the players as superheroes. In spring 1999, TV Land aired repeats of Harlem Globetrotters on Saturday mornings as part of its TV Land Super Retrovision Saturdaze lineup. The series has not been rerun since. The series was a co-production of Hanna-Barbera and CBS Productions. Syndication rights were originally held by Viacom Enterprises and later Paramount Domestic Television, formerly owned by CBS as its syndication arm. They are currently held by CBS Television Distribution.
In April 1972, Gold Key Comics launched a comic adaptation of the Harlem Globetrotters animated series; their first comic book appearance was in issue #8 of Gold Key's Hanna-Barbera Fun-In published in July 1971. Several stories in early issues were based on episodes of the TV show. The comic series lasted for 4 years and 12 issues through January 1975.
Soundtrack LP
A soundtrack album, The Globetrotters, was produced by Jeff Barry and released in 1970 by Kirshner Records, which featured tunes heard in episodes of the series. Don Kirshner served as music supervisor for both the series and the record. Two singles were generated from this onetime release, a cover of the Neil Sedaka tune "Rainy Day Bells" with former Cadillac J.R. Bailey on lead vocals, followed by three non-album singles. Jimmy Radcliffe produced, with Wally Gold, and provided the vocals on "Duke Of Earl", "Everybody's Got Hot Pants" from the first non-album single and co-wrote and produced "Everybody Needs Love" from the second as well providing a number of songs and recordings for the series. Globetrotter frontman Meadowlark Lemon was the only member of the team to be actually involved with the project, adding occasional background vocals to some tracks.
