Michael Jackson and The Jackson 5ive

The Jackson 5ive (1971-1973)

The tsunami of reportage following Michael Jackson’s death has paid little attention to his career as a cartoon figure. For two seasons between 1971 and 1973, animated versions of Jackson and his brothers appeared on ABC’s Saturday morning line-up as The Jackson 5ive.

The series came out of the Rankin/Bass production house, famous for such perennial favorites as Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), Frosty, the Snowman (1969), Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (1970), and other holiday favorites. Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass did not specialize in drawn animation, but they had good reason to move into the cartoon world. However time-consuming drawing individual cels for each movement could be—even with the labor-saving techniques of “limited” animation, the process was nothing compared to the painstaking stop-motion process that brought Rudoph, Frosty, and Heat Miser to life. A season’s worth of shows demanded a faster process. Following in the dollar-dripping footsteps of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, Rankin/Bass turned to drawings.

More accurately, they sub-contracted the animation process. Most of the cartoons originated in the studios of London-based Halas and Batchelor, who had received some acclaimed for their feature-length version of Animal Farm (1957). The team produced the cartoons in England (and some in Barcelona, Spain), synching the drawings to Amereican voice talent, although none of the Jacksons performed anything other than the songs for the show. The characters children heard as Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, and Michael were actors. Rankin/Bass favorite and D-Day veteran Paul Frees, who played the cop and Santa in Frosty, Burgermeister Meisterburger in Santa Claus, gave voice to Manager/Swami Berry Gordy in The Jackson 5ive. [You may have also enjoyed Frees’s voice as you nestled in your Doom Buggy traveling through the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and the other parks. He also voiced both John Lennon and Paul McCartney in The Beatles animated series]

There’s good reason that the memorials generally ignore the short-lived series. For the most part, the show was dreck. Like so many of the Saturday-morning cartoons of the late-1960s and early-1970s, The Jackson 5ive set low-budget animation to scripts that would embarrass even the most mercenary hacks.

An episode easily obtained on youtube.com, “A Rare Pearl,” has the brothers Jackson swearing off women forever after a conniving vixen rips off, humiliates, or otherwise exploits each of them. In this particular episode, while flying back to Detroit to record a new album, the brothers lose their resolve after meeting an attractive flight attendant nervously trying to survive her first day on the job. Ever helpful, the Jacksons help serve the other passengers on the flight, entertaining them with one of the episode’s de rigeur pair of songs. They spend the episode’s second half scurrying around the attendant’s house hiding from her overly-protective “mother.” In a moment reminiscent of any given Scooby Doo episode, the final scene reveals that mom is really the attendant’s football-playing brother in disguise, and that she actually has four sisters who all want to date the Jacksons.

Michael gets the last lines, telling the youngest sister that he cannot help falling in love with her seeing as she has “neat pets like two lizards and a parakeet.” When she smiles and reaches to kiss him, Michael backs away admonishing her, “Now girl, don’t push it. Don’t push it.”

The scene’s emphasis on his love for animals and ambivalence toward woman may now carry hints of prescience. At the time, however, it was something of a throwaway line. Indeed, Michael hardly occupied center stage. Today we recognize MJ as the group’s real star, but apparently no one told the writers. The youngest brother got as much screen time and attention as the others, or less. As a result, the one Jackson who might have actually been able to relate to the youngsters turning the dial was relegated to the background in favor of his older brothers.

Not only was the writing as unimaginative as many early 1970s cartoons, it was hardly age appropriate. For example, “A Rare Pearl” has the Jacksons at one point mimicking a variety of stars from early film, including the Keystone Kops, Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, and the oh-so-recognizable Ben Turpin—all done to “Never Can Say Goodbye.” One wonders whether the Jacksons, much less their young audiences would have any appreciation of the references. Neither were the scripts particularly well tuned to American audiences. Keen observers can find foreign residue sticking to scripts and drawings, such as in scenes featuring the brothers in mishaps with “custard pies,” or in which a young Michael hides in a television set left empty by a repairman who “took away the works.”

The shows contained few treats for animation fanatics. The music sections did allow artists a degree of freedom, but aside from some cool rotoscoping [the technique of drawing from film to make a “real” film look like a cartoon—think A-Ha’s “Take on Me” video or Richard Linklater’s 2006 film version of A Scanner Darkly] most of the these sections read like forced psychedelia. Otherwise, the production was cheaply forgettable.

It is easy to imagine that the people who wrote and produced The Jackson 5ive had little interaction with the Jacksons, or even their management. The program was one of several animated children’s programs based on popular music groups. The phenomenon had begun in 1965 with ABC’s The Beatles. Designed to capitalize on the initial burst of Beatlemania, the Saturday-morning series turned out to be a minor hit. Its thirty-nine episodes ran for four seasons on the network. John, Paul, George, and Ringo contributed nothing other than their music.

The Beatles’ success unleashed a small flood of animated shows focused on music groups. Although shows such as The Groovie Ghoulies (1970-1972) and Josie and the Pussycats (1970-1976) gained popularity, none had more impact than The Archie Show (1968-1969; syndicated until 1978), a cartoon loosely based on Bob Montana’s Archie comic books. The “band” supposedly consisting of Archie, Jughead, Veronica, and the rest of the gang sang a variety of songs, including smash hit, “Sugar Sugar,” the biggest-selling single of 1969 (something to remember in the midst of Woodstock reminiscences). On screen, the cartoon characters played the music; off screen, songwriting credits went to Andy Kim and Phil Spector-Associate/Neil Diamond-discoverer Jeff Barry; Ron Dante and Toni Wine performed it. (Ray Stevens, who wrote “Everything is Beautiful [In Its Own Way],” “The Streak,” and “Mississippi Squirrel Revival,” provided hand claps on the track.)

Making up musical groups could work just fine. As both The Monkees (1966-1968) and The Partridge Family (1970-1974) proved, musical hits could provide ancillary income and extra publicity. Creating storylines around an already-established act, however, could be even easier—even better if they actually were family. The Beatles might have seemed like brothers, how much better if they actually had been brothers?

The cartoon version of The Jackson 5ive was part of the line-up assembled by ABC’s wunderkind, Michael Eisner, who had good reason to believe that children’s programming would provide an avenue for his further advancement. Children’s programming in the form of The Mickey Mouse Club (1955-1959) had been one of the bootstraps that pulled the network from imminent collapse in 1955. In the mid-1960s another programming prodigy, Fred Silverman, had made his reputation by revamping the Saturday morning line-up at CBS, turning cheap animation into advertising gold. The Jackson Five presented Eisner with the opportunity to capitalize on the success of a musical fad, as The Beatles had done, without having to make up a family connection.

The Jackson 5ive proved viable enough that it not only renewed for another season, but Eisner and Rankin/Bass teamed up on a similar gimmick. The Osmonds (1972), a short-lived series proved notable for actually using members of the Osmond family as voice talent, but was otherwise undistinguished.

Eisner had his own version of programming's golden gut, however. Hip to the scene—both in terms of popular culture and the tremors rumbling through the industry that regulators might demand more educational programming—he also oversaw development of the series of short cartoons, Schoolhouse Rock! Although neither The Jackson 5ive nor The Osmonds made for smash hits, Eisner's accomplishments as ABC’s daytime chief earned him quick promotion, launching him toward mogul status.

And the The Jackson 5ive? The show remained largely in obscurity. MTV resurrected the series during the third week of June, 1995 during its “MJTV” week coinciding with release of the “HIStory” album. The 1998 book Rock Stars Do The Dumbest Things included it among MJ’s many sins (although it must be counted a venial one amidst the others). Jackson himself revealed little interest in the series. In the end, the series stands as little more than one of the many ways that people sought to capitalize on the mythos—however new—attached to all things Jackson. As such, The Jackson 5ive may reveal more about the nature of television and capitalization on the children’s marketing in the 1970s than about the steadfastly inscrutable King of Pop.

Two bonus sites:
Rick Goldschmidt's Rankin/Bass blog

Michael Jackson and his brothers in a 1973 Alpha-bits commercial