28: The Beatles Cartoons

Posted on | July 25, 2009 | 2 Comments

The Beatles Cartoons were a series of Saturday morning cartoons made in the mid-sixties, featuring of course The Beatles’ songs and John, Paul, George and Ringo as characters.  The Beatles were always getting into trouble in these episodes, and hilarity ensued!  If, of course, by hilarity, you mean eye-rolling, *facepalming* and racism.  Yes, a good chunk of  the Beatles cartoons were racist.  People of East Asian descent were caricatured and stereotyped particularly horrifically, as were Arab people, Latino people, any type of unspecified Indigenous person . . . basically, I’ve always said that it was a blessing that the writers of the cartoon acted as though black people didn’t exist in America.

The Beatles, however, had nothing to do with the cartoons at all — it was something signed off on by Brian.  They reportedly hated them, though some claim that George got a kick out of them.  It’s easy to see why they were less than pleased.  The voice acting is utterly atrocious, especially with regards to John and George, the writing is usually awful, and the songs regularly butchered, with sections cut out regardless of how bad it sounded.

And yet, setting aside and trying to forget the really racist ones, the cartoons can indeed be a guilty pleasure.  (I have a whole bootleg set on DVD.) Because when the episodes wildly and jaw-droppingly racist, the eye-rolling and *facepalming* can actually be rather fun — in short doses.  It’s always amusing — and often exasperating — to see how they decided to write a song around the episode.  Or do a poor job at pretending that was what they were doing. And if you’ve got a drink in your hand, the sing-a-longs in each episode can be fun.

Below is one of the best Beatles cartoons — right after I’m Looking Through You, and Honey, Don’t, which aren’t properly available on YouTube. Of course, in order to fully appreciate the Beatles Cartoons, you have to understand that under the standards we’re working with, an excellent Beatles cartoon is one that is so bad it’s good again. In any case, it is fairly representative of their writing method. Here it is, the German version of I Want to Hold Your Hand: “Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand.”

And just because I want to, a bonus video of “I’m Down.” The plot is averagely bad, but the performance sequence. Oh, the performance sequence. Just trust me, if you’re a big Beatles fan, you’ll love it.

Comments