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By Michaela Gordoni
If you grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, you’ll remember the cartoon SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK, but you may not know that it was never intended to be on TV.
It all started with a song.
David McCall, president of the McCaffrey and McCall advertising agency, asked his creative director George Newall to create a musical version of the multiplication tables. Newall consulted Bob Dorough and Ben Tucker, who created “Three Is A Magic Number,” TV Line reported.
“They were thinking of a phonograph recording and a book,” Dorough recalled. “The idea of television wasn’t remotely in their heads.”
However, publishers weren’t interested.
“One of the executives up at McCaffrey and McCall said, you know, one of our clients is ABC television…Why don’t we present it to them?” Dorough recalled. “And they presented it as an animation film to ABC, at which point suddenly we were in that business instead of the book business.”
Their 1973 pitch led to three seasons of SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK on the network, which wrapped up in the mid-’80s.
Related: INSTANT DREAM HOME: Episode 1.2: “Schoolhouse Rock”
Currently a “Schoolhouse Rock Live!” show is touring the US. It’s inspired by the old cartoons and developed by Chicago’s Theater BAM.
“I have been smiling and singing along to every song in this show like it’s 1977 and I’m an eight-year-old in front of the television again,” Director Bret Scott said in a news release. “The show is everything you remember about the TV show Schoolhouse Rock, plus six talented actors and a super fun script tying all these classic songs together. It doesn’t get any more wholesome and joyous than this.”
Journalist Lorien Strange said the performance is extremely engaging and vibrant. The stage includes giant set pieces: wooden blocks, an Etch-A-Sketch, and games. The actors play instruments on stage, dance, sing and pull the audience into the show with them. At one point, the cast finds hiding places in the audience where they give instructions to attendees to join in their song.
There’s also a version of the performance — “Schoolhouse Rock Live! Jr.” — which features child actors that individual theaters and schools may perform.
Chronicles writer Alexander Riley said elements of faith were present in the classic cartoon.
“The very first episode ‘Three is a Magic Number’ encouraged children to identify the number with ‘the ancient mystic Trinity’ and the threesome of ‘Faith and Hope and Charity.’ And then there was this lyric, which would have those who swear primary loyalty to LGBTQ ideology furious: ‘A man and a woman had a little baby; Yes, they did; And they had three in the family,'” he wrote.
“Right there among Saturday morning cartoons, the basic elements of the Christian faith were unapologetically and proudly proclaimed,” he continued. “Hard to believe it today, but it happened. I know. I was there.”
The show is available to stream on Disney+.
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