Butch Cassidy (TV series)

Butch Cassidy is a Saturday morning cartoon produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions in 1973 for NBC. The series title is a play on the name of the unrelated 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The character's music group is called the Sundance Kids.

Plot
Similar to both Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! and Josie and the Pussycats, the show depicted the adventures of a teen pop group of the series title. The band consisted of heartthrob Butch Cassidy (lead vocals and lead guitar), blonde beauty Merilee (tambourine), sensible Stephanie (bass guitar), and curly-topped Wally (drums). With Wally's dog, Elvis, the kids led double lives as popular rock stars and a secret crime fighting team working for the government. The teens were advised by a supercomputer named Mr. Socrates, who was inexplicably extremely allergic to dogs, and when the group met with Mr. Socrates in his lair for their latest assignment, Elvis was always told to stay outside.

In each episode, however, Elvis would somehow end up inside the lair, either by his own ingenuity or by Wally's forgetfulness; either way, Elvis' presence would cause the supercomputer to violently sneeze, blowing the group out of the lair and off to their assignment. Cassidy, designated as "Sundance 1," wore a special ring with a hidden communicator to keep in contact with Mr. Socrates from afar. Micky Dolenz, the drummer and most frequent lead singer for the group The Monkees, provided the voice of Wally.

Cast

 * Cameron Arthur Clarke -
 * Henry Corden -
 * Hans Conried -
 * Micky Dolenz - Wally
 * Paul Robert Engemann -
 * Shawn Oro Engemann -
 * Michael Evans -
 * Virginia Gregg -
 * Lloyd Chip Hand II - Butch Cassidy
 * Tina Holland - Stephanie
 * Loyal Lucas -
 * Susannah Olivia Lloyd -
 * Ross Martin -
 * Frank Maxwell -
 * Alan Oppenheimer -
 * Pam Peters -
 * Ronnie Schell -
 * John Stephenson - Mr. Socrates
 * Judy Strangis - Merilee
 * Franklin Welker - Elvis

Other appearances

 * Butch Cassidy was also the subject of Issue #11 of Gold Key Comics' Hanna-Barbera Fun-In in 1974; the story, "The Pearl Caper," was adapted from the October 6, 1973 Butch Cassidy TV episode of the same name.


 * Characters from Butch Cassidy appeared several times on the Adult Swim animated television series Sealab 2021. The whole band appeared in the episode "All That Jazz" in a long shot at a concert, standing in for MC Chris and performing the song "Fett's Vette". In a later episode, "Let 'Em Eat Corn!", the band appears again as inhabitants of SeaLab Pod Six, with Butch and Wally both sporting mustaches. Then again, in the episode "Butchslapped", the characters appeared alongside Marco, who was revealed to be one of the Sundance Kids. The character models for Butch and Wally were also used for the animated likeness of John Miller (the series director) and Adam Reed (one of the series writers) in the episodes, "Swimming in Oblivion" and "Return to Oblivion".

Home Media releases
On January 15, 2013, Warner Archive released Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids: The Complete Series on DVD in region 1 as part of their Hanna–Barbera Classics Collection. This is a Manufacture-on-Demand (MOD) release, available exclusively through Warner's online store and Amazon.com.