The Beagles (TV series)

The Beagles is an animated cartoon television series that aired on CBS from September 10, 1966 to September 2, 1967 and later in reruns on ABC from September 9, 1967 to September 2, 1968. It was produced by Total Television which created King Leonardo and His Short Subjects, Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales, and Underdog.

Inspiration
The show drew some inspiration from the famous musical group The Beatles, who had an animated program of their own at that time. In fact the run on CBS was scheduled opposite The Beatles' own show.

The show was shown on early morning TV on Channel 9 in Australia in 1970.

The original masters of this series are in the possession of TTV artist Joe Harris, according to an interview Harris did for the book "Created and Produced by Total Television Productions" by Mark Arnold.

The Beagles released one album, Here Come the Beagles, on Columbia Records in 1967.

Bio
The Beagles were different from The Beatles in that the The Beagles was a duo rather than a quartet and both members were anthropomorphic dogs. Stringer (voiced by Mort Marshall impersonating Dean Martin), the tall one played guitar, while Tubby (voiced by Allen Swift impersonating Jerry Lewis), short, fat and wearing spectacles played stand-up bass. They often got into trouble as the result of publicity stunts planned by their manager, a Scottish terrier named Scotty (also voiced by Swift).

Cancellation
According to Joe Harris, the editor of The Beagles died on the job and his widow threw out all the editing materials including the master negatives. The series was presumed lost; but the original negatives and tracks were found decades later in a warehouse owned by Golden Books. The films had apparently been shipped by mistake to Producers Associates of Television, General Mills' TV film subsidiary, which owned all of Total Television's other series; and were only discovered after Golden had bought P.A.T.'s interests.