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It was two months ago that we
passed along a report that Warner and Hanna-Barbera were prepping the long-awaited DVD release of
Josie and the Pussycats - The Complete Series, and now the announcement is here!
September 18th sees the 2-DVD release with all 16 animated episodes of the original 1970 show.
Josie McCoy was "Josie," voiced by Janet Waldo, well-known for her southern belle sounds as
Penelope Pitstop...but Cathy Dougher laid down Josie's singing tracks. The Pussycats were Valerie Brown (Barbara Pariot voice, Patrice Holloway singing) and Melody Valentine. The latter is most interesting, because she was voiced by longtime character actress Jackie Joseph (the former wife of Ken Berry), but Melody's singing voice was done by none other than Cheryl Ladd, of
Charlie's Angels and
Las Vegas fame, credited under one of her older screen alias names of "Cherie Moor." Other voices included Sherry Alberoni (who had a recurring role in
Family Affair), Casey Kasem (who years later would read a fan's written-in "long distance dedication" to Cheryl Ladd on his
American Top 40 radio show), and the legendary voice of
Scooby-Doo, Don Messick.
The SRP is $26.99 for 352 minutes of on- and off-stage fun (and bad guy pursuit), based on characters from Archie Comics. As we reported last time, courtesy of info from Earl Kress, the extra on board will be a documentary about "The Allure and Charm of Dan DeCarlo: The Man and His Art," profiling
Josie's legendary creator through his art and the remembrances of his biographer and colleagues.
What you WON'T find on this set, apparently, is "something fascinating in the Warner’s film archives that should definitely be included on this set," which our good friend Earl Kress had publicly requested Warner to get in touch with him about. We here at TVShowsOnDVD tried helping Earl, and fans even brought it up during a recent live online chat Warner held at the Home Theater Forum website. Warner never replied to our inquiries, or to the one at the chat. But a few weeks ago Earl
posted in his blog (during an interesting speculation about what will and won't be seen for future DVD releases) that he had not heard from Warner, and that the material would stay locked up in the vaults. After the online chat, we checked again with Earl, and he sadly reported to us that he still had not heard from Warner, and said he "would be totally shocked if there's another human being on the planet that knows about the material." Too bad. Thanks, Earl, for trying!
