George Newall, a creator of ‘Schoolhouse Rock,’ at 88
George R. Newall, an advertising executive who was the last surviving original creator of “Schoolhouse Rock,” the musical, animated snippets that taught juvenile Generation X television viewers grammar, math, civics, and science for a few moments during their otherwise vacuous Saturday morning commercial programming, died Nov. 30, in a hospital near his home in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. He was 88.
The cause was cardiopulmonary arrest, his wife, Lisa Maxwell, said.
The “Schoolhouse Rock” TV series, which ran from 1973 to 1984 and was revived in the 1990s, set didactic ditties and quirky cartoons to upbeat music to furtively transform rote learning into euphonious fun during regular programming and before the government, in the 1990s, mandated that stations broadcast a modicum of educational and informative fare.
The show won four Emmy Awards.
The series spawned books, recordings, live sing-along shows, and a nostalgia cult that will mark the show’s 50th anniversary next year when The Walt Disney Co. presents a primetime television special, rereleases “The Official Schoolhouse Rock Guide” by Mr. Newall and Tom Yohe, and publishes an adult coloring book featuring all of the program’s characters.
“Three Is a Magic Number,” celebrating tripods, triangles, and even a couple producing a baby; “Interjection!” which depicts a cartoon character getting stuck in the posterior with a big needle; and Mr. Newall’s “Unpack Your Adjectives” became among the show’s perennial favorites.
“Schoolhouse Rock” originated in the early 1970s when David McCall, president of the McCaffrey & McCall advertising agency, complained to Mr. Newall, a creative director there, that his young sons couldn’t “multiply, but they can sing along with Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones.”
Could Mr. Newall put the multiplication tables to music? he asked. Mr. Newall’s search for a quirky musician who might help led him to Ben Tucker, who played bass at the Hickory House in New York, which Mr. Newall frequented regularly.
“I asked Ben, and he said, ‘Oh yeah, my partner, Bob Dorough — he can put anything to music!’” Mr. Newall told The New York Times Magazine in 2018.
“He told me Bob had written a song based on the words on the mattress tag that say, ‘Do not remove under penalty of law,’” Mr. Newall recalled. “So I brought Bob in, and David gave him the assignment. He came back about two weeks later with ‘Three Is a Magic Number,’ and we were all knocked out by it.”
The song inspired Yohe, the agency’s art director and a cartoonist, to start doodling. What was originally conceived as an educational phonograph record morphed into a series of threeminute films that the creative team presented to Michael Eisner, then the director of children’s programming at ABC, a client of the ad agency.
Eisner happened to be meeting with Chuck Jones, the immortal Bugs Bunny animator.
“After we played the song and Tom [Yohe] showed them the storyboards, Eisner looked at Jones and said, ‘What do you think?’” Mr. Newall told The New York Times in 1994. “And Jones said, ‘I think you should buy it right away.’ It was probably the quickest deal in television history.”
The first season was followed with themed series on grammar, government (to coincide with America’s Bicentennial celebration), science, and computer technology.
Eisner later became chair and chief executive of The Walt Disney Co., which acquired “Schoolhouse Rock” in 1996 (including new segments produced in the 1990s with J.J. Sedelmaier Productions) when it bought Capital Cities/ABC.
Mr. Newall and Yohe were the executive producers and creative directors of the original episodes and were joined by other collaborators. Mr. Newall composed 10 of the songs.
Yohe died in 2000, Dorough in 2018.
George Robert Newall Jr. was born June 17, 1934, in Lakewood, N.J. His father was a builder. His mother, Louise (DeNyse) Newall, worked for the school board in Brick Township.
After attending Point Pleasant Beach High School and serving in the Army’s 11th Airborne Division Band at Fort Campbell, Ky., Mr. Newall graduated from Florida State University with a bachelor’s degree in music composition in 1960. He moved to New York City, where, starting in a mailroom at $50 a week, he worked for a number of ad agencies, including Ogilvy & Mather and Grey.
Mr. Newall is survived by his wife, artist and singer Lisa (Chapman) Maxwell; a stepson, Lake Wolosker; and his sisters, Jessie Newall Bissey, Kathy Newall Hogan, and Anne Newall Kimmel.