'Schoolhouse Rock' co-creator George Newall has died at the age of 88

Adman became cartoon director George Newall, one of the creators of the iconic educational cartoon Schoolhouse Rock! , died Nov. 30 in a hospital near his New York village of Hastings-on-Hudson. The news of his death at the age of 88 from cardiopulmonary arrest was shared with  the New York Times by his wife, Lisa Maxwell.

The original Saturday Morning Schoolhouse Rock! shorts aired from 1973 to 1984. The idea came about when advertising executive David McCall of McCaffrey & McCall approached the agency's creative director, Newall, about setting the times tables to music to help McCall's son memorize them. With the help of songwriters Ben Tucker and Bob Dorough and the agency's art director Tom Yohe who provided the illustrations, the idea evolved into a series of animated shorts.

McCaffrey and McCall pitched the cartoons to Michael Eisner, who was director of children's programming at ABC at the time. Informing young viewers about a range of topics from science, history and grammar to ecology and civics, Schoolhouse Rock! spawned iconic edutainment tracks like “I'm Just a Bill” and “Conjunction Junction” in the pop culture landscape of the 70s and 80s.

Rock School! won four Daytime Emmy Awards over its original run, with several more nominations for both the early cartoons and the '90s revival. A home video tie-in titled  Schoolhouse Rock! Earth was released in 2009, featuring 11 new songs. The show also spawned a live musical theater show in 1993. The Walt Disney Company (then headed by Eisner) acquired the franchise in 1996; Newall and Yohe co-wrote  Schoolhouse Rock! The Official Guide  of the same year.

Newall is survived by a wife, stepson and three sisters. He is predeceased by his collaborators McCall (1999), Yohe (2000), Tucker (2013) and Dorough (2018).

[Source: The New York Times via Deadline]