George Newall, 'Schoolhouse Rock' Co-Creator, Dead at 88

He was the last surviving member of the educational program's production team.

Advertising executive George Newall, one of the co-creators of 1970-80s edu-tainment program, Schoolhouse Rock—the animated musical snippets famous for teaching young Generation X television viewers grammar, math, civics and science—has died. He was 88.

According to his wife, Lisa Maxwell, the TV show-runner died of cardiopulmonary arrest on Nov. 30 at a hospital near his New York home.

Schoolhouse Rock came about in the early 1970s when David McCall, president of the McCaffrey & McCall advertising agency, complained to Mr. Newall, a creative director working there at the time, that his young sons couldn’t multiply, "but they can sing along with Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones," per The New York Times. The ask was to put the concept of  multiplication tables to music.

He eventually came across Bob Dorough (now accredited as another co-creator) to assist with this feat, who Newall told The New York Times in 2018 could "put anything to music." The musician knocked the assignment out of the park, coming back with the jingle "Three is a Magic Number" two weeks later.

The tune inspired the agency’s art director/cartoonist Mr. Yohe to start doodling, and what was initially conceived as an educational phonograph record morphed into a series of three-minute films that the creative team presented to Michael Eisner, the then-director of children’s programming at ABC, a client of the agency. Needless to say, everyone loved the idea, and so, Schoolhouse Rock was born.

The well-known series originally ran from 1973–1984 and was revived in the 1990s, running for an additional five years.

Newall was born on June 17, 1934, in Lakewood, New Jersey. After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in music composition in 1960 from Florida State University, he moved to New York City, where, starting in a mailroom at $50/week, he worked for a number of ad agencies, eventually working his way up the old-fashioned way.

The executive outlived each of his fellow Schoolhouse Rock creators, becoming the last surviving member of the production team.

George 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.