The Flintstones

The show is set in a comical version of the Stone Age, but has added features and technologies that resemble mid-20th-century suburban America. The plots deliberately resemble the sitcoms of the era, with the caveman Flintstone and Rubble families getting into minor conflicts characteristic of modern life.[8] The show is set in the Stone Age town of Bedrock (pop. 2,500). Dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures are portrayed as co-existing with cavemen, saber-toothed cats, and woolly mammoths.

Animation historian Christopher P. Lehman considers that the series draws its humor in part from creative uses of anachronisms. The main one is the placing of a "modern", 20th-century society in prehistory. This society takes inspiration from the suburban sprawl developed in the first two decades of the postwar period. This society has modern home appliances, but they work by employing animals.[9] They have automobiles, but they hardly resemble the cars of the 20th century. These cars are large wooden and rock structures and burn no fuel. They are powered by people who run while inside them. This depiction is inconsistent, however. On some occasions, the cars are known to have engines (with appropriate sound effects), requiring ignition keys and gasoline. Fred might pull into a gas station and say, "Fill 'er up with Ethel", which is pumped through the trunk of a woolly mammoth marked "ETHEL". Whether the car runs by foot or by gas varies according to the needs of the story. Finally, the stone houses of this society are cookie-cutter homes positioned into neighborhoods typical of mid-20th-century American suburbs.[10]

• Alan Reed – Fred Flintstone, Uncle Ghastly
• Jean Vander Pyl – Wilma Flintstone, Pebbles Flintstone
• Mel Blanc – Barney Rubble, Dino, Zack Hatrock
• Daws Butler – Barney Rubble (season 2; episodes 1, 2, 5, 6 and 9 only)
• Bea Benaderet – Betty Rubble (seasons 1–4), Gravella Hatrock
• Gerry Johnson – Betty Rubble (seasons 5–6), Granny Hatrock (in "The Hatrocks and the Gruesomes")
• Don Messick – Bamm-Bamm Rubble, Hoppy, Arnold, Gobby Gruesome
• John Stephenson – Mr. Slate, Joe Rockhead, Sam Slagheap
• Verna Felton – Wilma's mother[lower-alpha 2] (seasons 2 and 3)
• Janet Waldo – Pearl Slaghoople (season 4)
• Harvey Korman – The Great Gazoo

Fred Flintstone physically resembles both the first voice actor who played him, Alan Reed, and Jackie Gleason, whose series, The Honeymooners, inspired The Flintstones.[12] The voice of Barney Rubble was provided by voice actor Mel Blanc, except for five episodes during the second season (the first, second, fifth, sixth, and ninth); Hanna-Barbera regular Daws Butler filled in and provided the voice of Barney while Blanc was incapacitated by a near-fatal car accident.[13][14] Blanc was able to return to the series much sooner than expected, by virtue of a temporary recording studio for the entire cast set up at Blanc's bedside.[15] Blanc's Barney voice varied from nasal to deep before his accident, as he and Barbera (who directed the sessions with Alan Dinehart) explored the right level in relation to the comedy and the other characters. Blanc uses both Barney voices in one of the earliest episodes, "The Prowler."[16]

Reed was insistent on playing Fred in a relatively natural speaking voice, rather than a broad, "cartoony" style. Few animated short cartoons used this "straightforward" method, except for experimental studios like UPA and feature films with more realistic characters. The performances of Reed and the cast (as well as the writing) helped ground the animated world of The Flintstones in a relatable reality. The dialogue style of The Flintstones set a precedent for acting in animation that continues to exist today, sometimes falsely attributed in modern animated productions as "revolutionary."[17]

In a 1986 Playboy interview, Gleason said Alan Reed had done voice-overs for Gleason in his early movies and that he had considered suing Hanna-Barbera for copying The Honeymooners, but decided to let it pass.[18] According to Henry Corden, a voice actor and a friend of Gleason's, "Jackie's lawyers told him he could probably have The Flintstones pulled right off the air. But they also told him, 'Do you want to be known as the guy who yanked Fred Flintstone off the air? The guy who took away a show so many kids love and so many parents love, too?'"[19]

Henry Corden first spoke for Fred Flintstone on the 1965 record album Songs From Mary Poppins, then continued doing the voice for most of the other Flintstone records on the label.[20] At roughly the same time, Corden was providing Fred's singing voice in two films being produced at the studio: the 1966 special Alice in Wonderland, or What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This? and the 1966 feature film The Man Called Flintstone. Corden assumed the role completely after Reed's death in 1977, starting with the TV special, A Flintstone Christmas.[21]

Since 2000, Jeff Bergman, James Arnold Taylor, and Scott Innes (performing both Fred and Barney for Toshiba commercials) have performed the voice of Fred. Since Mel Blanc's death in 1989, Barney has been voiced by Jeff Bergman, Frank Welker, and Kevin Michael Richardson. Various additional character voices were created by Hal Smith, Allan Melvin, Janet Waldo, Daws Butler, and Howard Morris, among others.

The opening- and closing-credits theme during the first two seasons was called "Rise and Shine", a lively instrumental underscore accompanying Fred on his drive home from work. .[22] Starting in season three, episode three ("Barney the Invisible"), the opening- and closing-credits theme was the familiar vocal "Meet the Flintstones". This version was recorded with a 22-piece big band conducted by composer Hoyt Curtin and performed by the Randy Van Horne Singers. The melody is derived from part of the 'B' section of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 17 Movement 2, composed in 1801/02.[23] The "Meet the Flintstones" opening was later added to the first two seasons for syndication. The musical underscores were credited to Hoyt Curtin for the show's first five seasons; Ted Nichols took over in 1965 for the final season.[22] Many early episodes used the underscores composed for Top Cat and The Jetsons. Episodes of the last two seasons used the underscore of Jonny Quest for the more adventurous stories.

The idea of The Flintstones started after Hanna-Barbera produced The Huckleberry Hound Show and The Quick Draw McGraw Show. Although these programs were successful, they did not have the same wide audience appeal as their previous theatrical cartoon series Tom and Jerry, which entertained both children and the adults who accompanied them. Since children did not need their parents' supervision to watch television, though, Hanna-Barbera's output became labeled "kids only". Barbera and Hanna wanted to recapture the adult audience with an animated situation comedy.[24]

Barbera and Hanna considered making the two families hillbillies (a hillbilly theme was later incorporated into two Flintstones episodes, "The Bedrock Hillbillies" and "The Hatrocks and the Gruesomes"), ancient Romans (Hanna-Barbera eventually created The Roman Holidays), pilgrims, or American Indians before deciding on a Stone Age setting. According to Barbera, they settled on that because "you could take anything that was current, and convert it to stone-age".[25] Under the working title The Flagstones, a treatment was written by Harry Winkler. The family originally consisted of Fred, Wilma, and their son, Fred, Jr. A brief demonstration film was also created to sell the idea of a "modern stone-age family" to sponsors and the network.[26]^: 3 It was a difficult sell, and required eight weeks of daily presentations to networks and ad agencies.[8] June Foray and Hanna-Barbera regular Daws Butler voiced the characters for the demonstration film, but Foray was dropped without warning before production began; Foray was upset about the rejection and refused to work with Hanna-Barbera for many years afterward, despite Barbera's efforts to offer her other work.[27] Animator Kenneth Muse, who worked on the Tom and Jerry cartoons, also worked on the early seasons of The Flintstones.

William Hanna was honest about the inspiration, saying, "At that time, The Honeymooners was the most popular show on the air, and for my bill, the funniest. The characters, I thought, were terrific. Now, that influenced greatly what we did with The Flintstones ... The Honeymooners was there, and we used that as a kind of basis for the concept." Joseph Barbera disavowed these claims in a separate interview, though, stating, "I don't remember mentioning The Honeymooners when I sold the show, but if people want to compare The Flintstones to The Honeymooners, then great. It's a total compliment. The Honeymooners was one of the greatest shows ever written."[28]

Jackie Gleason, creator of The Honeymooners, considered suing Hanna-Barbera Productions, but decided that he did not want to be known as "the guy who yanked Fred Flintstone off the air".[29][30] Gleason himself was sued because The Honeymooners was similar to The Bickersons, as critics noted at the time, and the lawsuit served by Bickersons creator Philip Rapp was settled out of court.[31] Another influence was noted during Hanna-Barbera's tenure at MGM, where they were in a friendly competition with fellow cartoon director Tex Avery. In 1955, Avery directed a cartoon entitled The First Bad Man (narrated by cowboy legend Tex Ritter). The cartoon concerned the rowdy antics of a bank robber in stone-age Dallas. Many of the sight gags from that series antedated similar situations used by Hanna-Barbera in the Flintstones series by many years. Some students of American animation point to this cartoon as a progenitive seed of the Flintstones.

The concept was also antedated by the "Stone Age Cartoons" series of 12 animated cartoons released from January to September 1940 by Fleischer Studios. These cartoons show stone-age people doing modern things with primitive means. One example is "Granite Hotel" including characters such as a newsboy, telephone operator, hotel clerk, and a spoof of Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.

Barbera explained that selling the show to a network and sponsors was not an easy task.

Here we were with a brand new thing that had never been done before, an animated prime-time television show. So we developed two storyboards; one was they had a helicopter of some kind and they went to the opera or whatever, and the other was Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble fighting over a swimming pool. So I go back to New York with a portfolio and two half-hour boards. And no-one would even believe that you'd dare to suggest a thing like that, I mean they looked at you and they'd think you're crazy. But slowly the word got out, and I used the presentation which took almost an hour and a half. I would go to the other two boards and tell them what they did, and do all the voices and the sounds and so-on, and I'd stagger back to the hotel and I'd collapse. The phone would ring like crazy, like one time I did Bristol-Myers, the whole company was there. When I got through I'd go back to the hotel the phone would ring and say "the president wasn't at that meeting, could you come back and do it for him." So I had many of those, one time I had two agencies, they'd fill the room I mean God about 40 people, and I did this whole show. I got to know where the laughs were, and where to hit it, nothing; dead, dead, dead. So one of the people at Screen Gems said "This is the worst, those guys...." he was so angry at them. What it was, was that there were two agencies there, and neither one was going to let the other one know they were enjoying it. But I pitched it for eight straight weeks and nobody bought it. So after sitting in New York just wearing out, you know really wearing out. Pitch, pitch, pitch, sometimes five a day. So finally on the very last day I pitched it to ABC, which was a young daring network willing to try new things, and bought the show in 15 minutes. Thank goodness, because this was the very last day and if they hadn't bought it, I would have taken everything down, put it in the archives and never pitched it again. Sometimes I wake up in a cold-sweat thinking this is how close you get to disaster.[25]

When the series went into production, the working title The Flagstones was changed, possibly to avoid confusion with the Flagstons, characters in the comic strip Hi and Lois. After spending a brief period in development as The Gladstones (GLadstone being a Los Angeles telephone exchange at the time),[32] Hanna-Barbera settled upon The Flintstones, and the idea of the Flintstones having a child from the start was discarded, with Fred and Wilma starting out as a childless couple. However, some early Flintstones merchandise, such as a 1961 Little Golden Book, included "Fred Jr".[33]

Despite the animation and fantasy setting, the series was initially aimed at adult audiences, which was reflected in the comedy writing, that as noted, resembled the average primetime sitcoms of the era, with the usual family issues resolved with a laugh at the end of each episode, as well as the inclusion of a laugh track. Hanna and Barbera hired many writers from the world of live-action, including two of Jackie Gleason's writers, Herbert Finn and Sydney Zelinka, as well as relative newcomer Joanna Lee, while still using traditional animation story men such as Warren Foster and Michael Maltese.

The Flintstones premiered on September 30, 1960, at 8:30 pm Eastern time, and quickly became a hit. It was the first American animated show to depict two people of the opposite sex (Fred and Wilma; Barney and Betty) sleeping together in one bed, although Fred and Wilma are sometimes depicted as sleeping in separate beds. For comparison, the first live-action depiction of this in American TV history was in television's first-ever sitcom: 1947's Mary Kay and Johnny.[34]

Fred and Wilma advertising Winston cigarettes during the closing credits

The first two seasons were co-sponsored by Winston cigarettes and the characters appeared in several black-and-white television commercials for Winston[35] (dictated by the custom, at that time, that the star(s) of a TV series often "pitched" their sponsor's product in an "integrated commercial" at the end of the episode).[36]

During the third season, Hanna and Barbera decided that Fred and Wilma should have a baby. Originally, Hanna and Barbera intended for the Flintstone family to have a boy, but the head of the marketing department convinced them to change it to a girl since "girl dolls sell a lot better than boy dolls".[24] Although most Flintstones episodes were stand-alone storylines, Hanna-Barbera created a story arc surrounding the birth of Pebbles. Beginning with the episode "The Surprise", aired midway through the third season (January 25, 1963), in which Wilma reveals her pregnancy to Fred, the arc continued through the time leading up to Pebbles's birth in the episode "Dress Rehearsal" (February 22, 1963), and then continued with several episodes showing Fred and Wilma adjusting to the world of parenthood. Around this time, Winston pulled out their sponsorship and Welch's (grape juice and grape jellies) became the primary sponsor, as the show's audience began to shift younger. The integrated commercials for Welch's products feature Pebbles asking for grape juice in her toddler dialect, and Fred explaining to Pebbles Welch's unique process for making the jelly, compared to the competition. Welch's also produced a line of grape jelly packaged in jars that were reusable as drinking glasses, with painted scenes featuring the Flintstones and characters from the show. In Australia, the Nine Network ran a "Name the Flintstones' baby" competition during the 'pregnancy' episodes—few Australian viewers were expected to have a U.S. connection giving them information about past Flintstone episodes. An American won the contest and received an all-expenses-paid trip to tour Hanna-Barbera Studios. Another arc occurred in the fourth season, in which the Rubbles, depressed over being unable to have children of their own (making The Flintstones the first animated series in history to address the issue of infertility, though subtly), adopt Bamm-Bamm. The 100th episode made (but the 90th to air), "Little Bamm-Bamm Rubble" (October 3, 1963), established how Bamm-Bamm was adopted. Nine episodes were produced before it, but aired afterward, which explains why Bamm-Bamm was not seen again until episode 101, "Daddies Anonymous" (Bamm-Bamm was in a teaser on episode 98, "Kleptomaniac Pebbles"). Another story arc, occurring in the final season, centered on Fred and Barney's dealings with the Great Gazoo (voiced by Harvey Korman).

After Pebbles's birth, the audience demographic had become wider and the series was marketed as a family series rather than the "adult" animated show of the earlier seasons. Between a wider number of viewers every year in the country, more children watching and competition from TV's trend toward fantasy shows, the episodes varied from family comedy and fantasy/adventure, but there were still stories about the couple dynamic. The last original episode was broadcast on April 1, 1966.[37]

The first three seasons of The Flintstones aired Friday nights at 8:30 Eastern time on ABC, with the first two seasons in black-and-white. Beginning with the third season in 1962, ABC televised the Flintstones in color, one of the first programs in color on that network.[38] Season four and part of season five aired Thursdays at 7:30. The rest of the series aired Fridays at 7:30.

In the U.S., besides being part of NBC Saturday mornings from 1966 to 1970, the syndicated reruns of the series were offered to local stations until 1997, when E/I regulations and changing tastes in the industry led to the show's move to cable television. From the time of Ted Turner's purchase of Hanna-Barbera in 1991, TBS, TNT, and Cartoon Network aired the program. On April 1, 2000, the program moved to Boomerang, where it aired until March 6, 2017 (in its last years on the channel, it had been relegated to a graveyard slot) and returned to the channel on July 30, 2018. Online, the series was made available on the In2TV service beginning in 2006, then the online version of Kids' WB until that service was discontinued in 2015. As of 2017, full episodes are only available in the U.S. on Boomerang's subscription video-on-demand service, with select clips made available on the official YouTube account tied to the revamped Kids' WB website. In 2019, MeTV acquired rerun rights to the series, returning the show to broadcast television for the first time in over 20 years.[39] All seasons of this series can currently be streamed on HBO Max, a streaming service Warner Bros. Discovery's and Tubi, a streaming service owned by Fox Corporation.

The night after The Flintstones premiered, Variety called it "a pen-and-ink disaster",[40] and the series was among many that debuted in a "vast wasteland" of a 1960–61 television season considered one of the worst in television history up to that point.[41] As late as the 1980s, highbrow critics derided the show's limited animation and derivative plots.[42] Animation historian Michael Barrier disliked the series, calling it a "dumb sitcom" and stated that "I can readily understand why someone who as a small child enjoyed, say, The Flintstones might regard that show fondly today. I have a lot more trouble understanding why anyone would try to defend anything about it on artistic grounds."[43] To put this in perspective, after AP’s movie-TV writer Bob Thomas bemoaned the quality of The Flintstones in papers of November 11, and television viewing at the time was overall. it was after he condemned another current series, Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone.[44]

Despite the mixed critical reviews following its premiere, The Flintstones has generally been considered a television classic and was rerun continuously for five decades after its end. In 1961, The Flintstones became the first animated series to be nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series, but lost out to The Jack Benny Program. In January 2009, IGN named The Flintstones as the ninth-best in its "Top 100 Animated TV Shows".[45] The first season of the series received an approval rating of 100% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on five reviews.[46] Common Sense Media gave the series a three out of five stars, saying: "Still a classic, but times have changed."[47]

Following the show's cancellation in 1966, a film based upon the series was created. The Man Called Flintstone was a musical spy caper that parodied James Bond and other secret agents. The movie was released to theaters on August 3, 1966, by Columbia Pictures.[53] It was released on DVD by Warner Home Video in Canada in March 2005 and in United States in December 2008.

The show was revived in the early 1970s with Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm having grown into teenagers, and several different series and made-for-TV movies (broadcast mainly on Saturday mornings, with a few shown in primetime), including a series depicting Fred and Barney as police officers, another depicting the characters as children, and yet others featuring Fred and Barney encountering Marvel Comics superhero The Thing and Al Capp's comic strip character The Shmoo—have appeared over the years. The original show also was adapted into a live-action film in 1994, and a prequel, The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, which followed in 2000. Unlike its sister show The Jetsons (the two shows appeared in a made-for-TV crossover movie in 1987), the revival programs were not widely syndicated or rerun alongside the original series.

Two sister Flintstones-themed amusement parks exist in the United States: Bedrock City in Custer, South Dakota. It closed in 2015 when the new owner, Mike Tennyson, and Warner Bros. could not come to an agreement over changes. It was too expensive for the repairs and changes that Warner Brother wanted. So Tennyson closed the park. The entire site was bulldozed in April 2019. Another one near Williams, Arizona, is still open for the summer of 2019, but slated to close by 2020. It cost $5 per person to get in. Both have been in operation for decades.[71]

Another existed until the 1990s at Carowinds in Charlotte, North Carolina. In Canada, Flintstone Park in Kelowna, British Columbia, opened in 1968 and closed in 1998; it was notable for the "Forty Foot Fred" billboard of Fred Flintstone which was a well-known Kelowna landmark.[72][73] Another Flintstones park was located in Bridal Falls, British Columbia, which closed in 1990.[74] Calaway Park outside Calgary, Alberta, also opened with a Flintstones theme and many of the buildings today have a caveman-like design, though the park no longer licenses the characters. The Australia's Wonderland and Canada's Wonderland theme parks, both featured Flintstones characters in their Hanna-Barbera-themed children's sections from 1985 until the mid-1990s. Kings Island (near Cincinnati) and Kings Dominion (near Richmond, Virginia) had a Hanna-Barbera land, in which many Hanna-Barbera characters were featured, including the Flintstones, in the early 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. Bedrock is one of the themed lands in the indoor Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi park in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, mainly home to the Flintstones Bedrock River Adventure flume ride.

A stage production opened at Universal Studios Hollywood in 1994 (the year the live-action film was released), developed by Universal and Hanna-Barbera Productions, at the Panasonic Theater, replacing the Star Trek show. The story consists of Fred, Wilma, Barney, and Betty heading for "Hollyrock". The show ran until January 2, 1997.

Theme cafeteria The Flintstones in Ayia Napa, Cyprus

Miles Laboratories (now part of Bayer Corporation) and their One-A-Day vitamin brand was the alternate sponsor of the original Flintstones series during its first two seasons, and in the late 1960s, Miles introduced Flintstones Chewable Vitamins, fruit-flavored multivitamin tablets for children in the shape of the Flintstones characters, which are still currently being sold.[75]

The Simpsons referenced The Flintstones in several episodes. In the episode "Homer's Night Out", Homer's local convenience store clerk, Apu, remarks "You look familiar, sir. Are you on the television or something?", to which Homer replies "Sorry, buddy, you've got me confused with Fred Flintstone."[76] During the couch gag of the opening credits of the episode "Kamp Krusty", the Simpson family arrive home to find the Flintstone family already sitting on their couch.[77] The same couch gag was reused in syndicated episodes of "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show", when The Simpsons overtook The Flintstones as the longest-running animated series.[78] In "Lady Bouvier's Lover", Homer's boss, Mr. Burns, appears at the family's house and says "Why, it's Fred Flintstone (referring to Homer) and his lovely wife, Wilma! (Marge) Oh, and this must be little Pebbles! (Maggie) Mind if I come in? I brought chocolates." Homer responds by saying "Yabba-dabba-doo!"[79] The opening of "Marge vs. the Monorail" depicts Homer leaving work in a similar way to Fred Flintstone in the opening of The Flintstones, during which he sings his own version of the latter's opening theme only to slam into a chestnut tree.

On September 30, 2010, Google temporarily replaced the logo on its search page with a custom graphic celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Flintstones' first TV broadcast.[80]

• List of works produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions
• List of Hanna-Barbera characters
• Hanna-Barbera's All-Star Comedy Ice Revue, a 1978 special in which Hanna-Barbera characters honor Fred in an all-star celebrity roast for his birthday
• Alley Oop, a comic strip about a prehistoric family with commentary on American suburban life
• The Cavern Clan, a Brazilian comic strip about prehistoric life in the Stone Age
• Prehistoric Peeps, a 1890 cartoon strip depicting cavemen with modern sensibilities living with dinosaurs

• Lehman, Christopher P. (2007), "The Cartoons of 1961–1962", American Animated Cartoons of the Vietnam Era: A Study of Social Commentary in Films and Television Programs, 1961–1973, McFarland & Company, ISBN 978-0786451425

• "The Flintstones": The Official Guide to the Cartoon Series, by Jerry Beck, Running Press, 2011.

Look up Appendix:Hanna-Barbera in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Flintstones.

• The Flintstones at IMDb
• The Flintstones at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• The Flintstones – Cartoon Network Department of Cartoons (Archive)
• Museum of Broadcast Communications: The Flintstones Archived September 27, 2013, at the Wayback Machine