Hoyt Stoddard Curtin (September 9, 1922 – December 3, 2000) was an American composer and music producer, the primary musical director for the Hanna-Barbera animation studio from its beginnings with The Ruff & Reddy Show in 1957 until his retirement in 1986, except from 1963–1973, when the primary music director was Ted Nichols.^[1][2]

Biography[link]

Curtin was a native of Downey, California, and had one son, Chris, with his wife Elizabeth.

In the 1950s Curtin was an in-demand composer for TV commercials. He first met Hanna and Barbera when he worked on a Schlitz beer commercial they were producing for MGM in 1957.

"About two weeks later they called and had a lyric they read over the phone. Could I write a tune for it? I called back in 5 minutes and sang it to them ... silence ... uh oh, I bombed out ... the next thing I heard was a deal to record it! Ruff & Reddy. At that moment they had quit at MGM and started their own company. All of our first main titles were done in that fashion. Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, etc.".^[3]

He was the composer of many of the Hanna-Barbera cartoons' popular theme songs, including The Flintstones until 1981, Top Cat, The Jetsons, Jonny Quest, Superfriends, Josie and the Pussycats, The Smurfs and The New Scooby-Doo Movies and all its spinoffs until 1986. Beginning in 1959, Curtin also composed many of the stock tunes used as incidental music in the various Hanna-Barbera series. He also was the composer for the 1960 animated series Q.T. Hush, one of the first cartoons to appear in color. He also composed two of the tunes heard in the background in Plan 9 From Outer Space, although he was embarrassed by the film's poor cinematic quality.

His other credits include the controversial score for the science-fiction film Mesa of Lost Women, Ed Wood's Jail Bait (as Hoyt Kurtain), and the music for the Sandy Frank cartoon Battle of the Planets for which a soundtrack was released in 2000. It was the last project he worked on before he died in Los Angeles, California on December 3, 2000 at the age of 78. He also composed and conducted the music for Thrillerama Adventure, a two-projector attempt at replicating Cinerama, in 1955 with a 38-piece orchestra.

In a 1999 interview Curtin said, "My pianist, Jack Cookerly,^[4] invented the synthesizer as we know it for Johnny Quest. It was made of orange crates with a keyboard and thousands of vacuum tubes! A regular jazz band, (of) 4 trumpets, 6 [trom]bones, 5 woodwind doublers, 5-man rhythm section including percussion"; was used to record the music for the Johnny Quest cartoon. The Johnny Quest session was done "...at RCA in Hollywood. Alvin Stoller or Frankie Capp usually played drums. I always tried to get the same guys where possible. They were the ones who could swing and read like demons." ^[5]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Hoyt Curtin at the Internet Movie Database
• Hoyt Curtin at Find a Grave

The Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that was broadcast from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966, on ABC. The original pilot episode clip however was called the "Flagstones" (which first appeared in 1959 as a 90 second promotion to draw advertisers to the show) and was later reincorporated into the show's 1st episode (3rd episode in original airdate order). The show's name was changed to "The Flintstones" shortly thereafter. The show was produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Flintstones was about a working class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend.

The show's continuing popularity rested heavily on its juxtaposition of modern everyday concerns in the Stone Age setting.^[4][5]

Overview[link]

The show is set in the Stone Age town of Bedrock. (In some of the earlier episodes, it was also referred to as "Rockville"). In this fantasy version of the past, dinosaurs, saber-toothed tigers, woolly mammoths, and other long-extinct animals co-exist with cavemen. Like their mid-20th century peers, these cavemen listen to records, live in split-level homes, and eat out at restaurants, yet their technology is made entirely from pre-industrial materials and largely powered through the use of various animals. For example, the cars are made out of stone, wood, and animal skins, and powered by the passengers' feet (as in the theme song, "Through the courtesy of Fred's two feet").

Technology[link]

Often the "prehistoric" analogue to a modern machine uses an animal.^[6] For example, when a character takes photographs with an instant camera, inside of the camera box, a bird carves the picture on a stone tablet with its beak. In a running gag, the animal powering such technology would frequently break the fourth wall, look directly into the camera at the audience and offer a mild complaint about their job. Other commonly seen gadgets in the series include a baby woolly mammoth used as a vacuum cleaner; an adult woolly mammoth acting as a shower by spraying water with its trunk; elevators raised and lowered by ropes around brontosauruses' necks; "automatic" windows powered by monkeys on the outside; birds acting as "car horns," sounded by the driver pulling on their tails or squeezing their bodies; an "electric" razor made from a clam shell, vibrating from a honey-bee inside; a pelican as a washing machine, shown with a beakful of soapy water; and a woodpecker whose beak is used to play a gramophone record. In most cases, "The Man of a Thousand Voices," Mel Blanc, contributed the animals' gag lines, often lowering his voice one to two full octaves, far below the range he used to voice the character of Barney Rubble. In the case of the Flintstones' cuckoo clocks, which varied from mechanical toys to live birds announcing the time, when the hour approached 12:00, the bird inside the clock "cuckooing" usually just ran out of steam and gave up vocally, physically, or both.

"Stone-age" names[link]

The Stone Age setting allowed for gags and word plays involving rocks and minerals. For example, San Antonio becomes "Sand-and-Stony-o"; the country to the south of Bedrock's land is called "Mexirock." Travel to "Hollyrock," a parody of Hollywood, usually involves an "airplane" flight — the "plane," in this case, is often shown as a giant pterosaur, with the fuselage strapped to its back. The last names "Flintstone" and "Rubble", as well as other common Bedrock surnames such as "Shale" and "Quartz", are in line with these puns. So are the names of Bedrock's celebrities: "Cary Granite" (Cary Grant), "Stony Curtis" (Tony Curtis), "Ed Sulleyrock/Sulleystone" (Ed Sullivan), "Rock Pile/Quarry/ Hudstone" (Rock Hudson), "Ann-Margrock" (Ann-Margret), "Jimmy Darrock" (James Darren), "Alvin Brickrock" (Alfred Hitchcock), "Perry Masonary/Masonite" (Perry Mason as played by Raymond Burr), "Mick Jadestone and The Rolling Boulders" (Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones), "Eppy Brianstone" (Brian Epstein) and "The Beau Brummelstones" (The Beau Brummels). Once, while visiting one of Bedrock's houses of "Haute Couture" with Wilma, Betty even commented on the new "Jackie Kennerock (Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis) look". In some cases, the celebrity featured also provided the voice: "Samantha" and "Darrin" from "Bewitched" were voiced by Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick York. Examples from the above list include Ann-Margret, Curtis, Darren, and the Beau Brummels. Other celebrities, such as "Ed Sulleystone" and "Alvin Brickrock," were rendered by impersonators. Some of Bedrock's sports heroes include: football player "Red Granite" (Red Grange), wrestler "Bronto Crushrock" (Bronko Nagurski), golfer "Arnold Palmrock" (Arnold Palmer), boxers "Floyd Patterstone" (Floyd Patterson) and "Sonny Listone" (Sonny Liston), and baseball players "Sandy Stoneaxe" (Sandy Koufax), "Lindy McShale" (Lindy McDaniel), "Roger Marble" (Roger Maris) and "Mickey Marble" or "Mickey Mantlepiece" (Mickey Mantle). Ace reporter "Daisy Kilgranite" (Dorothy Kilgallen) was a friend of Wilma. Monster names include "Count Rockula" (Count Dracula) and "The Frankenstone Monster" (Frankenstein's monster).

Characters[link]

The Flintstones[link]

The Rubbles[link]

Other characters[link]

Voice actors[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2009)

It has been noted Fred Flintstone physically resembled voice actor Alan Reed, and also Jackie Gleason, whose series The Honeymooners was said to be very similar to The Flintstones. The voice of Barney Rubble was provided by voice actor Mel Blanc, though five episodes during the second season (the 1st, 2nd, 5th, 6th, and 9th) employed Hanna-Barbera regular Daws Butler while Blanc was incapacitated by a near-fatal car accident. 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. It should be noted, however, Blanc's portrayal of Barney had changed considerably after the accident. In the earliest episodes, Blanc had used a much higher pitch. After his recovery from the accident, Blanc used a deeper voice, quite similar to the voice of the Abominable Snowman he performed in other cartoons.

Additional similarities with The Honeymooners included the fact that Reed based Fred's voice upon Jackie Gleason's interpretation of Ralph Kramden, while Blanc, after a season of using a nasal, high-pitched voice for Barney, eventually adopted a style of voice similar to that used by Art Carney in his portrayal of Ed Norton. The first time the Art Carney-like voice was used was for a few seconds in "The Prowler" (the third episode produced).

In a 1986 Playboy interview, Jackie Gleason said Alan Reed had done voice-overs for Gleason in his early movies, and he (Gleason) considered suing Hanna-Barbera for copying The Honeymooners but decided to let it pass.^[8] According to Henry Corden, who took over as the voice of Fred Flintstone after Alan Reed died, and was a friend of Gleason, “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?”^[9]

Henry Corden took over the voice responsibilities of Fred after Reed's death in 1977 with A Flintstone Christmas.^[10] Corden had previously provided Fred's singing voice in The Man Called Flintstone^[11] and later on Flintstones children's records. Since 2000, Jeff Bergman, James Arnold Taylor, and Scott Innes (performing Fred and Barney for Toshiba Commercials) have performed the voice of Fred. Since Mel Blanc's death in 1989, Barney has been voiced by both 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.

Voice cast[link]

• Fred Flintstone – Alan Reed; Henry Corden (singing voice in The Man Called Flintstone only)
• Wilma Flintstone/Pebbles Flintstone – Jean Vander Pyl
• Barney Rubble – Mel Blanc; Daws Butler (season 2; episodes 1, 2, 5, 6, and 9 only)
• Betty Rubble – Bea Benaderet (seasons 1–4); Gerry Johnson (seasons 5–6)
• Bamm-Bamm Rubble/Hoppy/Arnold – Don Messick
• Dino – Mel Blanc
• Mr. Slate – John Stephenson
• Mrs. Slaghoople – Verna Felton and Janet Waldo
• The Great Gazoo – Harvey Korman

Episodes[link]

Music[link]

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. The tune resembled "The Bugs Bunny Overture (This Is It!)," the theme song of The Bugs Bunny Show, also airing on ABC at the time, and may have been the reason the theme was changed in the third season.^[12]

Starting in Season 3, Episode 3 ("Barney the Invisible"), the opening and closing credits theme was the familiar vocal, "Meet the Flintstones". The melody is derived from part of the 'B' section of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 17 Movement 2, composed in 1801/02.^[13] 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.^[12]

During the show's final season, "Open Up Your Heart (And Let the Sunshine In)", performed by Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, in a clip from that season's first episode, was used as alternate close music.

In 2010 a PRS for Music survey of 2,000 adults in the UK found that the "Meet the Flintstones" theme tune was the most recognised children's' TV theme, ahead of those for "Top Cat" and "Postman Pat".^{[14] [15]}

Production history[link]

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. Tom and Jerry entertained both children and the adults that accompanied them. However since children didn't need their parents supervision to watch television Hanna-Barbera's output became labeled "kids only". Barbera and Hanna wanted to recapture the adult audience by creating the most popular form television genre that appealed to both adults and children, the situation comedy.^[16] Another influence is rooted in 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 visual jokes pre-dated similar ones used by Hanna-Barbera in the Flintstones series, many years later. Many students of American animation point to this cartoon as a progenitive seed (along with "The Honeymooners") of the Flintstones.

The show imitated and spoofed The Honeymooners.^[17] William Hanna admitted that "At that time, The Honeymooners was the most popular show on the air, and for my bill, it was the funniest show on the air. 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."^{[citation needed]} However, Joseph Barbera disavowed these claims in a separate interview, stating that, "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."^[18]

Before settling on the stone-age Barbera and Hanna experimented with hillbillies, Ancient Rome, Pilgrims, and American Indians as the settings for the two families.^[19] Originally, the series was to have been titled The Flagstones, and a brief demonstration film was created to sell the idea of a "modern stone age family" to sponsors and the network.^[20]:3 When the series itself was commissioned, the title 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),^[21] Hanna-Barbera settled upon The Flintstones. Aside from the animation and fantasy setting, the show's scripts and format are typical of 1950s and 1960s American situation comedies, with the usual family issues resolved with a laugh at the end of each episode, as well as the inclusion of a laugh track.

During the developmental stages, Hanna-Barbera created the Flintstone family consisting of Fred, Wilma, and their son, Fred Jr. However, when the series went into production, the idea of the Flintstones having a child from the start was discarded, with Fred and Wilma starting out as a childless couple; some early Flintstones merchandise, such as a 1961 Little Golden Book, included Fred Jr., before it was decided on his removal.^[22]

Although most Flintstones episodes are stand-alone storylines, the series did have a few story arcs. The most notable example was a series of episodes surrounding the birth of Pebbles. Beginning with the episode "The Surprise", aired midway through the third season (1/25/63), in which Wilma reveals her pregnancy to Fred, the arc continued through the trials and tribulations leading up to Pebbles' birth in the episode "Dress Rehearsal" (2/22/63), and then continued with several episodes showing Fred and Wilma adjusting to the world of parenthood. In Australia, the Nine Network ran a "Name the Flintstones' baby" competition during the 'pregnancy' episodes – few Australian viewers were expected to have a USA connection giving them information about past 'Flintstone' shows.

A postscript to the arc occurred in the third episode of 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 (10/3/63), established how Bamm-Bamm was adopted. About nine episodes were made before it, but shown after, which explains why Bamm-Bamm would not be 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).

The series was initially aimed at adult audiences, which was reflected in the comedy writing, which, as noted, resembled the average primetime sitcoms of the era. 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 (like Warren Foster and Tony Benedict). The first two seasons were co-sponsored by Winston cigarettes and the characters appeared in several black and white television commercials for Winston (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).^[23] During the third season (the season in which Pebbles was born), Welch's (grape juice and grape jellies) became the primary sponsor, and the overall tone and writing of the series became more family friendly. 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. Best Foods, makers of Skippy peanut butter, was the alternate sponsor.

The Flintstones 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.^[24]

The show contained a laugh track, common to most other sitcoms of the period. In the mid-1990s, when Turner Networks remastered the episodes, the original laugh track was removed. Currently, the shows airing on Boomerang and the DVD releases have the original laugh track restored to most episodes (a number of episodes from Seasons 1 and 2 still lack them). Some episodes, however, have a newer laugh track dubbed in, apparently replacing the old one. Because of this practice, the only episode to originally air without a laugh track ("Sheriff For a Day" in 1965) now has one.

The Flintstones also became the first primetime animated series to last more than two seasons;^[25] this record wasn't surpassed by another primetime animated TV series until the seventh season of The Simpsons in 1995/1996.^[25]

Reception[link]

The night after The Flintstones premiered, Variety called it "A Pen and Ink Disaster".^[26] However, the negative reviews were short-lived and The Flintstones soon became one of the most popular and well-loved shows of all time. In 1961, The Flintstones became the first animated series to be nominated for an Outstanding Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award, but lost out to The Jack Benny Show. In January 2009, IGN named The Flintstones as the ninth best in its "Top 100 Animated TV Shows".^[27]

Nielsen ratings[link]

• 1960–1961: #18
• 1961–1962: #21
• 1962–1963: #30
• 1963–1964: Not in the Top 30
• 1964–1965: Not in the Top 30
• 1965–1966: Not in the Top 30

Broadcast history[link]

Original[link]

Note: The most frequent time slot for the series is in bold text.

• Friday at 8:30-9:00 PM on ABC: September 30, 1960—April 5, 1963
• Thursday at 7:30-8:00 PM on ABC: September 19, 1963—December 17, 1964
• Friday at 7:30-8:00 PM on ABC: December 25, 1964—April 1, 1966

Films and subsequent television series[link]

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.^[28] It was released on DVD 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 prime time); 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.

It has been announced that Family Guy creator (and Hanna-Barbera alumnus) Seth MacFarlane will be reviving The Flintstones for the Fox network, with the first episode airing in 2013.^[29] The program was indefinitely delayed from the 2013 date however, due to MacFarlane's schedule. ^[30]

Television series[link]

• The Flintstones (1960–66) (166 episodes) (6 seasons)
• The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show (1971–72) (20 episodes) (1 season)
• The Flintstone Comedy Hour (1972–73) (16 episodes) (1 season)
• Fred Flintstone and Friends (1977–78) (95 episodes) (1 season)
• The New Fred and Barney Show (1979) (17 episodes) (1 season)
• Fred and Barney Meet the Thing (1979) (13 episodes) (1 season)
• Fred and Barney Meet the Shmoo (1979–80) (13 episodes) (1 season)
• The Flintstone Comedy Show (1980–82) (18 episodes) (2 seasons)
• The Flintstone Funnies (1982–84) (13 episodes) (1 season)
• The Flintstone Kids (1986–88) (76 episodes) (2 seasons)
• Dino: World Premiere Toons – featuring "Stay Out!" (1995) and "The Great Egg-Scape" (1997)
• Cave Kids: Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm (1996) (8 episodes) (1 season)
• The Flintstones (2013)

Theatrical animated feature[link]

• The Man Called Flintstone (1966, released by Columbia Pictures)
• The Flintstones (CGI Computer Animated film, TBA, released by Warner Bros. Pictures)

Television specials[link]

• A Flintstone Christmas (1977)
• The Flintstones: Little Big League (1978)
• The Flintstones Meet Rockula and Frankenstone (1979)
• The Flintstones' New Neighbors (1980)
• The Flintstones: Fred's Final Fling (1980)
• The Flintstones: Wind-Up Wilma (1981)
• The Flintstones: Jogging Fever (1981)
• The Flintstones' 25th Anniversary Celebration (1986)
• The Flintstone Kids' "Just Say No" Special (1988)
• Hanna-Barbera's 50th: A Yabba Dabba Doo Celebration (1989)
• A Flintstone Family Christmas (1993)

Television movies[link]

• The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones (1987)
• I Yabba-Dabba Do! (1993)
• Hollyrock-a-Bye Baby (1993)
• A Flintstones Christmas Carol (1994)
• The Flintstones: On the Rocks (2001)

Live-action films[link]

• The Flintstones (1994)
• The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (2000)

Other media[link]

For a list of DVDs, video games, comic books, and VHS releases, see List of The Flintstones media.

Theme parks[link]

At least two Flintstones-themed amusement parks exist in the United States: Bedrock City in Custer, South Dakota and another in Valle, Arizona. Both have been in operation for decades.

Another existed until the 1990s at Carowinds in Charlotte, NC. In Canada, Flintstone Park in Kelowna, British Columbia opened in 1968 and closed in 1998; notable for the "Forty Foot Fred" statue of Fred Flintstone which was a well known Kelowna landmark. Another Flintstones park was located in Bridal Falls, British Columbia which closed in 1990.^[31] Calaway Park outside Calgary, Canada, also opened with a Flintstones theme and many of the buildings today have a caveman-like design, though the park does not currently license the characters. The Australia's Wonderland & Canada's Wonderland theme parks both featured Flintstones characters in their Hanna-Barbera-themed children's sections from 1985 up until the mid '90s.

Live theater[link]

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.^{[citation needed]} It opened at the Panasonic Theater replacing the Star Trek Show. The story consists of Fred, Wilma, Barney and Betty heading for "Hollyrock".^{[citation needed]} The show ran until January 2, 1997.^{[citation needed]}

Popular culture[link]

Theme cafeteria The Flintstones in Agia Napa, Cyprus

As noted above, for the first two seasons, the series had strong ties to a sponsor, Winston cigarettes, with the characters shown smoking the product during commercial breaks. This approach was not unusual for television at that time, either with tobacco or any other product. In one memorable advertisement, Fred and Barney relaxed while their wives did housework, smoking Winstons and reciting Winston's jingle, "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should!"^[32] In 1962, Winston pulled their sponsorship from the show when Wilma became pregnant;^{[citation needed]} beginning in the fall of 1963, the main sponsor was Welch's Grape Juice. By no small coincidence, Pebbles' favorite drink was Grape Juice.

Welch's advertised their product with animated commercials featuring the cartoon cast and they were often pictured in print ads and on grape juice containers. In the actual scenes of a few episodes, Pebbles is given grape juice as a treat, although, in those scenes, Welch's is not mentioned by name.

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 sold to this day.^[33]

The characters from the series were used in a 1966 industrial film designed to promote the 1967 beer advertising campaign for Anheuser-Busch's Busch Beer. This film was released to the Anheuser-Busch distributors, and it was not seen by the general public until years later when bootleg copies began to circulate.^[34]

In 1982 satirist Tom Chalkley, using the alias "Bruce Springstone", did a parody of the intro theme titled 'Bedrock Rap/Meet the Flintstones'. The cover of the album listed "Live at Bedrock". Sounding like Bruce Springsteen, Tom did a talking intro describing himself as a kid 'flipping dino burgers' and watching a worker (Fred) 'coming home to his stone hut' at night shouting 'Wilma, I'm home honey. Wilma!', then launching into a Springsteen-esque version of the intro theme from the show, complete with saxophone solo at the end.^[35]

The series spawned the Post Foods brands of Pebbles cereals: Fruity Pebbles and Cocoa Pebbles, and the discontinued Dino Pebbles (later revived as "Marshmallow Mania Pebbles", and then to "Marshmallow Pebbles").

In the 1985 documentary feature Bring on the Night, Sting and his band sing "Meet the Flintstones" during a recording session.^[36]

"Weird Al" Yankovic paid homage to the Flintstones in his song "Bedrock Anthem", a combined parody of "Under the Bridge" and "Give it Away", both by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, that even featured Flintstones voices and sound effects. It also was rereleased on the soundtrack album of the 1994 live action film.

The Screaming Blue Messiahs had a song called "I Wanna Be a Flintstone" on their album Bikini Red. It was later rereleased on the soundtrack album of the 1994 live action film The Flintstones.

The Simpsons have 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."^[37] During the opening credits of the episode Kamp Krusty, the Simpson family arrive home to find the Flintstone family already sitting on their couch.^[38] The beginning of the episode Marge vs. the Monorail is an homage to the The Flintstones opening sequence. Homer leaves work much in the same way Fred Flinstone does, singing to the tune of The Flintstones theme: "Simpson, Homer Simpson / he's the greatest guy in history / from the town of Springfield / he's about to hit a chestnut tree" at which point he screams and crashes his car into a tree.^[39] 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!"^[40] In Rome-old and Juli-eh, to save on gas, Homer "Flintstones" the car, imitating Fred Flintstone by putting his feet through the car floor and running on the road, yet with much less efficiency. Again, he says "Yabba-dabba-doo!"^[41] In Little Orphan Millie, Homer sings a song about his wife which contains the line "She's the Wilma to my Fred".^[42]

An episode of BBC sci-fi comedy series Red Dwarf sees Lister and the Cat discussing, and agreeing that they find both Wilma and Betty attractive, before realizing that the discussion is pointless... 'She'll never leave Fred and we know it!'

In 2008, Warner Bros/ Theater Ventures announced that Jeff Marx, Jake Anthony and Marco Pennette would collaborate on a stage musical version of The Flintstones, with the plot putting a contemporary spin on the characters.^[43] The proposed production stalled during negotiations.

Fred Flintstone's exclamation 'Yabba-Dabba-Doo!', shouted in the opening credits as well as any time Fred became happy or excited, is widely known and repeated.

In the Young Money song BedRock, although the song is mainly about sex, the name is referenced with the line: "Call me Mr Flintstone, I can make your bedrock".

More recently, the Flintstones have been seen in commercials for GEICO automotive insurance and Midas auto repair shops.

On September 30, 2010, Google temporarily replaced the logo on their search page with a custom graphic celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first TV broadcast.^[44]

In the animated feature, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs when Ellie jumps on a brontosaurus she exclaims, "Yabba-Dabba-Do". Manny later says, "Don't Yabba-Dabba-Do that again".

The Beastie Boys song "Shake Your Rump" from their 1989 album Paul's Boutique contains the lyrics "Like Fred Flintstone driving around with bald feet".^[45]

See also[link]

	Animation portal
	Television portal
	United States portal

• Hanna-Barbera's All-Star Comedy Ice Revue – Hanna-Barbera characters honor Fred in an all-star celebrity roast for his birthday (1977)
• "(Meet) The Flintstones", a version of the show's theme song that became a hit single for The B-52s.

References[link]

External links[link]

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

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: The Flintstones

• Museum of Broadcast Communications: The Flintstones
• The Flintstones - Cartoon Network Department of Cartoons (Archive)
• Webrock: The Flintstones and Hanna-Barbera Site
• The Flintstones page at Toonopedia
• The Flintstones at the Internet Movie Database
• The Flintstones at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• The Flintstones at TV.com
• 50 Years of Journey of The 'Flintstones'
• A film clip of television commercials for Winston cigarettes featuring The Flintstones is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]

William Denby Hanna (July 14, 1910 – March 22, 2001) was an American animator, director, producer, and cartoon artist, whose film and television cartoon characters entertained millions of people for much of the 20th century. When he was a young child, Hanna's family moved frequently, but they settled in Compton, California, by 1919. There, Hanna became an Eagle Scout. Hanna graduated from Compton High School in 1928. He briefly attended Compton City College but dropped out at the onset of the Great Depression.

After working odd jobs in the first months of the Depression, Hanna joined the Harman and Ising animation studio in 1930. During the 1930s, Hanna steadily gained skill and prominence while working on cartoons such as Captain and the Kids. In 1937, while working at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Hanna met Joseph Barbera. The two men began a collaboration that was at first best known for producing Tom and Jerry and live action films. In 1957, they co-founded Hanna-Barbera, which became the most successful television animation studio in the business, producing programs such as The Flintstones, The Huckleberry Hound Show, The Jetsons, Scooby-Doo, The Smurfs, and Yogi Bear. In 1967, Hanna–Barbera was sold to Taft Broadcasting for $12 million, but Hanna and Barbera remained heads of the company until 1991. At that time, the studio was sold to Turner Broadcasting System, which in turn was merged with Time Warner, owners of Hanna's first employer Warner Bros., in 1996; Hanna and Barbera stayed on as advisors.

Hanna and Barbera won seven Academy Awards and eight Emmy Awards. Their cartoons have become cultural icons, and their cartoon characters have appeared in other media such as films, books, and toys. Hanna–Barbera's shows have a global audience of over 300 million people and have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Personal life[link]

William Hanna was born to William John and Avice Joyce (Denby) Hanna in Melrose, New Mexico.^[1]:5 The third of seven children and the only son, Hanna maintained that there was no war between the sexes nor sibling rivalry in their home.^[1]:5[2] Hanna described his family as "a red-blooded, Irish-American family".^[1]:9 His father was a construction superintendent for railroads as well as water and sewer systems throughout the western regions of America, requiring the family to move frequently.^[1]:6 When Hanna was three years old, the family moved to Baker City, Oregon, where his father worked on the construction of the Balm Creek Dam. It was here that Hanna developed his love of the outdoors.^[1]:6[3] The family moved to Logan, Utah, before moving to San Pedro, California, in 1917.^[4]:67 During the next two years they moved several times before eventually settling in Watts, California, in 1919.^[1]:10 In 1922, while living in Watts, he joined Scouting.^[1]:11 He attended Compton High School from 1925 through 1928, where he played the saxophone in a dance band.^[5] This passion for music carried over into his career as he helped write songs for his cartoons, including the theme for The Flintstones.^{[4]:67–68[6][7][8]} Hanna became an Eagle Scout as a youth and remained actives in Scouting throughout his life.^{[4]:67–68[9]} As an adult, he served as a Scoutmaster and was recognized by the Boy Scouts of America with their Distinguished Eagle Scout Award in 1985.^{[3][4]:120[10]} Despite his numerous career-related awards, Hanna was most proud of this Distinguished Eagle Scout Award.^[5] His interests also included sailing and singing in a barbershop quartet.^[8][11][12] Hanna studied both journalism and structural engineering at Compton City College,^[6][13]:6 but had to drop out of college with the onset of the Great Depression.^[14] He married Violet Blanch Wogatzke on August 7, 1936, and they had two children,^[1]:29 David William and Bonnie Jean,^[9] and seven grandchildren.^[15] In 1996, Hanna, with assistance from Los Angeles writer Tom Ito, published his autobiography—Joe Barbera had published his two years earlier.^[4]

Career[link]

Film[link]

After dropping out of college, Hanna worked briefly as a construction engineer and helped build the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood.^[6][13]:6 He lost that job during the Great Depression and found another at a car wash. His sister's boyfriend encouraged him to apply for a job at Pacific Title and Art, which produced title cards for motion pictures.^[16] While working there, Hanna's talent for drawing became evident, and in 1930 he joined the Harman and Ising animation studio, which had created the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series.^[17] Despite a lack of formal training, Hanna soon became head of their ink and paint department. Besides inking and painting, Hanna also wrote songs and lyrics.^[17] For the first several years of Hanna's employment, the studio partnered with Pacific Title and Art's Leon Schlesinger, who released the Harman-Ising output through Warner Bros. When Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising chose to break with Schlesinger and begin producing cartoons independently for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1933, Hanna was one of the employees who followed them.^[17][18]

Hanna was given the opportunity to direct his first cartoon in 1936; the result was To Spring, part of the Harman-Ising Happy Harmonies series.^[3] The following year, MGM decided to terminate their partnership with Harman-Ising and bring production in-house.^[4]:68 Hanna was among the first people MGM hired away from Harman-Ising to their new cartoon studio. During 1938–39, he served as a senior director on MGM's Captain and the Kids series, based upon the comic strip of the same name (an alternate version of the Katzenjammer Kids that had resulted from a 1914 lawsuit). The series did not do well; consequently, Hanna was demoted to a story man and the series was canceled.^[4]:68–69 Hanna's desk at MGM was opposite that of Joseph Barbera, who had previously worked at Terrytoons. The two quickly realized they would make a good team.^[1]:Foreword By 1939 they had solidified a partnership that would last 50 years.^[17][18] Hanna and Barbera worked alongside animation director Tex Avery, who had created Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny for Warner Bros. and directed Droopy cartoons at MGM.^{[1]:33[19]:18}

In 1940, Hanna and Barbera jointly directed Puss Gets the Boot, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best (Cartoon) Short Subject.^[20][21] The studio wanted a diversified cartoon portfolio, so despite the success of Puss Gets the Boot, Hanna and Barbera's supervisor, Fred Quimby, did not want to produce more cat and mouse cartoons.^[4]:75–76 Surprised by the success of Puss Gets the Boot, Hanna and Barbera ignored Quimby's resistance^[1]:45 and continued developing the cat-and-mouse theme. By this time, however, Hanna wanted to return to working for Ising, to whom he felt very loyal. Hanna and Barbera met with Quimby, who discovered that although Ising had taken sole credit for producing Puss Gets the Boot, he never actually worked on it. Quimby then gave Hanna and Barbera permission to pursue their cat-and-mouse idea. The result was their most famous creation, Tom and Jerry.^[4]:78–79

Modeled after the Puss Gets the Boot characters with slight differences, the series followed Jerry, the pesky rodent who continually outwitted his feline foe, Tom.^[3][11] Hanna said they settled on the cat and mouse theme for this cartoon because: "We knew we needed two characters. We thought we needed conflict, and chase and action. And a cat after a mouse seemed like a good, basic thought."^[6] The revamped characters first appeared in 1941's The Midnight Snack.^[1]:46 Over the next 17 years Hanna and Barbera worked almost exclusively on Tom and Jerry,^[20] directing more than 114 highly popular cartoon shorts.^[22] During World War II they also made animated training films.^[4]:92–93 Tom and Jerry relied mostly on motion instead of dialog.^[18] Despite its popularity, Tom and Jerry has often been criticized as excessively violent.^{[23]:42[24]:134} Nonetheless, the series won its first Academy Award for the 11th short, The Yankee Doodle Mouse (1943)—a war-time adventure.^[3] Tom and Jerry was ultimately nominated for 14 Academy Awards, winning 7.^[25] No other character-based theatrical animated series has won more awards, nor has any other series featuring the same characters.^[17][26] Tom and Jerry also made guest appearances in several of MGM's live-action films, including Anchors Aweigh (1945) and Invitation to the Dance (1956) with Gene Kelly, and Dangerous When Wet (1953) with Esther Williams.^[14][26][27]

Quimby accepted each Academy Award for Tom and Jerry's without inviting Hanna and Barbera onstage. The cartoons were also released with Quimby listed as the sole producer, following the same practice for which he had condemned Ising.^[4]:83–84 When Quimby retired in late 1955, Hanna and Barbera were placed in charge of MGM's animation division.^[17][28] As the studio began to lose more revenue due to television,^[8][16] MGM soon realized that re-releasing old cartoons was far more profitable than producing new ones.^{[4]:2–3, 109} In 1957, MGM ordered Hanna and Barbera's business manager to close the cartoon division and lay off everyone by a phone call.^{[4]:2–3, 109} Hanna and Barbera found the no-notice closing puzzling because Tom and Jerry had been so successful.^[26]

Television[link]

During his last year at MGM, Hanna branched out into television, forming the short-lived company Shield Productions with fellow animator Jay Ward,^{[29] :27–29} who had created the series Crusader Rabbit. Their partnership soon ended, and in 1957 Hanna reteamed with his former partner Joseph Barbera to produce cartoons for television and theatrical release.^[11] The two brought different skills to the company; Barbera was a skilled gag writer and sketch artist, while Hanna had a gift for timing, story construction, and recruiting top artists. Major business decisions would be made together, though each year the title of president alternated between them.^{[1]:77, 146[4]:120[28]} A coin toss determined that Hanna would have precedence in the naming of the new company,^[1]:Foreword first called H-B Enterprises but soon changed to Hanna–Barbera Productions.^[8][28]

The first offering from the new company was The Ruff & Reddy Show,^[11] a series which detailed the friendship between a dog and cat.^[9] Despite a lukewarm response for their first theatrical venture, Loopy De Loop, Hanna–Barbera soon established themselves with two successful television series: The Huckleberry Hound Show and The Yogi Bear Show. A 1960 survey showed that half of the viewers of Huckleberry Hound were adults. This prompted the company to create a new animated series, The Flintstones.^[27][30] A parody of The Honeymooners, the new show followed a typical Stone Age family with home appliances, talking animals, and celebrity guests. With an audience of both children and adults, The Flintstones became the first animated prime-time show to be a hit.^[9][27][31] Fred Flintstone's signature exclamation "yabba dabba doo" soon entered everyday usage,^[27][32] and the show boosted the studio to the top of the TV cartoon field.^[14] The company later produced a space-age version of The Flintstones, known as The Jetsons. Although both shows reappeared in the 1970s and 1980s, The Flintstones was far more popular.^[9]

By the late 1960s, Hanna–Barbera Productions was the most successful television animation studio in the business. The Hanna–Barbera studio produced over 3000 animated half-hour television shows.^[27] Among the more than 100 cartoon series and specials they produced were: Atom Ant, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy (an imitation of the earlier Spike and Tyke MGM cartoons), Jonny Quest, Josie and the Pussycats, Magilla Gorilla, Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks, Quick Draw McGraw, and Top Cat.^[7][26] Top Cat was based on Phil Silvers's character Sgt. Bilko,^[33] though it has been erroneously reported that Sgt. Bilko was the basis for Yogi Bear.^[18] The Hanna–Barbera studio also produced Scooby-Doo (1969–1986) and The Smurfs (1981–1989).^[11] The company also produced animated specials based on Alice in Wonderland, Jack and the Beanstalk, Cyrano de Bergerac as well as the feature-length film Charlotte's Web (1973).^{[4]:228–230}

As popular as their cartoons were with 1960s audiences, they were disliked by artists.^[34] Television programs had lower budgets than theatrical animation, and this economic reality caused many animation studios to go out of business in the 1950s and 1960s, putting many people in the industry out of work.^[18][30] Hanna–Barbera was key in the development of limited animation^{[35]:75[36]:54}, which allowed television animation to be more cost-effective, but often sacrificed artistic quality.^{[7][11][15][26]} Hanna and Barbera had first experimented with these techniques in the early days of Tom and Jerry.^{[4]:74, 115} To reduce the cost of each episode, shows often focused more on character dialogue than detailed animation.^[18][34] The number of drawings for a seven-minute cartoon decreased from 14,000 to nearly 2,000, and the company implemented innovative techniques such as rapid background changes to improve viewing.^[30] Critics criticized the change from lush, detailed animation to flat characters with repetitive motion.^[34] Barbera once said that their choice was to adapt to the television budgets or change careers.^{[35]:75[36]:54} The new style did not limit the success of their animated shows, enabling Hanna–Barbera to stay in business, providing employment to many who would otherwise have been out of work.^[30] Limited animation became the standard for television animation, and continues to be used today in television programs such as The Simpsons and South Park.^[2][34]

In 1966, Hanna–Barbera Productions was sold to Taft Broadcasting (renamed Great American Communications in 1987) for $12 million.^{[4]:162, 235–236} Hanna and Barbera remained at the head of the company until 1991.^{[37]:16[38][39]:151} At that point, the company was sold to the Turner Broadcasting System for an estimated $320 million,^[40] which itself merged with Time Warner, owners of Warner Bros., in 1996.^[9] This began a close association with the Cartoon Network. Hanna and Barbera continued to advise their former company and periodically worked on new Hanna–Barbera shows, including the The Cartoon Cartoon Show series and hit silver screen versions of The Flintstones (1994) and Scooby-Doo (2002).^[12][27][41]

Death[link]

Hanna died of throat cancer on March 22, 2001, in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, California and was interred in Ascension Cemetery in Lake Forest, California.^[42] After Hanna's death, Cartoon Network aired a 20-second segment with black dots tracing Hanna's portrait with the words "We'll miss you - Cartoon Network" fading in on the right-hand side.

Legacy[link]

Most of the cartoons Hanna and Barbera created revolved around close friendship or partnership; this theme is evident with Tom and Jerry, Yogi Bear and Boo Boo, Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble, Ruff and Reddy, The Jetsons family and the friends in Scooby-Doo. These may have been a reflection of the close business friendship and partnership that Hanna and Barbera shared for almost 60 years.^[1]:214 Although their professional strengths, weaknesses, and personalities meshed perfectly,^{[2][14][17][27]} Hanna and Barbera traveled in completely different social circles. Hanna's circle of personal friends primarily included other animators; Barbera had an affinity for Hollywood's celebrity society.^[1]:52–53 Their division of work roles complemented each other but they rarely talked outside of work since Hanna was interested in the outdoors and Barbera liked beaches and good food and drink.^{[4]:120–121} Nevertheless, in their long partnership, in which they worked with over 2000 animated characters, Hanna and Barbera rarely exchanged a cross word.^[11] Barbera said: "We understood each other perfectly, and each of us had deep respect for the other's work."^[20]