As noted in the earlier post on this series' 1960 episodes, The Flintstones was considered a trail-blazing
concept when it first appeared in the fall of 1960--the first animated series
to air in prime-time and a clever satire on the progress of the Space Age in
its depiction of modern conveniences having low-tech equivalents during the
Stone Age. By its July 1, 1961 cover story, TV
Guide was touting Hanna-Barbera as the wave of the future--the article
notes that when The Flintstones
debuted it was the only show of its kind, but due to its early success there
would be 5 animated series in prime-time starting in the new fall 1961 season.
The hindsight of history shows us that none of those other series, including
Hanna-Barbera's Top Cat, would match
the success of The Flintstones, and
that its success had already peaked as well--though it ranked 18th on the
Nielsen ratings list for the 1960-61 season, it fell to 21st the following
season, 30th in its third season, and out of the top 30 for the final three
seasons. Rather than being the forerunner of a new trend, The Flintstones was more of an outlier.
Even TV Guide saw
its appeal as short-lived: while reviewer Dwight Whitney lauded it as the lone
fresh entry amongst the new shows as of December 1960, critic Gilbert Seldes
was already calling it stale in his March 18, 1961 TV Guide review, saying that the series failed to measure up to
feature film cartoons from Walt Disney, earlier Mr. Magoo shorts, or
live-action sit-coms like I Love Lucy
and Father Knows Best. While Seldes approved of the overall concept,
he claimed that there were better-drawn commercial cartoons than what The Flintstones offered. However, this
lack of polish is exactly what Hanna and Barbera cited in the July 1, 1961
article as their reason for making TV cartoons economically feasible. They
claimed that their work for MGM before setting up their own shop, as well as
other cartoon-producers of the time, like Disney, spent too much time and money
trying to make animated characters move like real ones when cruder movement was
sufficient to make the animation work. But there is really no counter argument
for Selden's other claim that the series' plots were stale--unlike the
imaginative stories on the Rocky and Bullwinkle series, The Flintstones seemed satisfied to recycle hackneyed situations
from countless live-action sit-coms.
What is perhaps more surprising is that some of the
secondary characters seen as integral parts of the Bedrock landscape were
rather unsettled well after the series launched. The Flintstone's pet dinosaur
Dino wasn't firmly established until March 1961. The initial opening title
sequence shows Fred driving home from work, entering the house to grab a plate
of food from Wilma before settling in front of the TV. When Fred enters the
house a blue, not magenta-colored, dinosaur is curled up in his chair in front
of the TV. Hearing Fred coming, the dinosaur quickly scrambles down and curls
up next to the chair. This sequence was not changed until Season 3, even after
Dino was established as being magenta-colored. The first time we see Dino
perform his signature move of knocking Fred down when he walks up the sidewalk
on his way home from work and then licking his face is in the episode
"Arthur Quarry's Dance Class" (January 13, 1961). But two episodes
later in "The Snorkasaurus Hunter" (January 27, 1961) the Flintstones
and Rubbles go on a hunting trip dreamed up by Fred as a way to save money on
groceries. While the wives play cards, Fred and Barney go hunting for a
Snorkasaurus, a purple dinosaur that looks much like Dino. After the
Snorkasaurus outwits the men by hiding in one of their tents, Wilma takes pity
on the animal and persuades Fred to let her take it home as a pet rather than
killing and eating it. She names the Snorkosaurus Dino and soon has it
performing all of her house chores, such as vacuuming and ironing. Never mind
the disturbing implications of planning to kill and eat an animal that later
becomes the equivalent of the family dog, Dino is never again shown as being
purple and never does housework after this episode. The next time we see Dino
is in "The Long, Long Weekend" (March 10, 1961) when he has returned
to being magenta-colored and knocking Fred down when he comes home, which would
be his role from then on.
Fred's boss is another character who was unsettled until well
into Season 2. In "The Tycoon" (February 24, 1961) Fred asks his boss
Mr. Boulder for a leave of absence so that he can secretly impersonate an AWOL
business executive who is a dead ringer for Fred and whose assistants want him
to pretend to be so that his empire doesn't crumble. In "The Good
Scout" (March 24, 1961) Fred's boss is Joe Rockhead, a name that would be
used for other characters in later episodes. In "Flintstone of
Prinstone" (November 3, 1961), Fred's boss is Mr. Slate, a Prinstone
graduate whom Fred is trying to impress by studying at his alma mater. Mr.
Slate is also his boss in "The Beauty Pageant" (December 1, 1961), in
which Fred and Barney get roped into judging a beauty contest because no one
else wants the trouble that would come with such a duty. But in "The
Masquerade Ball" (December 8, 1961), Fred's boss is back to being Mr.
Rockhead. Though actor John Stephenson is best remembered as the voice of Mr.
Slate, that role was not firmly established on The Flintstones until at least 1962.
Things were not helped when the legendary Mel Blanc, voice
of Barney Rubble, suffered a near fatal car accident on January 24, 1961, which
left him in a coma for two weeks. While he was recovering, the versatile Daws
Butler voiced Barney for a few episodes before the producers were able to set
up recording equipment in Blanc's hospital room and later at his home to allow
him to continue recording episodes with the other cast members at his bedside. Blanc's
temporary absence from the program proved to be only a minor hiccup in the
grand scheme of the series. Still, for a series being touted as a trailblazer
in the animation field, The Flintstones
experienced an unusual amount of uncertainty at the height of its popularity.
What the series probably did best was satirize contemporary
culture by showing that there's nothing new under the sun. As noted above, the
clever recreation of modern conveniences in Stone Age clothing was what
received the most praise. But the series also poked fun at other television
programs, music fads, and celebrity culture. Crime dramas were a favorite
subject of ridicule, even on live-action sit-coms such as Father Knows Best and My Three Sons. In "Love Letters on the Rocks" (February 17, 1961)
Fred meets up with a private detective named Perry Gunnite to find out who
penned love poetry to Wilma he found in one of their end tables. As soon as
Gunnite walks into the bar where they are meeting, he is attacked and pummeled
by some mobster's henchmen, an obvious dig at Peter Gunn's near-constant
thrashings on his own program. "Alvin Brickrock Presents" (October 6,
1961) pokes fun at Alfred Hitchcock's suspense series by having the Flintstones
live next door to an archaeologist who looks and sounds like Hitchcock and whom
they suspect of having murdered his wife and disposed of the body (Rear Window anyone?). And "The Soft
Touchables" (October 27, 1961) is a transparent lampoon of The Untouchables in which Fred and Barney decide to open their own
detective agency and become dupes for a gang of mobster bank robbers. 
Fickle music fans are parodied in "The Girls Night
Out" (January 6, 1961) in which Fred becomes an overnight sensation after
recording a hipsterized version of "Listen to the Mockingbird" at an
amusement park recording booth. After he leaves the record behind, a teenager finds
it and forwards it to a record executive. When the record company finds Fred's
true identity, a Svengali figure named The Colonel (modeled after Elvis'
Colonel Tom Parker) transforms Fred into Hi Fye and launches a nationwide tour.
Wilma soon grows tired of the rigors of touring and even though The Colonel
assures her that Fred's fame won't last, she decides to end things right away
by blowing his cover and telling his fans that he is really a square, which
sends them off in search of the next insta-star. The music business gets
another ribbing in the first episode of Season 2, "The Hit
Songwriters" (September 15, 1961), in which Hoagy Carmichael plays himself
and helps the boys write a song based on Fred's signature phrase "Yabba
Dabba Do" after the boys' first attempt, a blatant rip-off of
"Stardust," is rejected by a music publisher. Carmichael injects a
note of realism into the plot when he tells Fred that only 1 out of every 5,000
song written becomes a hit, advice that doesn't seem to deter Fred until Wilma
puts her hand over his mouth to quash any further attempt to collaborate with
Barney on new songs.
Movie stars are also fair game in "The Rock Quarry
Story" (October 20, 1961) in which movie star Rock Quarry (i.e., Hudson)
grows tired of being hounded by adoring fans and decides to go incognito to
experience real life. At first he is thrilled with the novelty of bowling and
shooting pool with Fred and Barney, who never recognize him since he uses his birth
name of Gus Schultz. However, after the novelty wears off, Quarry can't seem to
convince anyone that he really is a movie star until he fortunately runs into
his boss and is returned to the fans he was tired of just a few days before.
While The Flintstones' producers were
fond of poking fun at the fickleness of fans and the elusiveness of fame,
perhaps they were hedging their bets against their own popularity, which they
knew too well had an inevitable expiration date. Still, what they accomplished
in keeping an animated series on prime-time TV for 6 seasons was something
unmatched for several decades.
The Actors
For the biographies of Alan Reed, Mel Blanc, Jean Vander
Pyl, and Bea Benaderet, see the 1960 post for The Flintstones. For the biography of Daws Butler, see the 1960
post for Rocky and His Friends. For
the biography of Hal Smith, see the 1961 post for The Andy Griffith Show.
John Stephenson
Hailing from Kenosha, Wisconsin, John Winfield Stephenson
first took up acting while attending small Ripon College before matriculating
to the University of Wisconsin to study law. His studies were interrupted by
World War II during which he served in the U.S. Army Air Force and earned a
Distinguished Service Cross. After the war he attended Northwestern University,
where he earned a master's degree in speech and drama and worked in Chicago
radio. After visiting Chicago friends in Hollywood, he found work out west on
the radio shows It's Always Sunday
and The Count of Monte Cristo. He
then became the voice for sponsor Philip Morris in introducing episodes of I Love Lucy on television starting in
1951. Soon thereafter he also began appearing in acting roles on various TV
shows and in feature films such as Day of
Triumph, Strange Lady in Town,
and The Looters. He appeared in
several episodes of the TV drama Treasury
Men in Action, The George Burns and
Gracie Allen Show, and Perry Mason
and had a recurring role as Roger Crutcher on the Jackie Cooper series The People's Choice from 1955-58. His long and prolific career as a voice actor
for animated series began with his first appearance on the 11th episode of The Flintstones, "The Gold
Champion," which aired on December 9, 1960. In all, he appeared in 73
episodes during the show's 6-year run, most notably as Fred's boss Mr. Slate.
After becoming ensconced at Hanna-Barbera due to his work on
The Flintstones, Stephenson was then
cast as ladies man Fancy-Fancy on the 1961-62 animated series Top Cat, followed by the role of Dr.
Benton C. Quest on Jonny Quest and
Colonel Fusby on The Peter Potamus Show.
Concurrently he continued appearing in live-action series such as The Real McCoys, The Beverley Hillbillies, Hogan's
Heroes, and serving as the episode-ending narrator on Dragnet. But by the late 1960s his voice acting work far surpassed
his live-action credits on series such as Young
Samson & Goliath, The Wacky Races,
The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, and
The Adventures of Gulliver. The 1970s
were just as busy with work on Where's
Huddles?, Scooby Doo, Where Are You?,
Help!...It's the Hair Bear Bunch, The Houndcats, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, Inch High Private Eye, Super
Friends, Jeannie, Dinky Dog, and The Fantastic Four. The 1980s, likewise, included considerable
voice-acting work on The Incredible Hulk,
The Dukes, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, The Littles, G.I. Joe, The Smurfs, and The Transformers, to name but a few. He continued to find work in
the various Flintstones and Scooby-Doo revivals up until 2010. He
contracted Alzheimer's disease a couple of years later and died May 15, 2015 at
age 91.
Don Messick
Donald Earl Messick was born in Buffalo, NY, but his family
soon thereafter moved to Baltimore before relocating again in rural Maryland. Messick
grew up listening to classic radio programs, such as Fibber McGee and Molly and Jack
Benny. By age 13 he had developed his own ventriloquist act and two years
later landed his own radio program on WBOC in Salisbury, Maryland. After
graduating from high school at age 16, he moved back to Baltimore to study
acting while living with his grandparents. At age 18 his father was killed in a
freak accident when a flagpole he and two other men were taking down came in
contact with electrical wires, killing all three men. Soon afterward Messick
was drafted into the army and brought along his ventriloquist dummy, replete
with an army uniform made by his mother, which got him assigned to Special
Services as an entertainer for the troops. After the war, Messick first
relocated to San Francisco, where an Army buddy produced a radio program. He
then moved to Hollywood and convinced a theatrical agent to represent his
ventriloquist act before landing the role of Raggedy Andy on The Raggedy Ann radio show. But after being
noticed in a local talent show, he went on tour with a production company doing
his ventriloquist act again and then tried it on the east coast before
returning west to work on live puppet shows. Once puppet shows began being
replaced in theaters by cartoon shows, Messick began introducing himself to the
local animation studios, which is where he met William Hanna and Joseph Barbera
just as they were about to leave MGM and start their own studio. But before MGM
shuttered its animation studio, Messick met Daws Butler, who introduced him to
Tex Avery, who eventually hired him to voice Droopy Dog after Bill Thompson
left the show. In 1957 when Hanna and Barbera started producing their first
made-for-TV animated series, Ruff and
Reddy, they hired Messick to voice Ruff and Professor Gizmo and Butler to
voice Reddy. The two would be paired in numerous other Hanna-Barbera
productions, including The Huckleberry
Hound Show as Pixie and Dixie and The
Yogi Bear Show with Butler playing Yogi and Messick playing Boo Boo and
Ranger Smith. When Hanna-Barbera launched their first prime-time cartoon series
with The Flintstones Butler and
Messick were again called on to provide a variety of supporting characters.
Messick continued working for Hanna-Barbera during and after
The Flintstones' 6-year run,
providing various voices on Top Cat,
Mr. Twiddles on The New Hanna-Barbera
Cartoon Series, taking over for John Stephenson as Dr. Benton C. Quest on Jonny Quest, playing So-So on The Peter Potamus Show, and Mr. Peebles
on The Magilla Gorilla Show. When The Flintstones added children to the
lineup in 1963, Messick provided the voice of Bamm-Bamm Rubble. He would go on
to play Atom Ant, Shag Rugg, and Precious Pupp on The Atom Ant Show, Blip, Bronto, and Zorak on the original Space Ghost, Kaboobie on Shazzan, Vulturo and Falcon 7 on Birdman, Snork, Aramis, and Professor
Carter on The Banana Splits Adventure
Hour, Dick Dastardly's sidekick dog Muttley on The Wacky Races, Tagg and Eager on The Adventures of Gulliver, Fumbles on Where's Huddles?, and Scooby Doo on Scooby Doo, Where Are You? In the 1970s he would also provide voices for Josie and the Pussycats, The Houndcats, Inch High Private Eye, Dinky
Dog, The Fantastic Four, and Godzilla, to name but a few. The 1980s
saw him playing Papa Smurf on The Smurfs
as well as appearing in The Transformers,
Paw Paws, Foofur, and Pound Puppies
along with various specials and reboots of Yogi
Bear, Scooby Doo, Jonny Quest, and The Jetsons. He also played a voice actor like himself on the
live-action series The Duck Factory in
1984. He continued working until suffering a stroke in 1996, his last credits
coming on yet another Jonny Quest revival, The
Real Adventures of Jonny Quest. A second stroke on October 24, 1997 killed
him at age 71.
Notable Guest Stars
Because it was an animated series, The Flintstones did not have many guest stars known from other
shows, except those listed below.
Season 1, Episode 19, "The Hot Piano": Frank
Nelson (shown on the left, see the biography section for the 1960 post on The Jack Benny Program) plays a music store clerk.
Season 1, Episode 20, "The Hypnotist": Howard
McNear (see the biography section for the 1961 post on The Andy Griffith Show) plays a veterenarian.
Season 1, Episode 26, "The Good Scout": Lucille
Bliss (the voice of Crusader Rabbit on Crusader
Rabbit, Smurfette on The Smurfs
and various Smurf specials, and Ms. Bitters on Invader ZIM) plays boy scout Hugo.
Season 2, Episode 1, "The Hit Songwriters": Hoagy
Carmichael (see the biography section for the 1960 post on Laramie) plays himself.
Season 2, Episode 3, "The Missing Bus": Sandra
Gould (Mildred Webster on I Married Joan
and Gladys Kravitz on Bewitched)
plays schoolgirl's mother Mrs. Gypsum. Pattie Chapman (Miss Duffy on Duffy's Tavern) plays a nurse.
Season 2, Episode 4, "Alvin Brickrock Presents":
Elliott Field (shown on the right, the voice of Blabber and the narrator on Quick Draw McGraw) plays archaeologist Alvin Brickrock.
Season 2, Episode 5, "Fred Flintstone Woos Again":
Frank Nelson (see "The Hot Piano" above) plays a hotel clerk.
Season 2, Episode 7, "The Soft Touchables": Sandra
Gould (see "The Missing Bus" above) plays female con artist Dagmar.
Season 2, Episode 9, "The Little White Lie":
Sandra Gould (see "The Missing Bus" above) plays newspaper columnist
Daisy Kilgranite.
Season 2, Episode 10, "Social Climbers": Paula
Winslowe (shown on the left, played Martha Conklin on Our Miss
Brooks) plays Wilma's high school classmate Emmy Glutzrock.
Season 2, Episode 11, "The Beauty Contest": Leo
DeLyon (the composer on It's a Business
and the voice of Spook and Brain on Top
Cat) plays gangster Big Louie.
