The Jetsons (1962)

 

For a series that to this day is considered hugely influential in the way we envision the future, The Jetsons has an underwhelming history and is interesting today primarily for its depiction of devices the creators imagined for the year 2062. The series was the third attempt by the Hanna-Barbera studio to create a prime-time animated series, after the success of The Flintstones in 1960 and the failure of Top Cat in 1961. Since The Flintstones had caught on with its humorous depiction of stone-age versions of mid-century appliances and other devices, Hanna-Barbera decided to try the same approach in the opposite direction--the future. So, rather than dinosaurs performing the tasks that by 1960 were handled electronically, The Jetsons showed the same functions performed by automation and robots. As Matt Novak points out in his 2012 Smithsonian Magazine article "50 Years of The Jetsons: Why the Show Still Matters," many of the show's futuristic inventions, such as moving sidewalks, were created elsewhere had already been published in other forums. Novak says that what The Jetsons did was "condense and package those inventions into entertaining 25-minute blocks for impressionable, media-hungry kids to consume." But the program wasn't initially intended just for kids, since it was aired in prime-time, and therein lies the story of why, like Top Cat, it failed to catch on initially.

Though it was the first prime-time program offered in color by ABC, as Novak observes, only 3% of American households had color TVs by 1962. Furthermore, since it was the first ABC color program, ABC allowed individual affiliates to decide whether to broadcast it in color or black-and-white, and only a handful of larger markets chose the color option, meaning that very few people saw it in color during its initial run. Novak maintains that the program loses much of its futuristic appeal when viewed in black-and-white. On top of this, it was slotted into the Sunday evening schedule opposite the already-popular Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color  and Dennis the Menace. Consequently, the show was canceled after its initial 24 episodes, though ABC continued to re-run episodes until the new fall schedule began in September 1963. However, the show was then aired in syndication on Saturday mornings on ABC the following season and thereafter on Saturday mornings on NBC off and on into the mid-1980s when it was rebooted for two new seasons. So while its initial run hardly made a dent on the TV landscape, its long life on Saturday mornings allowed it to influence an entire generation of impressionable children, with an increasing number of them having color TVs as the years went by, which helps to explain how a 1-year flop became an icon of futurism.

As for the content of the show itself, it's a typical Hanna-Barbera production, meaning that it borrows heavily from worn-out plots and character types and even its satirical digs at other shows and general situations are hardly innovative. Whereas Hanna-Barbera had based The Flintstones characters on those from Jackie Gleason's Honeymooners and the Top Cat characters on those from The Phil Silvers Show (even casting Silvers alum Maurice Gosfield as Benny the Ball), The Jetsons is not clearly based on a particular family sit-com, other than the character of Rosey the Robot, who has been compared to the title character from Hazel in that she is an older model with a Brooklyn accent. In a case of serendipitous coincidence, Shirley Booth's Hazel has a nightmare in which she is replaced by Robby the Robot (from Forbidden Planet fame) in the second episode from Season 2 of Hazel, which aired on September 27, 1962, just four days after the first episode of The Jetsons, which introduced the character of Rosey.

The second episode of The Jetsons, "A Date With Jet Screamer" (September 30, 1962) pokes fun at rock 'n' roll teen idols (a la Ricky Nelson of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet) and their fans when Judy Jetson enters a song-writing contest and wins a date with the titular Jet Screamer. Her father George tries to foil her chances of winning by intercepting her own song submission and replacing it with a language Elroy developed for talking to his friends in code made up of nonsense words like "Oop" and "Eek." The big joke is that the nonsensical song wins the contest, a clear jab at rock 'n' roll songs like Gene Vincent's "Be Bop a Lula," which already had been heavily parodied by this time. And other sit-coms, like The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Donna Reed Show, and especially The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis had already covered the territory of lingo-laden pop stars, to say nothing of the Edd "Kookie" Byrnes character from 77 Sunset Strip.

"Las Venus" (December 16, 1962) recycles the worn-out joke of a man trying to keep two dates with two different women at the same time, a gag used heavily in comedy feature films for decades. In this case, George has promised to take Jane to Las Venus for a second honeymoon at the same time that his boss Mr. Spacely has ordered him to meet and close the deal for a lucrative contract with female executive and Marlene Dietrich sound-a-like G.G. Galaxy. George has to zip back and forth between two hotels dancing with each of the women and putting them in an extended dance spin so that he can dash back to the other hotel and resume his date with the other. Of course, he can keep up the ruse only so long before Jane discovers he has been spending time with another woman. Naturally, Ms. Galaxy assures Jane that George has been all business with her, and she is willing to sign the contract with Spacely nonetheless so that we get the expected and inevitable happy ending. A similar type of plot is featured in "Jetson's Nite Out" (October 7, 1962), only this time George is joined by his boss Cosmo Spacely in tricking their wives so that they can attend a football playoff game. Spacely tells his wife that he cannot attend a concert for which she has tickets because he has to tend to his gravely ill employee Jetson, while George tells Jane he can't attend the PTA meeting with her because he has to work late. Eventually they are both found out because the game is televised, and George has the winning ticket for the stadium's one millionth customer, meaning he winds up on screen where he is seen by Jane and Mrs. Spacely. If this feels like a story you have seen elsewhere, either on another sit-com or in the movies, it's because it is.

Not only did The Jetsons borrow liberally from other sources for their stories--they also borrowed from themselves, regurgitating the same story twice within the first 15 episodes. In "The Flying Suit" (November 4, 1962), Spacely's chief rival Cogswell's Cosmic Cogs develops a flying suit that can be controlled and navigated by the wearer's brain waves. George winds up getting the suit through a mix-up at the cleaners, and Spacely believes that George has invented a way to enable human flight, while George believes his newfound ability comes from an invention by Elroy, who coincidentally has been trying to invent a pill to enable humans to fly. Meanwhile Cogswell's test pilot Harlan returns from the cleaners with George's ordinary suit which obviously does not fly, and the planned demonstration of Cogswell's new invention in front of his board of directors is a disaster. When Spacely then tries to demonstrate what he believes are Elroy's flying pills to his board of directors, he also falls flat, literally. No one realizes that the real flying suit still works, and when the clerk from the cleaners returns the two mixed-up suits to their rightful owners, Cogswell tells Harlan to simply throw the real flying suit away. About a month later, we get "Astro's Top Secret" (December 9, 1962) in which the Jetson's dog Astro swallows Elroy's toy remote-controlled spaceship and is thereby able to fly, though he is navigated by the toy remote control. After Spacely and Cogswell have a contentious game of golf, which ends with Spacely threatening to drive Cogswell out of business, Cogswell assigns Harlan to spy on Jetson to see if there is any real threat behind Spacely's bluster. When Harlan sees Astro flying around the Jetson's apartment and reports back to Cogswell, the latter has Harlan kidnap Astro to try to discover his secret. Naturally, his efforts to get Astro to reveal his secret are for naught, and Cogswell phones Spacely to surrender in their business war, much to Spacely's surprise. Astro is navigated back home by George with the remote-control device. When Spacely and Cogswell then convene at George's apartment to witness his ground-breaking invention, George turns off the remote, causing Astro to fall to the ground, dislodging the toy spaceship to reveal that there was no great invention after all. The particulars may be a little different, but these two episodes are essentially the same story, aired 5 weeks apart.

Besides repeating the same story in such a short span of time, the show seemed to be made up anew each week without much thought given to consistency from one episode to the next. There are several early episodes featuring automated food-dispensing systems, but they appear different each time. In the debut episode "Rosey the Robot" (September 23, 1962) a fair amount  of time is devoted to the "food-a-rac-a-cycle," which dispenses fully cooked meals at the touch of a button, only the Jetson's model is not working properly, and George complains about having to replace it before he has even paid off the old one. But by the next episode, "A Date With Jet Screamer"," they have a different-looking model that Jane programs with computer punch cards. By the 15th episode, "Test Pilot" (December 30, 1962), Jane is making breakfast with yet another model that has a telephone-like rotary dial and spits out an entire meal in the form of a pill. If we accept the premise from the first episode that these appliances are expensive enough to require long-term financing, it seems impossible that they would be on their third different model in the span of three months. Likewise, George and Jane's bedroom accommodations seem to change from one week to the next--sometimes they have separate beds, sometimes they sleep together in the same bed, and in the first episode we see only George in a single bed that transforms into a toaster-like device that pops him out when he won't wake up. Similarly, after much is made in the first episode of Jane wanting to buy a robot maid to relieve her of the strain of pushing buttons to clean the house and operating the food-a-rac-a-cycle, she is back to doing her own housework in the next episode. In fact, Rosey appears in only two of the first 15 episodes. In short, the creators of The Jetsons seem not to have had a clearly defined vision of the details of future life before embarking on their journey (or felt the need for a continuity supervisor); they simply made it up as they went along.

And yet despite its rehashing of old stories and lack of detailed continuity, the one prescient prediction about the future on The Jetsons is its depiction of how labor-saving devices would make people lazier, growing more reliant on having work done for them and therefore becoming less willing to do anything for themselves. In the opening episode, we see Jane doing a TV workout program that consists of only exercising her index finger to make it strong enough to push buttons all day. In another episode George's morning exercises consist of watching a video of him running and performing other exercises. Though his work week has shrunk to just three days, George is constantly going to Spacely to get the afternoon off or a vacation approved. Jane likewise is overcome by having to push a few buttons to perform housework, so she feels the need to get a robot maid. But otherwise the characters all act just like other sit-com characters of the early 1960s: George aspires to career advancement and is constantly being promoted to Vice President, then fired, then rehired back to his old job (similar to his being sucked around the treadmill in the closing credits); Jane loves to shop and spend money and drives dangerously; Judy has a new boyfriend every week and is obsessed with teen idol singers; and Elroy is preoccupied with TV super heroes ("Elroy's Pal" [December 23, 1962]), trying to invent things, including his secret coded language ("A Date With Jet Screamer"), and playing with his dog. In other words, the underlying theme from The Jetsons seems to be that despite all the technological innovations that could appear a century into the future, humans will still be the same. Depending on your current view of humanity, that sentiment is either reassuring or severely depressing.

The theme song and scores for individual episodes of The Jetsons  were composed by Hoyt Curtin, who was profiled in the 1961 post on Top Cat.

The complete series has been released on DVD by Warner Home Video.

The Actors

For the biography of Daws Butler, see the biography section in the 1960 post for Rocky and His Friends. For the biographies of Mel Blanc and Jean Van Der Pyl, see the biography section in the 1960 post for The Flintstones. For the biography of Don Messick, see the biography section in the 1961 post for The Flintstones.

George O'Hanlon

George O'Hanlon was born in Coney Island, New York on November 23, 1912, 15 years after his cousin Virginia became a cultural icon for writing a letter to a newspaper asking if there really was a Santa Claus, prompting the editorial response "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus." The O'Hanlon family had a long history in the entertainment business dating back to his grandmother performing as a dance hall girl at the Birdcage Theatre in Tombstone, Arizona during the days of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. O'Hanlon's parents were also both entertainers: his mother Lulu Beeson was a dancer in the burlesque theater circuit, and his father George, whose stage name was Sam Rice, owned a theater in Providence, Rhode Island where he also produced and directed. Consequently young George grew up around the theater and became a vaudeville performer himself at a young age while also being mentored by Lou Costello of Abbott & Costello fame. The family lost the theater during the Great Depression and headed out to Hollywood, where young George began to find work as an extra in movie productions, including working as a chorus boy in various Busby Berkeley films. Thanks to a helpful casting director at Warner Brothers he won a scholarship to the prestigious Bliss Haydens drama school. Finally in 1942 he got his big break when he was hired by director Richard L. Bare to play the everyday average Joe McDoakes in a short titled So You Want to Give Up Smoking. Based on this performance, he was signed to a contract by Warner Brothers, but after acting in one more McDoakes short, he was drafted into the Army and served three years during World War II. After the War, O'Hanlon returned to Warner Brothers, which would produce 61 more McDoakes shorts through 1956 with O'Hanlon now co-writing the scripts with Bare, thereby launching a long and prolific career as a writer. At the same time, O'Hanlon continued getting bit parts, sometimes uncredited, in feature films such as The Spirit of West Point, Heading for Heaven, Are You With It?, The Counterfeiters, and June Bride. In November 1948, O'Hanlon spun off the Joe McDoakes character on his own radio show, The George O'Hanlon Show, with Willard Waterman playing his boss. By the early 1950s he began to find infrequent guest spots on TV programs such as My Little Margie, The Dennis Day Show, and The Loretta Young Show. In 1954 he began appearing as neighbor Calvin Dudley on the William Bendix sit-com The Life of Riley, a series for which he also wrote a screenplay to dip his foot into the TV screenplay business. He simultaneously appeared on other programs as a guest star, such as I Love Lucy, Sugarfoot, Maverick, How to Marry a Millionaire, and The Red Skelton Hour as well as the occasional B-movie, such as Kronos and Bop Girl Goes Calypso. But when he and Bare then tried to adapt the McDoakes character for television and produced a pilot in the hopes of landing a series, O'Hanlon was fired from The Life of Riley for moonlighting. In 1959 he tried his hand at not only co-writing the script but also directing the feature film The Rookie, starring Tommy Noonan (who was his co-writer on the script), Peter Marshall, and Julie Newmar. Though he long thought he was not suited for work as a voice actor, he auditioned for the part of Fred Flintstone with Hanna-Barbera but lost out to Alan Reed (one account says that he was going to be cast for the role until an influential sponsor insisted he wasn't right for the part, which led to Reed being cast). He found more work writing scripts for other series such as 77 Sunset Strip, The Ann Sothern Show, and The Gallant Men before Hanna-Barbera came back to him to have him audition for the part of George Jetson.

Though The Jetsons would make O'Hanlon a TV icon, the original series lasted only 24 episodes, and he was again looking for work, acting in series such as The Roaring '20s, Mister Ed, and The Lieutenant while also co-writing the screenplay for the feature film For Those Who Think Young with his brother James and Dan Beaumont. In 1964 he was cast in a supporting role as cab driver Artie Burns on The Reporter starring Harry Guardino, but the series lasted only a single season. In the latter 1960s he wrote for Petticoat Junction, Gilligan's Island, Love, American Style and a couple of different Jackie Gleason series while also appearing in some of the same episodes as well as on Marcus Welby, M.D., The Name of the Game, and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. In the early 1970s he had minor roles in the Walt Disney feature films The Million Dollar Duck, Now You See Him, Now You Don't, and Charley and the Angel as well as appearing on TV programs such as Adam-12, The Partridge Family, The Odd Couple, and Mission: Impossible. Then in 1976 he suffered a stroke while undergoing bypass surgery, which left him nearly blind with compromised short-term memory. It appeared that he would never work again, and his wife Nancy supported the family as a cosmetics company executive. Relegated to watching TV and sitting around the Motion Picture Hospital, O'Hanlon became obsessed with bringing back The Jetsons, with Nancy later saying he claimed to have a premonition that it would be revived even though no one was talking about it at the time. Finally in the mid-1980s O'Hanlon's dream came true, and Hanna-Barbera called him to see if he would again play the part, even though it meant making substantial accommodations for him due to his vision and memory impairments. Someone would have to read his part to him line by line and have him repeat it back on tape. The process was laborious and exhausting for O'Hanlon, but he finally felt that he was doing something worthwhile. Hanna-Barbera produced two new seasons of the series in 1985-87 and then decided to do a feature film as well. But while recording his lines for the film, O'Hanlon was obviously in physical distress. Joe Barbera had him rushed to St. Joseph's hospital, where the doctor who examined him said he had only hours left to live. He passed away on February 11, 1989 at the age of 76.

Penny Singleton

Born Mariana Dorothy Agnes Letitia McNulty on September 15, 1908 in Philadelphia, her father Benny was a newspaper man there. She began her entertainment career as a child singing in silent movie theaters and joined the troupe The Kiddie Kabaret after completing the sixth grade, her last year of schooling, which she would later regret. After briefly attending Columbia University, she made her Broadway debut at age 17 in the production Sky High, billed as Dorothy McNulty, in 1925. She followed that with Sweetheart Time in early 1926 and then Jack Benny's The Great Temptations later that same year. Her performance in the 1927-29 production of Good News as a replacement for the character of Flo was her ticket to Hollywood as she reprised the role in the 1930 feature film version. But it took a while for her movie career to take off. After appearing in another 1930 feature, Love in the Rough, she returned to Broadway for the 1932 production Hey Nonny Nonny!  Other than appearing in a 1934 short, she did not return to films until 1936 in After the Thin Man playing the part of Polly. But she felt that the role typecast her and turned down other similar roles, which somewhat stifled her career. After appearing in two 1937 films--Vogues of 1938 and Sea Racketeers--she married dentist Laurence Scroggs Singleton. Even though the couple divorced two years later, she took his last name as part of a new stage name, along with the name Penny because as a girl she had collected pennies for good luck, first using the name for literary pieces she published in national magazines. The new name appeared to bring her instant good luck because in 1938 she appeared in no less than 11 feature films, including the role that would change her life, Blondie Bumstead in the first of 28 features in the Blondie series. If she had felt typecast before, she surely must have felt it now, as she played little else but Blondie for the next dozen years, the exceptions being the 1941 comedy Go West, Young Lady with Glenn Ford and Ann Miller and Young Widow in 1946, starring Jane Russell. At the same time, she was playing Blondie on the weekly radio program from 1939-50. And to cement her place in the Blondie universe, she even remarried to the film series producer Robert Sparks in 1941. But all of that changed when the series was finally retired in 1950. Anticipating the inevitable, she had devised the practice of paying actors residuals for repeat performances of their work and had a residuals clause written into her contract for the later Blondie films. Initially she had her own radio show on the NBC network, The Penny Singleton Show, and she made her television debut in an episode of Pulitzer Prize Playhouse , but these would be her last credits for over a decade. Nevertheless, she was determined to keep working and launched her own touring nightclub show which led to being included on USO tours during the Korean War. In the late 1950s she became very active in the American Guild of Variety Artists, first being elected to the union's board and then named President for 1958-59. She advocated for variety performers to be treated as employees by the producers who hired them, requiring that they be paid pensions and have unemployment insurance, but when she began questioning the inconsistencies she saw in the union's various reports, she was suspended, making her unable to work as a variety performer herself. She sued the union, and after Senator John J. McClellan began investigating unions practices, Singleton was called to testify at Congressional hearings and eventually won her lawsuit, gaining union reinstatement and $15,000 compensation in 1963. In the meantime, she was hired to voice Jane Jetson by Joe Barbera, who was thrilled to be able to use the iconic voice of Blondie for his space-age sit-com.

Though The Jetsons ran for only a single season of 24 episodes, the exposure resurrected Singleton's acting career, if only briefly. She was cast in an episode of Death Valley Days in 1963 and one for The Twilight Zone in 1964. Meanwhile, her husband Robert Sparks died in 1963. While her return to TV acting fizzled out quickly, she remained active in her work for AVGA, leading a strike for the Rockettes dancing troupe in 1967 over working conditions. In 1969 she was reelected President of AVGA and the next year led a strike by workers of the Disney on Parade  touring show in which the producers tried cutting costs by refusing to transport a support stage, thereby causing the dancers to suffer repeated shin splints because the main stage was being placed directly on top of concrete and had no give. In the early 1970s she returned to Broadway as a replacement for the role of Sue Smith in the 1971-73 production of No, No, Nanette. Though she only completed sixth grade in her formal education, she received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts Degree from St. John's University in 1974. Her career was once again revived with the reboot of The Jetsons in 1985, and though most of her late career was voicing Jane Jetson in a variety of TV movies, shorts, the 1990 feature film, and the series itself, it also led to her appearing in a 1986 episode of Murder, She Wrote. She died at age 95 on November 12, 2003.

Janet Waldo

Born Patricia Waldo in Grandview, Washington on February 4, 1919, her mother was a singer who trained at the Boston Conservatory of Music, and her father, Benjamin Franklin Waldo (purportedly a distant cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson) was a railroad man whose job required the family to move frequently. Her elder sister Elisabeth would become an award-winning violinist and composer, and while his daughters were still young her father decided he didn't want them to grow up to marry farmers, so he sold the family farm and moved the family to Seattle. Janet began her acting career in church plays and got her first big break while performing in a theatrical production while attending the University of Washington where alumnus Bing Crosby was staging a talent scout promotion. Crosby's scouts encouraged Waldo to enter their contest, which she won, the prize being a trip to Hollywood with Crosby and a movie contract with Paramount. However, Waldo recalled in a later interview with Leonard Maltin that the studio didn't really know what to do with her and that she never felt comfortable in front of the camera, so her early film career consisted largely of bit parts, beginning in 1938 with features such as Cocoanut Grove with Fred MacMurray and Harriet Nelson and Sing, You Sinners with Crosby, MacMurray, and Donald O'Connor. She played a number of hat check girls, receptionists, , and telephone operators as well as occasionally credited parts in features such as Tom Sawyer, Detective, Zaza, Persons in Hiding, The Star Maker, and What a Life. Though she worked her way up to leading roles in a few westerns by the early 1940s, such as One Man's Law, The Bandit Trail, and Land of the Open Range, her option was dropped around 1942. Crosby's brother Larry, producer of the radio program Kraft Music Hall, took her under his wing, and she began getting parts on radio with Lux Radio Theatre in 1941. Waldo says she felt right at home doing radio theater and would appear on dozens of programs, including occasionally on Bing Crosby's show. She says her big break came when she auditioned for and was cast on Edward G. Robinson's Big Town. But her biggest breakout came in 1944, first portraying dizzy teenager Emmy Lou on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (a role she would continue playing when the program transitioned to television in the 1950s) and taking over the title role on Meet Corliss Archer from Priscilla Lyon. She would continue playing Archer for almost a decade, until 1953, but did not follow the program when it transitioned to TV. In 1948 she married writer Robert E. Lee, who with his partner Jerome Lawrence would write Inherit the Wind, Auntie Mame, and First Monday in October, and she would appear on some of Lee's radio programs such as Favorite Story, playing opposite William Conrad in an adaptation of Wuthering Heights. She also co-starred with Jimmy Lydon on the short-lived teen radio series Young Love from 1949-50. Though she didn't do much live-action television, she had a memorable debut as star-struck teenager Peggy Dawson in a 1952 episode of I Love Lucy (she had appeared on Lucille Ball's radio program My Favorite Husband years earlier). She appeared 5 times as Emmy Lou in the first TV season of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet in 1953, and would continue to pop up as a variety of other characters over the show's 14 seasons, including one named Janet in the series' later years. But Waldo's career had hit something of a lull in the latter 1950s and early 1960s until she was tabbed to voice space-age teenager Judy Jetson in 1962.

Like others in The Jetsons' cast, Waldo became a regular member of the Hanna-Barbera voice cast for years afterward. She took over the role of Pearl Slaghoople on The Flintstones in 1964, voiced Granny Sweet on The Atom Ant Show and Precious Pupp, played Nancy on Shazzan, voiced Penelope Pitstop on Wacky Races and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, was Jenny Trent on Around the World in 79 Days and Cattanooga Cats, voiced Josie on Josie and the Pussycats and Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, was Widow Wilson on The Funky Phantom, played Mrs. Anders on Jeannie, and was Morticia Addams in the 1973 animated version of The Addams Family. And these are just the regular roles she voiced--she also provided various voices for many other Hanna-Barbera cartoons as well as voicing the character of Lanna Lang on a number of Superman-related cartoons, including The New Adventures of Superman, The Adventures of Superboy, and The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure. After the cancelation of The Jetsons, she also began to get more guest star work on live-action TV shows, such as Saints and Sinners, The Andy Griffith Show, and The Lucy Show. In 1964-65 she co-starred with Anthony Franciosa and Jack Soo on the sit-com Valentine's Day playing the role of Libby Freeman. In the mid- to late-60s she guest starred on Please Don't Eat the Daisies, Petticoat Junction, The F.B.I., The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Julia. From then on, she worked exclusively providing voices for dozens of animated TV series and TV movies, except for reprising her role as Amanda on the reunion TV movie Return to Mayberry in 1986. She returned as Judy Jetson when the series was rebooted in 1985 but was replaced for the 1990 feature film by pop star Tiffany at the direction of executives at Universal Pictures. The move backfired because loyal Jetsons fans were outraged, and by the time of the film's release, Tiffany's 15 minutes of fame had expired. Waldo, meanwhile, continued voicing various animated characters throughout the 1990s as well as performing in smaller Los Angeles-area theatrical productions and those of the California Artists Radio Theatre. In 2011 she was diagnosed with a benign but inoperable brain tumor and died 5 years later at the age of 97 on June 12, 2016.

Notable Guest Stars

Because it was an animated series, The Jetsons did not have guest stars but occasionally brought in other voice actors as listed below.

Season 1, Episode 2, "A Date With Jet Screamer": Howard Morris (shown on the left, appeared in Boys' Night Out, The Nutty Professor, and High Anxiety, played Ernest T. Bass on The Andy Griffith Show, and voiced Beetle Bailey, Gen. Halftrack, Otto, and Rocky on Beetle Bailey, Breezly Bruin on The Peter Potamus Show, Mr. Peebles on The Magilla Gorilla Show, Atom Ant on The Atom Ant Show, Jughead Jones, Big Moose, and Dilton Doiley on The Archie Show and Archie's Funhouse, Frankie, Wolfie, and Dr. Jekyll on Sabrina and the Groovie Goulies, Cousin Ambrose on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, and The Hamburglar on McDonaldland) plays teen idol Jet Screamer.

Season 1, Episode 6, "The Good Little Scouts": Dick Beals (shown on the right, voiced Gumby on The Adventures of Gumby and The Gumby Show, Buzzer Bell and Shrinking Violet on The Funny Company, Yank on Roger Ramjet, Davey Hanson on Davey and Goliath, Buzz Conroy on Frankenstein, Jr. and the Impossibles, Reggie Van Dough on The Richie Rich/Scooby Doo Show and Richie Rich, Scat on The Biskitts, and N.J. Normanmeyer on The Addams Family) plays Mr. Spacely's son Arthur.

Season 1, Episode 7, "The Flying Suit": Howard Morris (see "A Date With Jet Screamer" above) plays Cogswell test pilot Harlan.

Season 1, Episode 8, "Rosey's Boyrfriend": Howard Morris (see "A Date With Jet Screamer" above) plays Judy's boyfriend Booster Pendleton.

Season 1, Episode 11, "A Visit From Grandpa": Howard Morris (see "A Date With Jet Screamer" above) plays George's grandfather Montague Jetson. Bea Benaderet (shown on the left, see the biography section for the 1960 post on The Flintstones) plays stranded motorist Emily Scope and young mother Celeste Skyler.

Season 1, Episode 12, "Astro's Top Secret": Howard Morris (see "A Date With Jet Screamer" above) returns as Cogswell assistant Harlan.

Season 1, Episode 14, "Elroy's Pal": Howard Morris (see "A Date With Jet Screamer" above) plays children's TV star Nimbus the Great and Elroy's friend Willie.

 

Top Cat (1961)

After their success launching their first prime-time animated series The Flintstones in the fall of 1960, Joseph Barbera and Bill Hanna came up with a second series for the fall of 1961 using the same formula--basing it on a beloved live-action TV sitcom of the 1950s, in this case You'll Never Get Rich, later known as The Phil Silvers Show. Such was the popularity of The Flintstones that Barbera years later recalled that he was able to sell the series using only a sketch of the main character, rather than any developed stories or supporting characters. But once the series began development, they cemented the connection to Silvers' show by having veteran comedian Arnold Stang do his best Phil Silvers impression in voicing the title role. They also hired actor Maurice Gosfield, who played Pvt. Duane Doberman to Silvers' Sgt. Bilko, as the voice of Top Cat's sidekick Benny the Ball, and they hired writers like Barry Blitzer, who had written 17 scripts for The Phil Silvers Show. Like Bilko, Top Cat is a financial schemer always looking for an opportunity to make a quick buck, though he always plans for the rest of his gang to also benefit if he is successful. He is always running afoul of beat cop Charlie Dibble, who is constantly threatening to bust him for not keeping his alley clean, using his call box phone, or being somehow involved in whatever crime Dibble has been assigned to solve. But despite their seemingly antagonistic relationship, Dibble is actually fond of Top Cat and his antics. In the very first episode "Hawaii Here We Come" (September 27, 1961), Dibble becomes depressed at the prospect of Top Cat and his crew having drowned when they jump off a cruise ship after Dibble accuses them of passing counterfeit currency. Likewise, in "Top Cat Falls in Love" (November 8, 1961), Dibble is saddened thinking that Top Cat is near death, when in actuality Top Cat has only faked a rare illness to spend more time with nurse Miss LaRue with whom he is infatuated.

But while Barbera and others considered Top Cat to be one of the most sophisticated animated series they ever produced, it basically used only a handful of story lines recycled over and over, and the characters always wind up back where they started at the end of each episode, no better or worse off for all their frantic activity. Just in the 14 episodes that aired in 1961 alone, there are two stories about Top Cat failing to realize he has a fortune in his hands and throwing it away. In "The Maharajah of Pookajee" (October 4, 1961) Top Cat reads about a famed maharajah coming to town who gives out valuable rubies to people he likes. So in order to get into the hotel where the maharajah will be staying, Top Cat and the gang impersonate him and his entourage, even dispensing fake glass rubies, but after being found out by Dibble, they flee the hotel and Top Cat runs into the real maharajah and is given a ruby when he helps him up. But naturally Top Cat thinks this is just another imposter handing out fake glass, so he tosses it into the bay until he finds out from Dibble that the ruby was real. By then it is too late, and Top Cat has squandered an opportunity to achieve the wealth he seeks. Likewise in "The Tycoon" (December 27, 1961) Benny the Ball is given a check made out to Top Cat for a million dollars by a billionaire who wants to imitate a generous TV character (based on the real-life TV show The Millionaire), but Top Cat refuses to believe the check is real and tears it up into many pieces that then wind up in the city dump, once again thwarting his dreams of wealth.

We also get two romance-driven plots that go nowhere. In "Top Cat Falls in Love" (November 8, 1961) Top Cat becomes infatuated with a nurse he encounters while visiting Benny in the hospital. As mentioned above, he fakes a rare disease to get admitted to the hospital, figuring that he can wear her down and marry her, only to find that she is engaged to a doctor in another town, leaving Top Cat with a burly replacement nurse that he then has to trick in order to escape from. In "Choo-Choo's Romance" (December 6, 1961), Choo-Choo falls for Parisian kitten Goldie living in a nearby apartment, and Top Cat goes to great lengths to help him romance her, convinced that once he really gets to know her he won't be so enamored. This scheme requires Top Cat to fake his own death in a duel with Goldie's boyfriend Pierre, but when Choo-Choo considers a life without Top Cat and the rest of the gang, he abandons Goldie and she returns to Pierre. In other words, the bottom line in Top Cat is that where you are is the best place you can be--striving for wealth or romance will not bring happiness.

The same theme is hammered home in "The Missing Heir" (October 28, 1961) when Top Cat sees an ad in the paper notifying the heir of a million-dollar estate that he must come forward within 24 hours or lose the inheritance. Since Benny has a few of the physical characteristics mentioned in the ad, Top Cat has him pose as the missing heir, but then the real heir shows up just as the cats expose attempts by the butler and family dog to do away with Benny and get the inheritance for themselves, meaning that Top Cat and his gang walk away with nothing because the real heir inherits the esetate. Even worse, the real heir gives away his fortune and shows up in Hoagy's Alley wanting to join Top Cat's gang, as if belonging to his gang is more desirable than being what Top Cat is constantly seeking--to become rich.

One of the characteristics of The Flintstones that made it such a big hit was its clever skewering of contemporary pop culture and modern conveniences reimagined in Stone Age form, thereby confirming the old adage that there's nothing new under the sun. Top Cat did not take the same approach in recasting human foibles in cat-centric terms--instead the cats wear human clothes, can drive a car, and converse with humans as if they speak the same language. But the series does take a poke at several popular TV shows in episodes such as "The Unscratchables" (December 13, 1961), a painfully obvious jab at the very popular series The Untouchables replete with mobsters and the cats decked out in zoot suits. " The Maharajah of Pookajee" has more mobsters, whom Top Cat first takes for actors from the popular shows Peter Pistol (i.e., Peter Gunn) or Have Gun -- Will Shoot (i.e., Have Gun -- Will Travel), but these are merely winks to the viewing audience rather than a developed satire. However, "Naked Town" (November 18, 1961) offers a more pointed critique of the TV-obsessed public when Officer Dibble is assigned to keep a block of streets cleared for the filming of an episode for the show Naked Town (i.e., Naked City) and actually ends up aiding a pair of warehouse thieves who show up early and pretend to be TV producers. The ever gullible Dibble is thrown off his guard after Top Cat butters him up when hearing of his choice assignment, suggesting that it could be the first step to an acting career and an Academy Award so that when the imposter producers appear, Dibble bends over backwards to please them, as do Top Cat and the gang, and sees nothing suspicious when they tell Dibble to wait around the corner while the crooks empty a warehouse full of new merchandise with Top Cat's help.

However, TV viewing audiences were not star-struck when Top Cat was originally broadcast. It failed to crack the top 30 and was canceled after one season, though it did return in syndication shown during morning children's programming. As documented below, Hanna-Barbera considered resurrecting the series a few years later, but after Maurice Gosfield's death, those plans were canceled. The Top Cat characters would resurface on later Hanna-Barbera ensemble shows such as Yogi's Treasure Hunt and Yogi's Gang. And in 1988 they released a TV movie called Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats with many of the original voice actors reprising their roles. Though remembered fondly by many today, Top Cat falls somewhere in the middle of the pack for cartoons of the era--certainly head and shoulders above what was coming out of UPI but below Hanna-Barbera's better offerings The Flintstones and The Jetsons as well as Jay Ward's Bullwinkle Show. One last legacy note--the trademark wheezing laugh from Dick Dastardly's dog sidekick Muttley was first voiced by Hanna-Barbera regular Don Messick while playing the dog Griswold in the episode "The Missing Heir."

The theme song and scores for individual episodes of Top Cat were composed by Hanna-Barbera musical director Hoyt Curtin. Born Hoyt Stoddard Curtin in Los Angeles in 1922, he grew up in San Bernadino where his father sold insurance. Curtin started playing piano at age 5 and won a talent contest with his singing at age 12. In junior high school he led his own combo, and after serving in the Navy during World War II he enrolled at USC  to study music. His original plan was to write scores for feature films but after only being offered work on such B-film fare as Mesa of Lost Women, Jail Bait, and Plan 9 From Outer Space, he instead concentrated on radio and TV commercials. In 1957 he worked with Hanna-Barbera on a Schlitz beer commercial, which they remembered after leaving MGM to set up their own studio. When producing their first cartoon series The Ruff and Ready Show, they called Curtin with a lyric and asked him to write a score for it, which he was able to do in about 5 minutes. Thereafter he became their sole musical composer and director, writing themes to their iconic cartoon series Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, and Jonny Quest, to name but a few. He continued working for Hanna-Barbera until 1989, his last credit being for The Smurfs, and finally retired from composing in 1992. He passed away December 3, 2000 at age 78. Since Curtin tended to use the same musicians from one series to the next, the vocal group singing the theme to Top Cat is very likely the Randy Van Horne Singers, the group Curtin used when lyrics were added to The Flintstones theme in Season 3.

The complete series has been released on DVD by Warner Home Video.

The Actors

For the biography of John Stephenson, see the 1961 post for The Flintstones.

Arnold Stang

Although he claimed to be from Chelsea, Massachusetts, Stang was born in New York City on September 28, 1918. But by age 9 he was living in Chelsea when he sent a postcard to a New York radio station requesting an audition. When the audition was granted, Stang secretly took a bus without his parents' knowledge to Manhattan and wound up being offered a job, which he then had to reveal to his parents after returning home. It was the beginning of a long and prolific career in radio, film, and television in which Stang would play a host of Brooklyn-accented wiseguys, except for his role on Top Cat for which he was required to mimic Phil Silvers of Sgt. Bilko fame. But long before that as a child voice actor he appeared on children's radio programs such as Let's Pretend, The Horn and Hardhart Children's Show, and American Pageant of Youth before moving on to all-age comedies like The Goldbergs and crime dramas like Gangbusters. In the 1940s he decide to try his hand in Hollywood, where he had bit parts in films such as My Sister Eileen, Seven Days' Leave, and Let's Go Steady. He eventually decided to return to New York and to radio, landing regular work first on The Al Jolson Show and by 1947 on The Milton Berle Show. Stang also found voicework for Paramount cartoons, providing the voice for the mouse Herman in a series of Herman and Katnip shorts, and also ventured into early New York-based television on shows such as Laughter in Paris and The Henry Morgan Show, but he would not join Berle's TV show  until 1953. His exposure on Berle's show led to a flood of offers, including joining the TV version of The Goldbergs and landing a prime dramatic role in the feature The Man With the Golden Arm. He also had a few TV guest spots on shows such as December Bride and The Red Skelton Hour before returning to Hollywood in the early 1960s, which led to spots on Wagon Train and Bonanza as well as being recruited for the title voice role on Top Cat.

Top Cat would not be his last regular TV role. After appearing in large ensemble features The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm and It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Stang was cast as Stanley Stubbs in the short-lived female Navy comedy Broadside in 1965, the same year he appeared in the country exploitation feature Second Fiddle to a Steel Guitar and provided the voice of Nurtle the Turtle in the animated Pinocchio in Outer Space. In the late 1960s he was a regular performer on The Jonathan Winters Show and appeared in the campy LSD feature Skidoo as well as the underwater adventure Hello Down There. In 1970 he starred opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in the bodybuilder's first feature film Hercules in New York and spent the rest of the decade doing occasional voicework and TV guest spots on Emergency!, Chico and the Man, and Flying High. He reprised the voice of Top Cat for the 1980s animated series Yogi's Treasure Hunt and had his final credits doing a variety of voices for the 1999-2002 animated series Courage the Cowardly Dog. In his later years he and his wife moved to Greenwich, Connecticut and then Needham, Massachusetts. He died from pneumonia in Newton, MA on December 20, 2009 at the age of 91. For a more detailed biography, see WFMU's Beware of the Blog.

Maurice Gosfield

Born in New York City, Maurice Lionel Gosfield grew up in Philadelphia and Evanston, Illinois where he attended high school and first got involved in community theater. In 1934 he was acting in the Ralph Bellamy and Melvyn Douglas Players in Chicago doing Shakespeare before moving to New York and making his Broadway debut in Siege in 1937. During World War II he served in the army as a Technical Sergeant, then returned to the theater after the war ended. He made his TV debut in a 1949 episode of The Clock and had an uncredited part in the feature Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town the following year. But his big break came when he was cast in the Sgt. Bilko pilot The New Recruits in 1955. Writer Nat Hiken recalled in his autobiography that Gosfield showed up at an open casting call with a lengthy list of credits that included not only his handful of theatrical roles but a claim of over 2000 radio appearances and hundreds of TV roles, which Hiken said were impossible to verify. Some of those radio appearances were on a show with Phil Silvers that lasted only a couple of months. Nevertheless, Hiken felt that Gosfield's short portly appearance was perfect for the role of dimwitted Pvt. Duane Doberman (though he was named Pvt. Mulrooney in the pilot) on The Phil Silvers Show. Gosfield's role as Doberman made him a household name, earning him TV's Bachelor of the Year Award in 1957 and an Emmy nomination in 1959. DC Comics even created a series of comic books titled Sgt. Bilko's Pvt. Doberman. But after the show's demise, Gosfield only managed a few TV guest spots on programs such as The Detectives, The Jim Backus Show, One Happy Family, and The Red Skelton Hour before being tabbed to voice Benny the Ball in the Sgt. Bilko-inspired Top Cat in 1961.

Gosfield said that he enjoyed voicing Benny the Ball as much or more than playing Pvt. Doberman because he felt it was more prestigious playing a cat as opposed to someone named after a dog. But after Top Cat's cancellation, he had only one more film role, a cameo as a garbage collector in the Doris Day & James Garner comedy The Thrill of It All in 1963. In 1964 he auditioned for the part of Uncle Fester on The Addams Family but lost out to Jackie Coogan. On October 14, 1964 he became ill while performing at New York Theatre and after being sent to a couple of different hospitals and being prescribed a host of medicines, he suffered a heart attack three days later. He was again rushed to the hospital and survived two more days, during which time he was visited by Arnold Stang, who told him that Hanna-Barbera was planning to revive Top Cat. But two hours after Stang left, Gosfield suffered another heart attack and died at age 51 on October 19, 1964.

Leo de Lyon

Born Irving Levin in Paterson, New Jersey on April 27, 1926, de Lyon got his first big break when he won a competition as a piano-playing comedian on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts in 1947, which led to him getting booked into small theaters around New York. Eventually he worked his way up to larger venues, such as Harold Minsky's Carnival in Manhattan, where he became friends with singer Ralph Young, later of the musical duo Sandler & Young. De Lyon wrote the duo's first ten arrangements and would be recruited decades later to be their music director in the 1970s. After a stint at the Olympia in Miami, he returned to New York to play the Strand Theater. When Josephine Baker returned to America for a triumphant engagement in 1951, de Lyon performed between her sets for 8 months. In 1952 he scored his first regular television role on the sitcom It's a Business, but the show was short-lived and afterward he returned to the nightclub circuit, including traveling to London to play the Palladium with the Platters and Lonnie Donegan in 1956. He returned to TV when he was cast as Spook and Brain on Top Cat in 1961.

After Top Cat was canceled, de Lyon continued his comedy routine but started finding occasional TV guest spots in 1964. After appearing on The New Phil Silvers Show that year, he and Silvers worked up a musical comedy act that opened at the Cork Club in Houston and then moved on to the Sahara in Las Vegas. The duo continued the act for roughly four years. Meanwhile de Lyon logged guest appearances on The Jack Benny Program, My Mother the Car, and Bewitched. In 1967 he voiced Flunkey in the Disney animated feature The Jungle Book. He released a novelty 45 rpm record sometime in the 1960s billed as Leo de Lyon and the Musclemen, who included a young Al Kooper. He had a memorable guest appearance accompanying Dean Martin on a 1970 episode of The Dean Martin Show. He returned to cartoon voicework in the 1980s for Hanna-Barbera on Paw Paws in 1985-86 and Foofur in 1987. And he reprised the voices of Spook and Brain for the 1988 TV movie Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats. He retired from performing in 2011 but is still living.

Marvin Kaplan

Marvin Wilbur Kaplan was born in Brooklyn in 1927, the son of a doctor. After graduating from Brooklyn College with an English degree in 1947, he enrolled at USC in the Master's program for radio playwriting. The head of the department was Cecil B. DeMille's older brother William C. DeMille, who, after reading one of Kaplan's one-act plays, advised the aspiring writer to take a job as a stage manager to see firsthand what actors do to writers' lines. Because he did not own a car, Kaplan's options were limited and he wound up at the Circle Theater in Los Angeles, getting the job when they mistook him for somebody else. Several of the plays at the theater were directed by Charlie Chaplin, who refused to be credited because his sons performed there and he didn't want his involvement to negatively reflect on them. Kaplan eventually worked his way into acting in the theater's productions and one night during a performance of a Moliere comedy Katherine Hepburn was in the audience and came backstage afterward to compliment Kaplan on his work. He credits her feedback in making the decision to pursue an acting career. The next day there was a note on the theater bulletin board for him to call MGM, where he was given an appointment with director George Cukor. Cukor told him that Hepburn was acting as his agent and recommended that he be cast in her latest picture Adam's Rib in which Kaplan wound up playing the court stenographer who famously asks the correct spelling of "Pinky," Hepburn's character's nickname. From there he would appear in a string of features such as Francis, The Reformer and the Redhead, and Angels in the Outfield. He moved into radio when he was cast as Alfred Prinzmetal in the sitcom Meet Millie and was retained in the same role when the series moved to television in 1952. In the late 1950s he appeared on Make Room for Daddy and The Red Skelton Hour, then began the 1960s appearing in the Ernie Kovacs comedy feature Wake Me When It's Over and guest starring on M Squad, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, and The Detectives before being cast as the voice of Choo-Choo on Top Cat.

After Top Cat his work in feature films outshone his television appearances. Though he appeared in Jerry Lewis' The Nutty Professor, he later said in an interview that Lewis cut out many of his scenes and was mean to him. But he had a memorable scene with Top Cat alumnus Arnold Stang in It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. He also appeared in Blake Edwards' comedy The Great Race. Meanwhile he was logging more TV guest spots on shows such as McHale's Navy, Honey West, Gomer Pyle USMC, and My Three Sons. He also returned to his original vocation as a script writer, penning episodes of The Addams Family, The Bill Cosby Show, Mod Squad, and Maude. In 1971 he had a recurring role on the comedy The Chicago Teddy Bears, which starred Dean Jones and John Banner. His credits in the 1970s were sparse until he was cast as telephone repairman and regular diner customer Henry on Alice, appearing 82 times between 1978 and 1985. In 1984 he joined the California Artists Radio Theatre and served on its board for 32 years. He also served as President of the Los Angeles chapter of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists for 8 years. More occasional work followed in the 1980s, including reprising the voice of Choo-Choo in Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats. In 1990 he appeared in the David Lynch film Wild at Heart and then was cast as Dwight McGonigle in the TV series On the Air which Lynch had started but left after becoming bored, leading to the show's cancellation after 7 episodes. He appeared as Mr. Gordon in 4 episodes of the Ted Danson series Becker and provided various voices for The Garfield Show between 2008 and 2013. He died of natural causes at age 89 on August 25, 2016. 

Allen Jenkins

Born Alfred McGonegal on Staten Island in 1900, Jenkins was the son of two musical theater performers, Robert and Leona Jenkins. During World War I he helped build ships at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and later found work in the theater as a stage mechanic. He then attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and made his theatrical debut in a production of Checkers. Soon thereafter he would dance in a chorus with up-and-comer James Cagney in Pitter Patter. He would go on to appear in productions of Rain, What Price Glory?, The Front Page, Five Star Final, and Blessed Event. After taking over the role vacated by Spencer Tracy in a Broadway production of The Last Mile, he was summoned to Hollywood by Darryl F. Zanuck and originally signed to Paramount Pictures before moving over to Warner Brothers. His first film appearance came in the 1931 short Straight and Narrow, the first of some 175 film credits in which he often played comic heavies, from gangsters to policemen, including the film version of Blessed Event in 1932, I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang, 42nd Street, A Night at the Ritz, Destry Rides Again, Tin Pan Alley, Dive Bomber, Ball of Fire, and The Inside Story. He broke into television in 1952, appearing on shows such as Racket Squad, The Life of Riley, and I Love Lucy. His first recurring role was playing Johnny on The Duke in 1954, followed by 5 appearances as Alfie Malone on Damon Runyan Theater in 1955-56. Over the years he appeared as the character Muggsy on 11 episodes of The Red Skelton Hour  between 1954-62. He played cab driver Al Murray on 26 episodes of the Jeannie Carson sitcom Hey, Jeannie! in 1956-57 and had a supporting role as an elevator operator in the Doris Day-Rock Hudson feature Pillow Talk in 1959 before being cast as Officer Dibble on Top Cat 2 years later.

Following Top Cat he found steady work doing guest spots on TV show such as The Real McCoys, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Batman, and Bewitched. He also had supporting roles in feature films such as It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Robin and the 7 Hoods, and For Those Who Think Young. Later in life he publicly admitted to being an alcoholic and reportedly was the first actor to testify about his condition before the U.S. Congress. After contracting lung cancer, he died from complications due to surgery on July 20, 1974 at the age of 74. His last screen credit was in Billy Wilder's feature film version of the play he had appeared in decades before--The Front Page--which was released after his death.

Notable Guest Stars

Because it was an animated series, Top Cat did not have many guest stars known from other shows, except those listed below.

Season 1, Episode 1, "Hawaii Here We Come": Don Messick (see the biography section for the 1961 post on The Flintstones) plays a thief disguised as an old lady.

Season 1, Episode 3, "All That Jazz": Daws Butler (shown on the left, see the biography section for the 1960 post on Rocky and His Friends) plays new cat in town Jazz. Don Messick (see "Hawaii Here We Come" above) plays his sidekick Beau.

Season 1, Episode 4, "The $1,000,000 Derby": Hal Smith (see the biography section for the 1961 post on The Andy Griffith Show) plays a racetrack announcer.

Season 1, Episode 6, "The Missing Heir": Don Messick (see "Hawaii Here We Come" above) plays the dog Griswold.

Season 1, Episode 7, "Top Cat Falls in Love": GeGe Pearson (shown on the right, voiced Crusader Rabbit on Crusader Rabbit) plays nurse Miss LaRue. Don Messick (see "Hawaii Here We Come" above) plays physician Dr. Dawson. Jean Vander Pyl (see the biography section for the 1960 post on The Flintstones) plays a beefy nurse.

Season 1, Episode 8, "A Visit From Mother": Bea Benaderet (see the biography section for the 1960 post on The Flintstones) plays Benny the Ball's mother.

Season 1, Episode 11, "Choo-Choo's Romance": Jean Vander Pyl (see "Top Cat Falls in Love" above) plays Parisian cat Goldie.

Season 1, Episode 12, "The Unscratchables": Herschel Bernardi (shown on the left, see the biography section for the 1960 post on Peter Gunn) plays gangster Muggsy. Bea Benaderet (see "A Visit From Mother" above) plays gangster moll Fifi.

Season 1, Episode 13, "Rafeefleas": Bea Benaderet (see "A Visit From Mother" above) plays Fancy-Fancy's girlfriend Shirley. Jean Vander Pyl (see "Top Cat Falls in Love" above) plays another unnamed Fancy-Fancy girlfriend.

Season 1, Episode 14, "The Tycoon": Don Messick (see "Hawaii Here We Come" above) plays billionaire T.L. Vanderfeller. Bea Benaderet (see "A Visit From Mother" above) plays haberdasher's wife Mildred.