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.

 

The Flintstones (1962)

 

By the year 1962, the once-fresh prime-time cartoon The Flintstones had settled into a comfortable routine of rehashed plots chronicling the misadventures of boorish Fred Flintstone that borrowed heavily from other TV programs, movies, and pop culture fads. The only new thing on the program that year was a different, now iconic opening sequence in which Fred drives the family to a drive-in restaurant and movie instead of showing him clocking out at work, picking up the dry cleaning, and parking in the garage before settling in front of the TV with a plate of food. The series also began using a few additional voice actors such as Herschel Bernardi and Howard Morris to voice a number of incidental characters.

When they weren't attempting to lampoon other TV shows and movies, such as poking fun at Gunsmoke and westerns in general in "A Star Is Almost Born" (January 12, 1962), homemaker programs in "The Happy Household" (February 23, 1962), game shows in "Divided We Sail" (April 6, 1962), swarthy Latin movie stars in "Latin Lover" (April 20, 1962), Lassie in "Dino Goes Hollyrock" (September 14, 1962), crime caper movies in "Here's Snow in Your Eyes" (October 19, 1962), TV crime dramas such as Hawaiian Eye in "Hawaiian Escapade" (November 16, 1962), and Hitchcock suspense films in "Dial S for Suspicion" (December 14, 1962), they were recycling their own already shopworn plots. For example, "The Gambler" (January 5, 1962) revolves around Fred's gambling addiction for which he once visited a psychiatrist and swore to Wilma that he would never engage in again. When skin-flint Fred tries to avoid settling his bill with newsboy Arnold, he falls off the wagon by offering to bet double or nothing on his bill over a game of marbles. Predictably, Fred loses but keeps doubling down and losing again until he has run up a tab of $88 that he can't possibly repay because Wilma has used the money he hid from her to pay off another debt he has been trying to avoid on their TV set. In the end, after Wilma has figured out what Fred has been up to and has to borrow money from Betty to replace the furniture that Fred gave Arnold to settle his debt, Fred swears off ever gambling again. But in "The Rock Vegas Story" (March 30, 1962) Fred decides to take Wilma and the Rubbles to Rock Vegas for their vacation after running into old friend Sherman Cobblehead who now owns a casino and invites Fred to come see him. Within minutes of their arrival at the casino, when the wives go to "freshen up," Fred loses all their money in a slot machine, and the two families have to spend the rest of their vacation working at the casino to afford their stay. Fred's failure to keep his promises is glossed over at the end of the episode when Cobblehead tells the husbands how lucky they are to have such devoted wives, whereas he is forced to live out his drab existence running a casino surrounded by beautiful show girls.

Fred's repeated attempts at deception are also recycled in two attempts to duck out of work to go see a day baseball game in "Operation Barney" (February 16, 1962) in which he calls in sick to skip work but when he forces Barney to do the same, Barney's boss requires him to submit to a medical examination that lands him in the hospital and almost has him undergo a serious operation. After Wilma and Betty discover the ruse, Fred promises never to play hooky from work again. Wilma is skeptical he will stick to it, and for good reason, because we see that Fred has his fingers crossed behind his back. And sure enough, he tries the same trick again in "Ladies' Day" (November 23, 1962), only this time he dresses in drag using clothes Wilma gave him to drop off at a rummage sale so that he can get into the ballgame for free on Ladies Day. Again predictably he doesn't get away with it and once exposed he again promises never to play hooky from work again. This time there are no crossed fingers, but who in their right mind would ever believe any promises made by Fred Flintstone? And who would want to watch him go through the same routine on episode after episode?

We could go over the multiple episodes about Fred's failed get-rich quick schemes or his cruelty to Barney, but perhaps more salient is the program's blatant chauvinism in its depiction of the roles of husbands and wives. This topic has been discussed on various web sites and in various forums with opinion generally falling into two camps--those who are shocked that a show they loved as children could be so misogynistic, and those who brush such criticism aside by saying the program only reflected the prevalent attitudes of the era, was set in the Stone Age so of course the male characters behave like "cave men," or was only a cartoon and therefore should not be taken so seriously. The episode most often cited for the program's chauvinism is the aforementioned "The Happy Household" in which Wilma is recruited to host a TV homemaker program but Fred eventually intervenes to get her show canceled so that she can be home to cook his dinners, not to tell other housewives how to please their husbands. Fred not only says that a woman's place is in the home, but ends the episode by admonishing any housewife viewers to take note of this week's lesson. While it is certainly true that The Flintstones was not the only TV program of its time to reinforce the stereotype of women being ideally and only suited to being homemakers--even the supposedly proto-feminist Donna Reed Show had her proving she could handle other jobs outside the home but always choosing to return to domestic contentment--what makes The Flintstones stand out is that its chauvinism can be disingenuously defended as being only a cartoon set in Stone Age times while also appealing to children who are less able to resist its reactionary message. Sure, it was a prime-time "adult" cartoon, but children are naturally drawn to cartoons due to their simplicity, bright colors, fantastical events, and general mood of fun and humor. Children even enjoy clearly adult-oriented cartoons such as The Bullwinkle Show, whose political and social satire is beyond their understanding, because the show depicts talking animals involved in outlandish adventures. In the TV age, cartoons are also a key component in the socialization of children and can have profound effects on their development, depending what kind of cartoons they are exposed to. The number of adults who are shocked when they revisit childhood favorites such as The Flintstones only reinforces the fact that children cannot discriminate like adults and recognize when a theme is being depicted only for humorous effect. That's why the messages disseminated by The Flintstones--that women can and should be satisfied only as housewives or that you can be cruel to your friends and suffer no real consequences--are not good, clean fun, even for adults.

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 Hal Smith, see the 1961 post for The Andy Griffith Show. For the biographies of John Stephenson and Don Messick, see the 1961 post for The Flintstones.

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 17, "A Star Is Almost Born": Frank Nelson (shown on the left, see the biography section for the 1960 post on The Jack Benny Program) plays TV producer Norman Rockbind.

Season 1, Episode 18, "The Entertainer": Paula Winslowe (Martha Conklin on Our Miss Brooks) plays Mr. Slate's client Greta Gravel.

Season 1, Episode 19, "Wilma's Vanishing Money": Frank Nelson (see "A Star Is Almost Born" above) plays a sporting goods store clerk. Herschel Bernardi (see the biography section of the 1960 post on Peter Gunn) plays stick-up man Silky.

Season 1, Episode 22, "Operation Barney": Herschel Bernardi (see "Wilma's Vanishing Money" above) plays an operating room doctor. Paula Winslowe (see "The Entertainer" above) plays the operating room nurse.

Season 1, Episode 23, "The Happy Household": Paul Frees (shown on the right, see the biography section for the 1960 post on Rocky and His Friends) plays TV producer Mr. Rockenschpeel and TV station owner Sam Bedrock. B.J. Baker (Miss Alabama at age 17, background singer and member of the Anita Kerr Singers, wife of Mickey Rooney and later jazz guitarist Barney Kessel) provides Wilma's singing voice.

Season 1, Episode 25, "This Is Your Life Saver": Walker Edmiston (shown on the left, played Enik on Land of the Lost and voiced Dr. Blinkey and Orson Vulture on H.R. Pufnstuf, Admiral Scuttlebutt, Bela, and Big Chief Sitting Duck on Lidsville, Sebastian on Dumbo's Circus, and Sir Thornberry on Adventures of the Gummi Bears) plays con man J. Montague Gypsum.

Season 1, Episode 26, "Trouble-in-Law": Verna Felton (shown on the right, played Mrs. Day on The Dennis Day Show and The Jack Benny Program and Hilda Crocker on December Bride and Pete and Gladys) plays Wilma's mother Pearl Slaghoople.

Season 1, Episode 27, "The Mailman Cometh": Herb Vigran (Judge Brooker on Gunsmoke) plays policeman Officer Riley.

Season 1, Episode 30, "Kleptomaniac Caper": Herb Vigran (see "The Mailman Cometh" above) plays policeman Officer O'Rockery. Herschel Bernardi (see "Wilma's Vanishing Money" above) plays a department store detective.

Season 1, Episode 31, "Latin Lover": Jerry Mann (shown on the far left, appeared in The Sky Divers, Shutter Bug, and The Maltese Bippy, also wrote several shorts and 3 episodes of Tom and Jerry as well as voicing Tom the cat) plays Italian movie star Roberto Rockelini. Paula Winslowe (see "The Entertainer" above) plays a cosmetics saleswoman.

Season 3, Episode 1, "Dino Goes Hollyrock": Herschel Bernardi (see "Wilma's Vanishing Money" above) plays talent agent Sam.

Season 3, Episode 3, "Barney the Invisible": Howard McNear (shown on the right, see the biography section for the 1961 post on The Andy Griffith Show) plays physician Dr. Quartz.

Season 3, Episode 5, "The Twitch": Ginny Tyler (shown on the left, voiced characters in Son of Flubber, The Sword in the Stone, Mary Poppins, and Doctor Doolittle and voiced Sally Hansen and Elaine Hansen on Davey and Goliath, Wendy on The New Casper Cartoon Show, Jan and Black Widow on Space Ghost, Flirtacia on The Adventures of Gulliver, Aunt Martha and Polly on Devlin, and Sue Richards and The Invisible Girl on The Fantastic Four) plays a talentless singer for agent Sam Stone.

Season 3, Episode 6, "Here's Snow in Your Eyes": Doug Young (shown on the right, voiced Doggie Daddy on Quick Draw McGraw, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy, and The Huckleberry Hound Show, Ding a Ling on The Huckleberry Hound Show, Yippee on The Peter Potamus Show and Yippee, Yappee and Yahooey, and later the Grand Poobah on The Flintstones) plays stolen goods fence Chip Marble.

Season 3, Episode 8, "The Little Stranger": Verna Felton (see "Trouble-in-Law" above) returns as Wilma's mother Pearl Slaghoople.

Season 3, Episode 12, "Nuttin' But the Tooth": 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 dentist Dr. Smiley Molar.

Season 3, Episode 13, "High School Fred": Howard Morris (see "Nuttin' But the Tooth" above) plays efficiency expert Mr. Rockhard.

Season 3, Episode 14, "Dial S for Suspicion": Howard Morris (see "Nuttin' But the Tooth" above) plays circus knife thrower Rodney Whetstone and physician Dr. Pilldown.

Season 3, Episode 15, "Flash Gun Freddie": Howard Morris (see "Nuttin' But the Tooth" above) plays the drug store clerk and comic-buying kid.