The Flintstones

The Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that was broadcast from September 30, 1960, to April 1, 1966, on ABC. The show was produced by Hanna-Barbera. The Flintstones was about a working-class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend.

The show's continuing popularity rested heavily on its juxtaposition of modern everyday concerns in the Stone Age setting. The Flintstones was the most financially successful network animated franchise for three decades, until The Simpsons debuted. In 2013, TV Guide ranked The Flintstones the second Greatest TV Cartoon of All Time (after The Simpsons ranked at first).

Overview
The show is set in the Stone Age town of Bedrock. In this fantasy version of the past, dinosaurs, saber-toothed tigers, woolly mammoths, and other long-extinct animals co-exist with cavemen. Like their mid-20th century counterparts, these cavemen listen to records, live in split-level homes, and eat out at restaurants, yet their technology is made entirely from pre-industrial materials and largely powered through the use of animals. For example, the cars are made out of stone, wood, and animal skins, and powered by the passengers' feet. Often the "prehistoric" analog to a modern machine uses an animal.

The Flintstones

 * Fred Flintstone is the main character of the series. Fred is an accident-prone bronto-crane operator at the Slate Rock and Gravel Company and the head of the Flintstone clan. He is quick to anger (usually over trivial matters), but is a very loving husband and father. He is also good at bowling and is a member of the fictional "Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes" (Lodge No. 26), a men-only club paralleling real-life fraternities such as the Loyal Order of Moose.
 * Wilma Flintstone is Fred's wife. She is more intelligent and level-headed than her husband, though she often has a habit of spending money (with her and Betty's catchphrase being "Da-da-da duh da-da CHARGE IT!!"). She often is a foil to Fred's poor behavior.
 * Pebbles Flintstone is The Flintstones' infant daughter, who is born near the end of the third season.
 * Dino, a sauropod dinosaur, is the Flintstone's pet who barks and generally acts like a dog. A running gag in the series involves Dino knocking down Fred out of excitement and licking him repeatedly. Though this irritates Fred a lot, he generally likes Dino very much.
 * Baby Puss is the Flintstones' pet saber-toothed cat, who is rarely seen in the actual series, but is always seen throwing Fred out of the house during the end credits, causing Fred to pound repeatedly on the front door and yell "Wilma!"

The Rubbles

 * Barney Rubble is the secondary main character and Fred's best friend and next door neighbor. His occupation is, for the most part of the series, unknown, though later series depict him working in the same quarry as Fred. He shares many of Fred's interests like bowling and golf, and is also a member of the "Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes". Though Fred and Barney frequently get into feuds with one another (usually due to Fred's short temper), their deep fraternal bond remains evident.
 * Betty Rubble is Barney's wife and Wilma's best friend. Like Wilma, she too has a habit of spending money.
 * Bamm-Bamm Rubble is the Rubbles' abnormally strong adopted son, whom they adopt during the fourth season; his name comes from the only phrase he ever speaks as a baby: "Bamm, Bamm!"
 * Hoppy is the Rubbles' pet Hopparoo (a kangaroo/dinosaur combination creature), whom they adopt in the beginning of the fifth season. He babysits the kids as he takes them around in his pouch. Fred Flintstone regards Hoppy as an overgrown and obnoxious nuisance until the fateful day that the Flintstones and the Rubbles go out together on a picnic. The families' lives are endangered during the picnic and Hoppy goes for help.

Other characters
Over 100 other characters appeared throughout the program.
 * Mr. Slate is Fred's hot tempered boss at the stone quarry. Though he is friends with Fred and Barney, he is often not impressed with Fred's antics at the quarry, and has fired him on many occasions, only to give him his job back at the end. A running gag is his ever-changing first name, which has been presented as Sylvester, Nate, Oscar and George.
 * Arnold is the Flintstones' paper boy, whom Fred absolutely despises, due to him often, unintentionally, throwing the newspaper at Fred's face. A running gag is Fred being outsmarted by Arnold.
 * Joe Rockhead is a mutual friend of Fred and Barney. Usually, when Fred and Barney have some kind of falling out, Fred mentions doing something (such as going to a baseball game) with Joe.
 * Pearl Slaghoople is Wilma's hard-to-please mother, who is constantly disapproving of Fred and his behavior.
 * The Great Gazoo is an alien exiled to Earth who helps Fred and Barney, often against their will. He is actually from the future, and is quite dismayed when he realizes he has been sent back to "the Stone Age". He can only be seen by Fred, Barney, Pebbles, Bamm-Bamm, other small children, Dino and Hoppy.
 * Uncle Tex Hardrock is Fred's maternal uncle and a member of the Texarock Rangers.
 * Sam Slagheap is the Grand Poobah of the Water Buffalo Lodge.

Voice actors
Fred Flintstone physically resembles both the voice actor who played him, Alan Reed, and Jackie Gleason, whose series The Honeymooners was said to be an inspiration for The Flintstones. The voice of Barney Rubble was provided by voice actor Mel Blanc, though five episodes during the second season (the 1st, 2nd, 5th, 6th, and 9th) employed Hanna-Barbera regular Daws Butler while Blanc was incapacitated by a near-fatal car accident. Blanc was able to return to the series much sooner than expected, by virtue of a temporary recording studio for the entire cast set up at Blanc's bedside. It should be noted, however, Blanc's portrayal of Barney had changed considerably after the accident. In the earliest episodes, Blanc had used a much higher pitch. After his recovery from the accident, Blanc used a deeper voice, quite similar to the voice of the Abominable Snowman he performed in other cartoons.

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

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

Henry Corden took over the voice responsibilities of Fred after Reed's death in 1977 with A Flintstone Christmas. Corden had previously provided Fred's singing voice in The Man Called Flintstone and later on The Flintstones children's records. Since 2000, Jeff Bergman, James Arnold Taylor, and Scott Innes (performing Fred and Barney for Toshiba Commercials) have performed the voice of Fred. Since Mel Blanc's death in 1989, Barney has been voiced by both Frank Welker and Kevin Michael Richardson. Various additional character voices were created by Hal Smith, Allan Melvin, Janet Waldo, Daws Butler, and Howard Morris, among others.

Voice cast

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

Music
The opening and closing credits theme during the first two seasons was called "Rise and Shine", a lively instrumental underscore accompanying Fred on his drive home from work. The tune resembled "The Bugs Bunny Overture (This Is It!)", the theme song of The Bugs Bunny Show, also airing on ABC at the time, and may have been the reason the theme was changed in the third season.

Starting in Season 3, Episode 3 ("Barney the Invisible"), the opening and closing credits theme was the familiar vocal, "Meet the Flintstones". The melody is derived from part of the 'B' section of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 17 Movement 2, composed in 1801/02. The "Meet the Flintstones" opening was later added to the first two seasons for syndication.

The musical underscores were credited to Hoyt Curtin for the show's first five seasons; Ted Nichols took over in 1965 for the final season.

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

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

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

Barbera and Hanna experimented with hillbillies (a hillbilly theme would later be incorporated into two Flintstones episodes, "The Bedrock Hillbillies" and "The Hatrocks and the Gruesomes"), Romans (Hanna-Barbera would eventually create The Roman Holidays), pilgrims, and Indians as the settings for the two families before deciding on the Stone Age. According to Barbera they settled on that because "you could take anything that was current, and convert it to stone-age". Under the working title The Flagstones, the family originally consisted of Fred, Wilma, and their son, Fred Jr. A brief demonstration film was also created to sell the idea of a "modern stone age family" to sponsors and the network.

The show imitated and spoofed The Honeymooners. William Hanna admitted that "At that time, The Honeymooners was the most popular show on the air, and for my bill, it was the funniest show on the air. The characters, I thought, were terrific. Now, that influenced greatly what we did with The Flintstones ... The Honeymooners was there, and we used that as a kind of basis for the concept." However, Joseph Barbera disavowed these claims in a separate interview, stating that, "I don't remember mentioning The Honeymooners when I sold the show. But if people want to compare The Flintstones to The Honeymooners, then great. It's a total compliment. The Honeymooners was one of the greatest shows ever written." Jackie Gleason, creator of The Honeymooners, considered suing Hanna-Barbera Productions, but decided that he did not want to be known as "the guy who yanked Fred Flintstone off the air". Another influence was noted between during Hanna-Barbera's tenure at MGM; where they were in a friendly competition with fellow cartoon director Tex Avery. In 1955, Avery directed a cartoon entitled "The First Bad Man" (narrated by cowboy legend Tex Ritter). The cartoon concerned the rowdy antics of a bank robber in stone-age Dallas. Many of the visual jokes pre-dated similar ones used by Hanna-Barbera in the Flintstones series, many years later. Many students of American animation point to this cartoon as a progenitive seed of the Flintstones.

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

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

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

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

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

The show premiered on September 30, 1960, at 8:30pm, and was an instant hit.

The Flintstones was the first American animated show to depict two people of the opposite sex (Fred and Wilma; Barney and Betty) sleeping together in one bed, although Fred and Wilma are sometimes depicted as sleeping in separate beds. For comparison, the first live-action depiction of this in American TV history was in television's first-ever sitcom: 1947's Mary Kay and Johnny.



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

During the third season Hanna and Barbera decided that Fred and Wilma should have a baby. Originally Hanna and Barbera intended for The Flintstone family to have a boy, the head of the marketing department convinced them to change it to a girl since "girl dolls sell a lot better than boy dolls". Although most Flintstones episodes were stand-alone storylines, Hanna-Barbera created a story arc surrounding the birth of Pebbles. Beginning with the episode "The Surprise", aired midway through the third season (January 25, 1963), in which Wilma reveals her pregnancy to Fred, the arc continued through the trials and tribulations leading up to Pebbles' birth in the episode "Dress Rehearsal" (February 22, 1963), and then continued with several episodes showing Fred and Wilma adjusting to the world of parenthood. It was around this time that Winston pulled out their sponsorship and Welch's (grape juice and grape jellies) became the primary sponsor. The Integrated commercials for Welch's products feature Pebbles asking for grape juice in her toddler dialect, and Fred explaining to Pebbles Welch's unique process for making the jelly, compared to the competition. Welch's also produced a line of grape jelly packaged in jars which were reusable as drinking glasses, with painted scenes featuring The Flintstones and characters from the show. In Australia, the Nine Network ran a "Name the Flintstones' baby" competition during the 'pregnancy' episodes – few Australian viewers were expected to have a USA connection giving them information about past 'Flintstone' shows.

Another arc occurred in the fourth season, in which the Rubbles, depressed over being unable to have children of their own (making The Flintstones the first animated series in history to address the issue of infertility, though subtly), adopt Bamm-Bamm. The 100th episode made (but the 90th to air), Little Bamm-Bamm (October 3, 1963), established how Bamm-Bamm was adopted. About nine episodes were made before it, but shown after, which explains why Bamm-Bamm would not be seen again until episode 101, Daddies Anonymous (Bamm-Bamm was in a teaser on episode 98, Kleptomaniac Pebbles). Another story arc, occurring in the final season, centered on Fred and Barney's dealings with The Great Gazoo (voiced by Harvey Korman).

After Pebbles' birth the overall tone and writing of the series became more juvenile and ratings from the adult demographic slowly began to decline. The show went quietly off the air on April 1, 1966. After its cancellation, The Flintstones became the first primetime animated series to last more than two seasons. This record wasn't surpassed by another primetime animated TV series until the seventh season of The Simpsons in 1995/1996.

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

Nielsen ratings

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

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

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

A new animated movie will be developed by Warner Bros which will be produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. The script is being written by Chris Henchy who co-wrote the comedy The Campaign.

Television series

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

Theatrical animated feature

 * The Man Called Flintstone (1966, released by Columbia Pictures)

Television specials

 * A Flintstone Christmas (1977)
 * The Flintstones: Little Big League (1978)
 * The Flintstones Meet Rockula and Frankenstone (1979)
 * The Flintstones' New Neighbors (1980)
 * The Flintstones: Fred's Final Fling (1980)
 * The Flintstones: Wind-Up Wilma (1981)
 * The Flintstones: Jogging Fever (1981)
 * The Flintstones' 25th Anniversary Celebration (1986)
 * The Flintstone Kids' "Just Say No" Special (1988)
 * Hanna-Barbera's 50th: A Yabba Dabba Doo Celebration (1989)
 * The Flintstones: A Page Right Out of History (1991)
 * A Flintstone Family Christmas (1993)

Television movies

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

Live-action films

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

Other media

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

Cancelled Seth MacFarlane reboot
In 2011, it was announced the Family Guy creator (and Hanna-Barbera alumnus) Seth MacFarlane would be reviving The Flintstones for the Fox network, with the first episode airing in 2013. After Fox Entertainment president Kevin Reilly read the pilot script and "liked it but didn't love it", MacFarlane chose to abandon work on the project rather than restarting it. The program has been indefinitely delayed from its planned 2013 date.

WWE Film
In May 2013, Warner Bros. Animation and WWE Studios announced a Flintstones animated film. The film will involve a "prehistoric WWE main event" and feature the voices of Vince McMahon, John Cena and Rey Mysterio", with the latter replacing CM Punk. The film will be released direct-to-video in early 2015.

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

Another existed until the 1990s at Carowinds in Charlotte, NC. In Canada, Flintstone Park in Kelowna, British Columbia opened in 1968 and closed in 1998; notable for the "Forty Foot Fred" statue of Fred Flintstone which was a well known Kelowna landmark. Another Flintstones park was located in Bridal Falls, British Columbia which closed in 1990. Calaway Park outside Calgary, Canada, also opened with a Flintstones theme and many of the buildings today have a caveman-like design, though the park does not currently license the characters. The Australia's Wonderland & Canada's Wonderland theme parks both featured Flintstones characters in their Hanna-Barbera-themed children's sections from 1985 up until the mid '90s. Kings Island near Cincinnati, OH, had a Hanna-Barbera land, in which many Hanna-Barbera characters were featured, including The Flintstones, in the 1980s and early '90s.

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

In popular culture


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

The Simpsons have referenced The Flintstones in several episodes. In the episode "Homer's Night Out", Homer's local convenience store clerk, Apu remarks "You look familiar, sir. Are you on the television or something?" to which Homer replies "Sorry buddy, you've got me confused with Fred Flintstone." During the opening credits of the episode Kamp Krusty, the Simpson family arrive home to find the Flintstone family already sitting on their couch. The beginning of the episode "Marge vs. the Monorail" is an homage to the The Flintstones opening sequence. Homer leaves work much in the same way Fred Flintstone does, singing to the tune of The Flintstones theme: "Simpson, Homer Simpson / he's the greatest guy in history / from the town of Springfield / he's about to hit a chestnut tree" at which point he screams and crashes his car into a tree. In "Lady Bouvier's Lover", Homer's boss, Mr. Burns appears at the family's house and says "Why, it's Fred Flintstone (referring to Homer) and his lovely wife, Wilma! (Marge) Oh, and this must be little Pebbles! (Maggie) Mind if I come in? I brought chocolates." Homer responds by saying "Yabba-dabba-doo!" In Little Orphan Millie, Homer sings a song about his wife which contains the line "She's the Wilma to my Fred".

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