The writers on The Flintstones developed side characters over the six seasons the cartoon series was on the air. Some were recurring, some died a natural death. But there was a one-shot character that found a home in another place.
Pop celebrity culture always came in for a gentle spoofing in animated cartoons. In the ‘30s and ‘40s, Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson, Jack Benny and other radio/movie stars were caricatured. Catchphrases were borrowed from network radio shows.
When television animation became practical, Hanna-Barbera (and especially Bob Clampett’s Snowball Productions) lightly spoofed other television shows.
In the first season of The Flintstones, the series took gentle aim at Peter Gunn, which ran three seasons from 1958-1961 and had a terrific and the quintessential crime-jazz theme composed by Henry Mancini. Art Phillips is credited as the writer who turned Gunn into private eye Perry Gunnite, hired by Fred Flintstone to track down whoever wrote a love letter to Wilma (it turned out to be Fred when he was in high school). Gunnite was voiced, Cary Grant style, by John Stephenson. (Note the nod to 77 Sunset Strip to the left).
There wasn’t a need for a detective on the series, so Gunnite made only one appearance in “Love Letters on the Rocks” (aired February 17, 1961). However, there was a need elsewhere.
Comic books, at least at one time, needed characters besides the title ones to fill space. The best thing is they didn’t have to interact with the main characters. They could have their own stories. That’s what happened with Perry Gunnite.
He appeared in two adventures “Flintstones on the Rocks,” published by Dell in 1961. It is an excellent comic book with great art (by Harvey Eisenberg?) and some fun, single-page featurettes. It also includes a publicity photo of Joe Barbera, Bill Hanna, Warren Foster and my favourite cartoon writer, Mike Maltese. You can find it here.
Here is the first of the two Gunnite stories. You can click on each page to read it.
The TV episode was solely animated by Carlo Vinci. Fred does one of those Carlo head shakes with the rubbery nose. It is on four drawings, animated on ones.
Here is it, slowed down.
Someone will mention the Gunnite walk cycle if I don’t.
It is eight drawings. The “knee up” is held for six frames. The following drawing is used twice, the cameraman moving the background slightly to the right the second time. The rest of the drawings are on ones.
Once again, the pose is held for six frames, then the next drawing is shot twice, with the background moving very slightly in the third frame.
When you only have $2,700 to make a cartoon, you have to find ways to avoid spending cash without looking like you’re avoiding spending cash.
Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera found clever ways to do that in the early episodes of Ruff and Reddy.
The fourth cartoon in the first adventure, The Mastermind of Muni-Mula, has some good examples. It opens with a recap of the previous episode, with about 32 seconds of animation being re-used. New animation follows, with about 30 seconds of eye-blinks in the darkness, as well as a match being lit.
The camera operator then opens up the aperture to reveal Ruff, Reddy and some Muni-Mula robots. The next 12 seconds is nothing but head turns, five positions on Ruff and Reddy, some of which are held for several frames. As well, the background and control panel overlay are used in several episodes.
The metallic men take our heroes to see The Big Thinker. Ed Benedict (or whoever) designed them without feet. No need for a walk cycle. The cel with the characters stays in place while the cameraman moves the background. The only animation is eye-blinks in the first scene below.
I like the backgrounds and layouts in these scenes, which are fairly short to keep the pace going. They show off the vastness of the space ship.
Ruff and Reddy are dropped in front of a large metallic head with two faces, a pleasant one and an angry one. The pleasant face gives Daws Butler a chance to do a Liberace-type voice.
The head reveals to Ruff and Reddy why they’ve been brought to Muni-Mula. He plans to make robot duplicates of them and invade the Earth. He doesn’t give a reason, but being an evil, mind-controlling dictator is reason enough.
Here’s another of Ken Muse’s silhouettes.
Ruff and Reddy’s body proportions are stretched upwards in the scene below; they almost look like hand puppets. But this puts them in a proper place in the frame. Ruff is looking at a finger, while Reddy is looking upward to where the head’s eyes would be.
Off they go. The characters pass behind overlays, just like in a theatrical cartoon, to lend a bit of depth to the scene.
Reddy is between two halves of a pressing machine. There’s no animation here, either. Reddy is held on a cel, while the two halves of the presser are on cels that are slid toward each other.
Hanna and Barbera called this “planned animation.” The term is silly, because all animation is planned. But the way they spoke at the time, it seems they wanted to differentiate what they were doing to other TV animated series at the time, such as Crusader Rabbit or the earlier Telecomics, which were practically still drawings.
This episode aired December 21, 1957.
Three cues from the Capitol Hi-Q ‘D’ series are heard, one by Spencer Moore and the rest by Geordie Hormel.
0:00 – Title card.
0:06 – ZR-90C WEIRD-EERIE (Hormel) – Start of cartoon
0:48 – No music – “Yeow!”
0:54 – ZR-90C WEIRD-EERIE (Hormel) – “That’s my finger,” lights up.
1:10 – No music – “In case you came in late…”
1:18 – L-657 EERIE DRAMATIC (Moore) – “I never saw so many twins…” Big Thinker scenes, metal men take them out of the chamber.
3:04 – No music – “I’m just scared again…”
3:09 – ZR-93K WEIRD-EERIE (Hormel) – “…a long assembly line,” end of cartoon.
3:28 – Title card.
The writers on The Flintstones developed side characters over the six seasons the cartoon series was on the air. Some were recurring, some died a natural death. But there was a one-shot character that found a home in another place.
Art Phillips is credited as the writer who turned Gunn into private eye Perry Gunnite, hired by Fred Flintstone to track down whoever wrote a love letter to Wilma (it turned out to be Fred when he was in high school). Gunnite was voiced, Cary Grant style, by John Stephenson. (Note the nod to 77 Sunset Strip to the left).
