Modern Stone Age Designs

Isn’t it enjoyable to stumble across production artwork from cartoon shows? There seems to be a fair bit of it from early Hanna-Barbera cartoons. A good thing, too, considering a lot of the archives (from what I understand) didn’t survive the closure of the studio on Cahuenga after the company was purchased by Turner then merged with Time-Warner.

I’d like to assume the drawings below were from the mind of Ed Benedict. As you may know, he had been Tex Avery’s and Mike Lah’s designer at MGM. He was hired at Hanna-Barbera when it was set up in 1957 after the closure of MGM’s cartoon operations.

Whether these were for The Flintstones or Ruff and Reddy, I can’t say. There was a story adventure involving a cave boy named Ubble Ubble (animated by Carlo Vinci) who looks like the drawing you see below. But the design was re-used when The Flintstones was in early development as The Flagstones. Fred had a son who looked like Ubble Ubble. The only difference I can see in publicity art that made it into newspapers is Fred Junior’s ears stuck out from the outside of the head instead of being drawn on the head as below. Incidentally, these were found on the Heritage Auctions website some time ago.



What you see below is definitely from The Flintstones. These are, I presume, layout drawings and were made for episode P-13, “The Girls Night Out” (animated by Don Patterson). Walt Clinton definitely provided layouts for most, if not all, of the cartoon. This was Warren Foster’s satire on fleeting fame in the rock music industry due to fickle teenagers.



Compare them to what appeared in the actual cartoon. I think, and it’s just a guess, Bob Gentle did these. I’m judging by the tan-coloured sky and the lack of Monty-like flatness. The chiselled letter effect is by Art Goble.



Perhaps I should do a post on the many different Flintstones caves (which aren’t really caves at all, even though that’s what Wilma calls her house in this cartoon). No one cared if the homes or cars or whatever were different from cartoon to cartoon (the cars eventually fell into a standard design). Now you have continuity freaks who will screech if the corn cobs on the curtains in the Simpsons’ kitchen are facing in the “wrong” direction). Give me the simpler times any day, especially when it comes to the great work of Ed Benedict.

Fred Flintstone, Age 111

Alan Reed landed a TV role in fall 1960. It went nowhere. He was picked to play an agent in the sitcom Peter Loves Mary which, by the way, included a maid played by Bea Benaderet. Fortunately for Reed, he got another role on a different show that season. You know what it is.

As hard as it is to believe, Reed was not the first or second choice to provide the voice for Fred Flintstone. Reed was perfect for the role. He gave it humour and gave it warmth. Reed’s Fred was a three dimensional character, quite a feat for a cartoon character.

For the fans who don’t know, Daws Butler used his grumpy Jackie Gleason-style voice in a short reel put together when the series was still known as The Flagstones in development in early 1960, but Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera felt he was being overused by the studio. Bill Thompson came out of cartoon retirement (he was working for Union Oil at the time), recorded five soundtracks as Fred, but had troubles with the low end of his voice, so he was let go (returning to the studio later as Touché Turtle). Reed was next and the part was his until his death at age 69.

Like pretty much all cartoon voice actors (including the main cast of The Flintstones), Reed came from radio. He was a star back in 1930 on a CBS show called Henry and George. Above you see him from Big Sister when he was using his original name. He adopted Alan Reed (the first two names of his youngest son) to get more dramatic roles and in 1939 decided just to stick with the one name.

Reed would be 111 if he were with us in person today. Here is a newspaper interview with him from when The Flintstones was still in production. This is from the Chicago Tribune syndicate, February 12, 1961. As a side note, the “Finnegan” role spoken of was originated by Charlie Cantor, who used it on Fred Allen’s radio show. If you’ve heard Sid Raymond as Baby Huey, that’s the voice. The “Falstaff” voice was the voice Reed used in the Flintstones episode where he becomes the snooty “Frederick.” And “Daddy” on the Snooks show sounded very Flintstone-ish.

The Real Fred Flintstone
By Larry Walters
IN A FEW short months the Flintstones have become the “first family” of television. After all they’re cavemen right out of the stone age. And the head of the house is Fred Flintstone, a sort of early Fibber McGee with some overtones of a latter day Jackie Gleason.
He’s sort of a lovable jerk as he goes about his problems via animated cartoons [at 7:30 p.m. Friday on channel 7] and for several weeks we couldn’t figure out who was doing his gooney voice.
Finally, we pegged it. The possessor of this voice is none other than Alan Reed, who used to play the classic lovable jerk Finnegan in the old Duffy’s Tavern series, and Clancy the Cop, another jerk from the same show.
But perhaps his best remembered role of the radio heyday was that of Falstaff Openshaw, the poet of Fred Allen’s Alley. He did that more than 10 years. He also was the voice of David Rubinoff, Eddie Cantor’s violinist. There were many laughs in Rubinoff’s mangling of the Queen’s English [it was the King’s English then] but Dave got the credit instead of Reed. Alan also played the original Daddy to Fanny Brice’s Baby Snooks.

After the Allen years Reed went to Hollywood where he worked in the TV versions of Duffy’s Tavern and Life with Luigi. Meanwhile, he had joined Fox studios under a long term contract. He made around 50 feature pictures, among them “Viva Zapata,” “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” and “Desperate Hours.”
A few years ago he decided to get into some business that would protect him in his old age. He heads Alan Reed Enterprises, a firm that distributes specialty and executive gifts. Going great, too, says Reed.
Reed recalls his days with Fred Allen as his best. This wry wit was a constant joy to be with and to work with, he recalls. Allen, who was one of the easiest touches on Broadway, gave away a lot of money. When NBC moved him from an east side studio to one on the west [Allen lived on Manhattan’s west side] Reed once asked how he liked the new place.
“It’s all right,” said Allen, “and it’s three less ‘touches’ walking here than it was to the other place.”
But Reed is having a fine time today. He’s got his money making business going well, and he enjoys “living” with his TV wife in Bedrock and riding around in his own convertible which has Stone wheels. He has a fine piano, naturally a Stoneway. He’s a joiner; one of his favorite associations is the Y.C.M.A., the Young Cave Men’s association. Occasionally he goes out on the town. His favorite night spot: the Rockadero Hilton.
But the nicest thing about his new TV career, is the hours.
“It used to take us three or four days to make a show,” he recalled. “But now we do a Flintstone show in three hours. And we do them in the evening, so it doesn’t even interfere with my business career.”
What a life!

Dan Gordon's Sketches

Dan Gordon was one of the originals at Hanna-Barbera, providing story sketches for the Ruff and Reddy series in 1957. Gordon was originally an architectural draughtsman (he was employed as one according the U.S. Censuses in 1920 and 1930). Whether he went into animation before his younger brother George is unclear, but the two of them both worked for the Van Beuren and Terrytoons studios in New York (with Joe Barbera) before he moved on to employment after the war on comic books, then with the John Sutherland and Transfilm industrial studios in the ‘50s.

Gordon seems to have worked on all of Hanna-Barbera’s series (possibly excluding Top Cat) until 1965 when he vanished from the studio. Heritage Auctions recently accepted bids on a number of items to which Gordon’s name was attached. Whether he drew them all is open for discussion.

First some great sketches that appear to have been made in preparation for The Jetsons (1962). There are some nice concepts here.



Next are some panels of either the Flintstones or Flagstones (the series’ original name). These drawings are definitely by Gordon, though the dialogue appears to have been scribbled in by Joe Barbera. They’re from “The Swimming Pool,” the first episode put into production, though the dialogue isn’t verbatim what’s in the finished cartoon.



Finally, some great sketches of Yogi Bear for a Kellogg’s Corn Flakes commercial. I don’t know whether these are Gordon’s. Yogi’s very attractively drawn and I like the crowing rooster on the package.



Gordon left the studio around the start of 1961 to work for Quartet, the commercial studio eventually run by Hanna-Barbera alumnus Mike Lah (he was Bill Hanna’s brother-in-law) but returned by the time Magilla Gorilla was in production then seems to have left again around the time Secret Squirrel and Atom Ant were being made in 1965. Gordon died five or six years later (I have not found a definitive source on when or where). He was one of a number of fine cartoon artists who put their stamp on the early (and best) Hanna-Barbera comedy series.

A Plan of Success Through Planned Animation

Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera weren’t the only ones trying to make it in the TV cartoon business in 1957, but they were the most successful. Everything fell into place for them. They needed a bankroller. They found one in Columbia Pictures, thanks to intermediary George Sidney (who got a piece of the action for hooking up the two with the studio). They figured out a way to make limited animation look less limited than Crusader Rabbit and other made-for-television cartoons of the day, and do it affordably. And they came up with likeable characters, who they put in entertaining situations. The end result? Sponsors, viewers, critical praise and people buying merchandise. All that equalled, as Fred Flintstone later remarked, “Do-Re-Mi Money.”

Hanna-Barbera’s success attracted attention in the trade press. Actually, the trades had been commenting on trends in animation for some time. What a difference a decade made. At the start of the 1950s, stories basically stated theatres saw no value in running cartoons and studios couldn’t make a profit on new ones. But then came expansion of television. Television needed programming. Old theatrical cartoons were sitting on the shelf, virtually worthless to the studios. The broadcast rights were sold to distributors—movie studios weren’t going to dirty themselves in something as mediocre as television, even if they had the mechanism—who proceeded to rake in small fortunes. Better and more desirable cartoons came on the market as the decade wore on, climaxing in two deals by AAP, one in early March 1956 to acquire pre-1948 Warner Bros. colour cartoons, and another about seven weeks to pick up 234 Popeye cartoons from King Features and Paramount (Billboard, Apr. 21, 1956). The airwaves became flooded with Bugs Bunny and Olive Oyl’s boyfriend as station after station after station eagerly snapped up the top-notch animated shorts. Having just about run out of old theatricals to put on TV, the idea of made-for-TV cartoons gained new traction. And that’s when Bill and Joe enter the story.

Originally, Bill and his brother-in-law, Mike Lah, were hired to create new Crusader Rabbit cartoons. But through some legal slight-of-hand, the project was forced off the drawing boards. Hanna, Barbera and Lah then borrowed the Crusader continuing-adventure format, plugged some new characters into it, and Ruff and Reddy were born.

Television Age magazine picks up the rest of the story for us, the story up until March 7, 1960, when the following was published. What’s great about this spotlight piece is not only were the Flintstones still into their “Flagstones” stage, but it’s the only publication I’ve found with a model drawing of Fred, Jr. You all know the character was dropped in development, and I can only presume it’s because Hanna and Barbera wanted a show based around the adults (Honeymooners, anyone?) and not a family. Of course, Ideal Toys’ bank account changed that later. Fred Jr. has the exact same design as Ubble Ubble from the Ruff and Reddy cartoons; Bill and Joe weren’t above borrowing from themselves (something that became all too apparent as the studio rolled on).

■ ■ ■
Cartoon comeback
With planned technique and original story lines . . . Hanna-Barbera Productions gives animation new life
Once upon a time Joe Barbera went out to the wonderful land of Hollywood to make cartoons. He worked very hard and was immensely gratified when theatregoers across the nation squealed like mice to see his Tom and Jerry run. A proud man, he would quietly observe that his output. eight seven -minute cartoons a year. was a heavy one. Then, one day, the pencil dropped. the ink dried: from high up in the tinselly towers of that mysterious world came a cry, echoing and re-echoing through the empty lots, the quiet streets, the vacant minds: enough! No more! And Joe Barbera, a storyteller without an audience, looked at his friend, Bill Hanna, an artist without a canvas, and they were both sad.
That was in 1957. If Mr. Barbera, partner in Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc., looks at the past as though it were an especially poignant fairy tale, he has a right to, for the ending is in the best tradition of those narratives: the two protagonists lived busily ever after. As producers of Ruff & Reddy, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw and The Flagstones (which is scheduled for prime evening time over ABC-TV next season), Hanna-Barbera is nothing if not busy. Today the company can be considered the leading producer of new cartoons for television, an occupation which was considered irresponsible or worse a few years ago by the hardheaded, the extremely hardheaded businessmen of that era. It didn't make economic sense, they argued, good animation is too expensive. limited animation too shoddy.

In developing a technique which was both good and economical the partners did to cartooning what the European small cars did to Detroit: initiated a minor revolution. That technique, called “planned animation” by Mr. Barbera, involves employing a rare commodity—experience—in the day-to-day operation. In his words, “you have to know when to cut and when not to cut. It's as simple as that. Limited animation is a mistake. Some people think they can save money and still come up with something good by taking cut-outs and moving them around a fixed background. It isn't that easy.”
Planned animation caught on quickly. With Screen Gems acting as distributor, Ruff & Reddy, a story about a frisky cat and a dim-witted dog, went on the air over NBC -TV in 1957. Huckleberry Hound, the saga of a canine Don Quixote, was picked up by Kellogg's in a huge national spot spread in 1958, and was recently renewed. Quick Draw McGraw, which is about an obtuse horse and his more perceptive, Spanish-speaking burro sidekick, was purchased by Kellogg's last year as part of its national spot pattern. Just last month ABC-TV purchased The Flagstones, a satire on an exurbanite family in the Stone Age. The historical background is irresponsibly recreated.
To make the cartoon-comeback circle complete, H-B has re-entered the theatrical-cartoon field—using its television technique. The company has signed a five -year exclusive contract with Columbia Pictures, parent company of Screen Gems. First theatrical cartoon series has been titled Loopy De Loop.
If the concept of planned animation seems unnecessarily vague in that it is basically a common-sense approach to production problems, its execution is another matter. Mr. Barbera is a story man and artist, and Mr. Hanna is a technician. With this start, a technique was worked out whereby all cartoon story men have learned to draw well enough to do their scripts in sketch form. “If the scripts were typed up we'd have to call in a sketch man and in the last analysis end up with a compromise,” Mr. Barbera observes. A certain amount of freshness and spontaneity is preserved this way, and the savings in time and cost are obvious, he notes.

Production is maintained at all times, and to avoid slowdowns an open -door policy is in effect at the shop (the Amco studios in Hollywood).
“We have no executives here. Everyone is available, and everyone works. We make quick decisions: if a story man comes in with an idea he gets a yes or no, frequently within a matter of minutes.”
H-B's production schedule demands this kind of concentration. Mr. Hanna and Mr. Barbera once did eight cartoons a year for theatrical release, and were proud of it. Today they do four cartoons a week for television, and all of them are in color. Another comparison: in 20 years of work for MGM the team turned out 120 Tom and Jerry cartoons; in two years in television they produced over 300 cartoons, and have orders totaling 700.
Planned animation affords a savings of about half over full animation, says Mr. Barbera. Where the latter utilizes as much as 17,000 cels (individual pictorial units) in a seven-minute cartoon, only 1,000 to 2,000 are used in planned animation for the same length production, and for the same or greater number of scenes and characters. This, in turn, has attracted business: in its first full year of operation (1958) H-B grossed $1 million; in 1959 the figure more than doubled to $2.25 million; in 1960, current contracts guarantee a gross of at least $3 million.
Curiously, the whole concept of planned animation grew out the studios of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. There, a technique was developed whereby a projected cartoon was done roughly at first, as a kind of preview. Mr. Barbera animated and drew and then broke the pictures into scenes, while Mr. Hanna timed it out. If it was found acceptable, a full cartoon was made. When MGM discontinued production of new cartoons, the partners took their wares elsewhere, convinced that a refinement of the preview technique could be adapted for television, and for motion-picture theatres, for that matter. Screen Gems, a partner in anything it finances of H-B's, agreed to distribute the product.
Affable and relaxed, Mr. Barbera is something of a salesman himself. He has a contagious regard for the numerous characters he has created, and a good ear for inflections and intonations of speech. These qualities helped him sell Huckleberry Hound to the Leo Burnett people (for Kellogg's) with just three storyboards, and before the character of Huckleberry Hound had been created. (Initially, the program consisted of Yogi Bear, Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinx.) [sic] That was on July 7, 1957, exactly 20 years to the day he started with MGM.

An emphasis on the purely technical aspects of the company's operation does not begin to explain its success. Mr. Barbera is quick to point out that “we can have the best staff in the world, but without story, characters, proper timing, we're doomed.”
The approach to the cartoons, however, is what seems to distinguish H-B Productions from its competitors. It has been described as light satirization, or wholesome burlesques, of familiar situations. It is largely a civilized humor which has caught on with children, and with many adults. Although violence is used on occasion to right wrongs, there is no sadism, little of the prat-fall humor which characterizes many of Hollywood's cartoons. With this tenuous formula, Messrs. Hanna and Barbera can be expected to make a major contribution to children's programming, and a modest one to adult fare.
■ ■ ■

Those last two paragraphs sum up why the early Hanna-Barbera cartoons have such appeal today.

Early Bedrock?

Flagstones concept art?

Reader Pat Caldore has pointed out these pieces below were recently put up for auction at the Van Eaton Gallery in California. Nowhere does the site indicate who is responsible for the artwork or when it was drawn. Is it retro? Or was it actually drawn in 1959 or 1960 in preparation for The Flintstones? Sorry, but I don’t have the answers. But here’s the artwork, especially for fans of the ‘50s flat look that Ed Benedict liked so much.

Note that the middle drawing has an ice-box pretty much like the one in the Kramden’s apartment in The Honeymooners

Huckleberry Hound and Others in Pictures

Let us now climb the creaking old steps to the virtual storage trunk in the Yowp cyber-attic to leisurely sift through fond memories of Hanna-Barbera past. In other words, I stole these images from internet sites and am re-posting them. Somehow, I like the wording of the first sentence better than the second.



We have regular readers who joined the Huck Hound Club way-back-when. Some of you even kept your membership card and managed to prevent your mom from throwing out other stuff that Huck’s headquarters sent to you. This application form for the Huck Club from 1961 came from the back of a Gold Key comic. Look what you got for 15 cents! Decorate your clubhouse! (Can an offer be any more suburban than that?). Offer not available in Canada.



Here’s a full-page ad from Weekly Variety, April 27, 1960. I suspect this is celebrating The Huckleberry Hound Show’s Emmy nomination (it won that June for Outstanding Children’s Program). What’s somewhat amazing is Huck never got a bad review; at least I haven’t been able to find one. The critics loved the show. You can read some of their comments in the ad. Too bad the blue on Huck is faded.



Did Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera conceive of Baywatch long before it aired? Could this be darling Clementine? Whatever the case, the photo is from the collection of cartoonist and Chicago historian Jim Engel. Any origins before that are unclear.



Someone decided to go out on Hallowe’en as Huck or is modelling the latest in bank robber fashion. Is that a ‘54 Pontiac in the car port? I’m guessing this photo is from the later ‘60s, being in colour and all. Someone posted it on Twitter.



Decisions, decision. Should I go with the Oven ready Cornish style roasting chicken for dinner, or the Polish smoked Kielbassi? And what’s the difference between “Cornish” and “Cornish-style?” The fact Huck is holding a box of his sponsor’s product and he’s very much on-model tells me the artwork didn’t come from someone on the staff of the Lorain Journal. This is from 1962. You may pause a moment and sob about the difference in price compared to today.



Another trade ad, this one from Television Age, March 7, 1960. It’s pushing ABC’s fall line-up. We post it because buried in the list of shows is The Flagstones. There aren’t many contemporary references to The Flintstones under its original name, and few ads. This is one of them. I thought I had saved a newspaper story I found with artwork that included a drawing of Fred Junior (no, this was not for a comic book, it was for the series) but I can’t find it amongst my megabytes of files. Grrr.
Boy, ABC sure had some failures in ‘60, didn’t it?



This needs no introduction.



We’ve been posting some of the Flintstones dailies from the Chicago Tribune. Evidently, Fred and Barney were part of the 1960s round of the Great Chicago Newspaper Wars as they appeared in a different paper at one time. This is courtesy of Scott Awley, who was a character designer late in the life of H-B and has a terrific collection of artwork used to pitch some of the studio’s series. The year is unknown. Nice prehistoric mushroom next to Fred.



Here’s an ABC publicity photo for Top Cat, specifically for the episode “Top Cat Falls in Love.” Oh, to have a full collection of stills for the four Hanna-Barbera prime-time shows on the network.



Finally, we save the best to last. It’s a Huckleberry Hound lamp from 1960. Yes, the 10-inch plastic red Huck is a little disconcerting but the best part is, naturally, the lamp shade. Look at the second picture and see who’s on it. Hey, there’s no name next to me like everyone else!

You can click on any of the pictures to enlarge them. We now close the virtual storage trunk and allow it to gather dust until the next visit to the cyber attic.

Cooking the Flintstones

How did Fred and Wilma Flintstone get their first names? Neither Bill Hanna nor Joe Barbera explain it in in their autobiographies, both of which go into detail about the evolution of “The Flintstones” series before it finally debuted. However, the answer seems to be supplied in a paid obituary that ran in the New York Times on February 22, 2010. It’s for a fellow named Joe Cook. You can read it in full here but the relevant portions state that Cook wrote the first two episodes of “The Flintstones” and that Fred was named for his father-in-law, while Wilma’s name came from his P.T.A. president.

You may be thinking the same thing I thought when I read this: Joe who?

Unfortunately, the original credits for the first season of the show were shorn from the cartoons when they went into syndication in 1966, so the cartoons themselves don’t reveal their writers. But the exhaustive website Webrock Online matches each cartoon with its writer and Cook’s name doesn’t appear. People have been known to make spurious claims about working on cartoons. Could Cook have done the same thing?

The answer would appear to be “no.”

The Knickerbocker News of Albany, New York ran a feature story on “The Flintstones” on June 11, 1960, a good 3½ months before the show debuted on ABC. And the information about the coming series came from Joe Cook. It’s evident in reading the story that Cook had to be in on the early development of the show. Some of the elements seem left over from the original “Flagstones” concept, such as the cartoon being set in “Rockville Vista.” And the publicity drawing supplied to the newspaper features some of the early Ed Benedict designs that were soon modified. Here’s Cook’s concept of the show:

Spoofing the Spoofers
Situation Comedy Animated
By WALTER HAWVER
WHEN YOU HEAR an announcer this fall proclaiming the merits of “The Dinosaur Show,” don’t make the mistake of thinking he slurred his words and meant “Dinah Shore.”
And if he should mention “Rockville Vista,” he will be referring not to the famed Wistful Vista of Fibber McGee and Molly but the cave city of Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
The Flintstones are the brainchildren of Joe Barbera, originator of the “Tom and Jerry” movie cartoons. In case anyone among my readers is unfortunate enough not to be acquainted with Barbara’s other animated creations, let me say right now you should get to know Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, Yogi Bear et al.
HUCK AND McGRAW and Yogi are all characters who can be a joy to the youngster and understood by the adult. I have said more than once that they deserve to be seen in a little later time period than the supper hour, which is their fate in most areas.
The Flintstones (previously “The Flagstones” until the author of the comic strip, “Hi and Lois,” exercised his prior rights) will have a later spot. To be exact, 8:30-9 p. m. on Friday’s TV’s first half hour animated situation comedy series.
It’s a little early for either ABC or Hanna-Barbera Productinos (William Hanna is the business half) to start beating the drums, but the other day I ran into Joe Cook, author of the first episode. To borrow a well-worn phrase, he gave me a Cook’s tour of the program.



* * *
IN JOE’S words, The Flintstones will have something for everybody. “It’s a flat-footed beer drinkers’ show,” he said. “New Yorker readers will probably find more in it than is really there. The kids’ll go for it, simply because it is a cartoon. Nuance-wise—now there’s a word—Barbera is, in effect, spoofing all situation comedy.
“He’s one of the swingingest, most creative people I ever met. He gets up at 5.30 a. m. and when others fog out on him at 11 p. m., he wonders what’s wrong.
“When he got the idea for The Flintstones, he called one of his animators on the phone and dictated the storyboard. They put together a 4-to-5-minute episode and sold the whole show on this basis.”
* * *
THE FLINTSTONES will have four major characters and I’ll let Cook describe them:
“Fred Flintstone: He’s an awfully nice, loveable, albeit charming, oaf. Sort of a cross between Jackie Gleason and Edgar Kennedy. You might call him the William Bendix of 1000 B.C.
“Wilma Flagstone [sic]: She’s an Audrey Meadows type, smart, sarcastic. She knows everything about her husband and doesn’t think he knows anything about anything.
“Barney and Betty Rubble: They’re the Flintstones’ next-door neighbors. Barney is the most charming idiot you can imagine. Betty is so sweet she makes you sick.”
THE SHOW will be loaded with gimmicks, but the basic one is the superimposition of the language and behavior of modern-day suburbia on the settings, costumes and props of prehistoric times.
The Stone Age city of Rockville Vista will have real streets and motor cars with fins (it hasn’t yet been decided if they will have motors). The Flintstones and the Rubbles will watch TV and go to ball games. When Betty lights Barney’s cigaret she’ll use a modern-type lighter, but when she pushes down two little sticks will rise up and rub together to produce a flame.
Cook said there are “no holds barred” for the writer. “You name any situation that can happen in a town and we’ll have it. Teen-age problems, municipal graft and bribery, people with all sorts of foibles. We’ll have a YCMA (Young Cave Men’s Association) and a businessman who owns the firm of ‘Rock & Quarry’.”
* * *
OCCASIONALLY, prehistoric animals will be introduced but Cook said there will be “less of Alley Oop than the Honeymooners.” And when a dinosaur or a tyrosanous [sic] reappears, they will be of the pet variety. “No 1,000,000 B. C. fights,” Cook pledged.
The decision to have the Flintstones as cave people instead of Westchester Countyites was made for Barbera, Cook said. “One of the hardest things for a cartoonist is to animate human beings, particularly the mouth. If you remember Snow White and the Seven dwarfs, you know that the dwarfs were more realistic than Snow White.”
Cook, who will write five more episodes for The Flintstones, has been associated with dozens of network television and radio shows and personalities in his career. Among them: Paul Winchell, Arnold Stang, Bert Parks, the Margaret Truman-Mike Wallace “Weekday” radio show, the Tony Bennett-Jaye P. Morgan summer replacement program for Perry Como and special material for Bob Hope, Will Jordan and other comics.

The story creates another mystery. When did Cook arrive at Hanna-Barbera, when did he leave and why? Why were Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera quick to credit Warren Foster with writing much of the first season of the show but never mention Cook? (Foster wrote “The Swimming Pool,” the episode which had its basis in the short Flintstones pilot.) Perhaps one of our readers may have the answers.

Happy Birthday, June Foray

How can the whole world not love June Foray? She’s brought countless moments of instant delight and enjoyment to several generations through her work in theatrical cartoons and on radio and television.

Well, someone didn’t like June Foray. Or, at least, they didn’t want her. For there was a role that got away 50 years ago.

Joe Barbera did all the voice casting and directing at Hanna-Barbera in the early years and he picked June to play Betty in The Flintstones. Her voice can be heard in the under-two-minute demo of the show that Barbera and John Mitchell of Screen Gems used to shop the show to New York ad agencies and networks. But, as we all know, she didn’t land the role.

June was asked about it in a 2000 interview for the Archive of American Television.

Oh, that broke my heart. I did a pilot because I had been working for Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera when they were out at MGM. And they said “we’re doing a”—it was called ‘The Flagstones’ at that time—and they said “you’re going to be the character [Betty] and so, it was Daws Butler and I who did the pilot.
And then my agent called and said “They’re not going to use you and they’re auditioning other people.” And I said “Gee, why don’t they at least [let her try a different voice]”—because when I went in there, Joe Barbera says “Oh, just be, na[tural], just do any voice,” you know. And I thought I did a good job. And they wouldn’t let me audition anymore. And so, a few months later, Joe called my agent and said “We feel so very bad about June. We’d like to hire her for something else.” And I said “You tell him to take a long walk off a short pier.” And I didn’t work for Bill and Joe for a long time until I did—well, I did ‘A Man Called Flintstone’—until I did ‘The Smurfs.’

Thus, June joined a list of people who tried out the “short pier” line—or perhaps another one with a little more colour in it—on Joe Barbera. I suspect June’s replacement as Betty, Bea Benaderet, did the same after suddenly finding Gerry Johnson doing the role.

Despite June’s recollection, she did appear on three Flintstones episodes—‘Foxy Grandma’ and ‘Dress Rehearsal’ in the third season, and ‘Bedrock Hillbillies’ in the fourth. She did mention she maintained cordial relations with Joe and Bill during the years before she worked with them again on The Smurfs. Her first work at Hanna-Barbera was on the 1958 Yogi Bear cartoon “Bear on a Picnic,” a rare time that a female actor was hired in the first season of the Huckleberry Hound Show (Daws Butler and Don Messick generally did women’s roles in falsetto).



Why was she unceremoniously dumped as Betty? And by whom? No one knows or is saying.

However, birthdays are meant to be happy occasions, and not dwell on the negative. So I would suggest you set aside some time today to pull out some Jay Ward cartoons and enjoy June’s fun acting. Or you can listen to Tim Dolcé’s interview with June he recorded last year on his Behind the Lines podcast. You can find it HERE. Cue to the 4:15 mark for the interview.

June has given us so many great performances, she deserves every accolade given to her by her fans and peers.

Happy birthday, June.