HANNA-BARBERA - Karte #31 - DIE FEUERSTEINE - CARDZ 1994

The Flintstones is an American animated sitcom produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions. The series takes place in a romanticized Stone Age setting and follows the activities of the title family, the Flintstones, and their next-door neighbors, the Rubbles (who are also their best friends). It was originally broadcast on ABC from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966, and was the first animated series to hold a prime time slot on television.

The continuing popularity of The Flintstones rests heavily on its juxtaposition of modern everyday concerns in the Stone Age setting. The Flintstones was the most financially successful and longest-running network animated television series for three decades, until The Simpsons , which debuted in late 1989, outlasted it. In 2013, TV Guide ranked The Flintstones the second-greatest TV cartoon of all time (after The Simpsons ).

Overview

The show is set in a comical version of the Stone Age but has added features and technologies which resemble mid-20th-century suburban America. The plots deliberately resemble the sitcoms of the era, with the caveman Flintstone and Rubble families getting into minor conflicts characteristic of modern life. The show is set in the Stone Age town of Bedrock (pop. 2,500). Non-avian dinosaurs and other animals are portrayed to co-exist during the time of cavemen, saber-toothed cats, and woolly mammoths.

Animation historian Christopher P. Lehman considers that the series draws its humor in part from creative uses of anachronisms. The main one is the placing of a "modern", 20th-century society in prehistory. This society takes inspiration from the suburban sprawl developed in the first two decades of the postwar period. This society has modern home appliances, but they work by employing animals. They have automobiles, but they hardly resemble the cars of the 20th century. These cars are large wooden and rock structures and burn no fuel. They are powered by people who run while inside them. This depiction is inconsistent, however. On some occasions, the cars are known to have engines (with appropriate sound-effects), requiring ignition keys and gasoline. Fred might pull into a gas station and say, "Fill 'er up with Ethel", which is pumped through the trunk of a woolly mammoth marked "ETHEL." Whether the car runs by foot or by gas varies according to the needs of the story. Finally, the stone houses of this society are cookie-cutter homes positioned into neighborhoods typical of mid-20th-century American suburbs.

Characters

The Flintstones

• Fred Flintstone - 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 household. 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. His famous catchphrase is "Yabba Dabba Doo!"

• Wilma Flintstone - Fred's wife and Pebbles' mother. She is more intelligent and level-headed than her husband, though she often has a habit of spending money (with Betty’s and her catchphrase being "Da-da-da duh da-da CHARGE IT!!"). She often is a foil to Fred's poor behavior, but is a very loyal wife to him. She is also a very jealous woman who is easily angered if there's even a hint of another woman (especially a pretty one) having anything to do with Fred.

• Pebbles Flintstone - The Flintstones' infant daughter, who is born near the end of the third season.

• Dino - The Flintstones' pet dinosaur that acts like a dog. A running gag in the series involves Fred coming home from work and Dino getting excited and knocking him down and licking his face repeatedly.

• Baby Puss - The Flintstones' pet saber-toothed cat, which 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!", waking the whole neighborhood in the process.

The Rubbles

• Barney Rubble - The secondary main character and Fred's best friend and next-door neighbor. His occupation is, throughout most of the series, unknown, though later episodes depict him working in the same quarry as Fred. He shares many of Fred's interests such as 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 very evident.

• Betty Rubble - Barney's wife and Wilma's best friend. Like Wilma, she, too, has a habit of spending money and also is highly jealous of other pretty women being around her husband.

• Bamm-Bamm Rubble - 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 - The Rubbles' pet hopparoo (a kangaroo-dinosaur combination creature), which they purchase at the beginning of the fifth season. When he first arrives, Dino and Fred mistake him for a giant mouse and are frightened of him, but they eventually become best friends after Hoppy gets help when they are in an accident. He babysits the kids as he takes them around in his pouch, which also serves as a shopping cart for Betty.

Other characters

Over 100 other characters appeared throughout the program.

• Mr. George Slate - Fred and Barney's hot-tempered boss at the gravel pit. Mr. Slate fires Fred on several occasions throughout the series, only to give him his job back by the end of the episode. A running gag is Slate's ever-changing first name, which was revealed to be Sylvester, Nate, Oscar, and George as the series progressed. In the episode "The Long, Long, Long Weekend" which originally aired on January 21, 1966, he is shown as being the founder of "Slate Rock and Gravel Company"; still in business two million years later, the company is operated by his descendant, "George Slate the Eighty-Thousandth". Note, in the early Flintstones episodes, the more recognized "Mr. Slate" character was known as "Mr. Rockhead" and was a supervisor of Fred's. Mr. Slate was a short character. During the course of the cartoon, the two men switched identities and the shorter character faded away from existence.

• Arnold - The Flintstones' paperboy, whom Fred absolutely despises, mainly because Arnold is frequently able to best and outsmart Fred at a number of tasks and also because he often ("unintentionally") throws the newspaper in Fred's face. Arnold's parents are mentioned in the series, but his mother Doris, a friend of Wilma and Betty's (as evidenced in the episode "The Little Stranger", which originally aired on November 2, 1962), is referenced in name only, never actually appearing onscreen. Arnold's father, however, did appear in the episode "Take Me Out to the Ball Game", which originally aired on April 27, 1962, though his name is never mentioned.

• Joe Rockhead - 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. Joe was, at some point, chief of the Bedrock Volunteer Fire Department as shown on the episode "Arthur Quarry's Dance Class", which originally aired on January 13, 1961. His appearance varied throughout the run of the series, but his appearance in the episode "The Picnic", which originally aired on December 15, 1961, was the one most commonly used.

• Pearl Slaghoople - Wilma's hard-to-please mother, Fred's mother-in-law and Pebbles' maternal grandmother, who is constantly disapproving of Fred and his behavior. Their disastrous first meeting was recounted in the episode "Bachelor Daze", which originally aired on March 5, 1964. They briefly reconciled in the episode "Mother-in-Law's Visit", which originally aired on February 1, 1963. That is, until, she found out that she became Fred's "nice fat pigeon" when he suckered her out of money that he needed to buy a baby crib for Pebbles. They reconciled again at the end of the TV movie I Yabba Dabba Do .

• The Great Gazoo - An alien exiled to Earth that helps Fred and Barney, often against their will. The Great Gazoo 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. Gazoo appeared in the final season only.

• Uncle Tex Hardrock is Fred's maternal uncle and a member of the Texarock Rangers. He constantly holds Fred's future inheritance over his head.

• Sam Slagheap - The Grand Poobah of the Water Buffalo Lodge.

• The Gruesomes - A creepy but friendly family that moves in next door to the Flintstones in later seasons.

  • Weidly Gruesome - The patriarch of the Gruesome Family who works as a reality show host.

  • Creepella Gruesome - The tall wife of Weidly.

  • Goblin "Gobby" Gruesome - The son of Weidly and Creepella.

  • Uncle Ghastly - The towering brother of Weirdly and uncle of Gobby who is mostly shown as a large furry hand coming out of a well or a wall. His shadow was also seen in their debut episode.

  • Occy - The Gruesome Family's pet octopus.

  • Schneider - Gobby's pet giant spider.

• The Hatrocks - A family of hillbillies that originally feuded with the Flintstones' Arkanstone branch in the style of the Hatfield-McCoy feud. Fred and Barney reignite a feud with them in "The Bedrock Hillbillies when Fred inherits San Cemente from the late Zeke Flintstone over who made the portrait of Fred's great-great-uncle Zeke. The Hatrocks later returned in "The Hatrocks and the Gruesomes" where they bunk with the Flintstones during their trip to Bedrock World's Fair and their antics start to annoy them. The Flintstones, the Rubbles, and the Gruesomes were able to drive them away by performing the Four Insects song "She Said Yeah Yeah Yeah." When they found that the Bedrock World's Fair was having the Four Insects performing, the Hatrocks fled back to Arkanstone.

  • Jethro Hatrock - The patriarch of the Hatrock Family. He had brown hair in "The Hatrocks and the Flintstones" and taupe-gray in "The Hatrocks and the Gruesomes."

  • Gravella Hatrock - The wife of Jethro.

  • Zack Hatrock - The oldest son of Jethro and Gravella.

  • Slab Hatrock - The youngest son of Jethro and Gravella.

  • Granny Hatrock - The mother of Jethro and grandmother of Zack and Slab.

  • Benji Hatrock - The son-in-law of Jethro.

  • Percy - The Hatrock's pet Dogasaurus.

Voice cast

• Alan Reed - Fred Flintstone, Uncle Ghastly

• Jean Vander Pyl - Wilma Flintstone/Pebbles Flintstone

• Mel Blanc – Barney Rubble, Dino, Zack Hatrock

• Daws Butler - Barney Rubble (season 2; episodes 1, 2, 5, 6, and 9 only)

• Bea Benaderet – Betty Rubble (seasons 1–4), Gravella Hatrock

• Gerry Johnson - Betty Rubble (seasons 5–6), Granny Hatrock (in "The Hatrocks and the Gruesomes")

• Don Messick - Bamm-Bamm Rubble, Hoppy, Arnold, Gobby Gruesome

• John Stephenson - Mr. Slate, Joe Rockhead, Sam Slagheap

• Verna Felton - Pearl Slaghoople (first time)

• Janet Waldo - Pearl Slaghoople (later appearances)

• Harvey Korman - The Great Gazoo

Additional voice cast

• Henry Corden

• Walker Edmiston

• June Foray - Granny Hatrock (in "The Bedrock Hillbillies")

• Sandra Gould

• Naomi Lewis - Creepella Gruesome

• Allan Melvin

• Howard Morris - Weirdly Gruesome, Schneider, Jethro Hatrock, Slab Hatrock, Percy

• Hal Smith

• Ginny Tyler

• Doug Young - Benji Hatrock

Voice actor details

Fred Flintstone physically resembles both the first voice actor who played him, Alan Reed, and Jackie Gleason, whose series, The Honeymooners , inspired The Flintstones . The voice of Barney Rubble was provided by voice actor Mel Blanc, except for five episodes during the second season (the first, second, fifth, sixth, and ninth); Hanna-Barbera regular Daws Butler filled in and provided the voice of Barney 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. Blanc's portrayal of Barney had changed considerably after the accident. In the earliest episodes, Blanc had used a much higher pitch to the point of portraying Barney as a smart-aleck. 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 and was shown as somewhat dopier than before.

Reed based Fred's voice upon Gleason's Honeymooners 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, Gleason said Alan Reed had done voice-overs for Gleason in his early movies and that he had 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's voice became Fred's after Reed's death in 1977, starting 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 both Fred and Barney for Toshiba commercials) have performed the voice of Fred. Since Mel Blanc's death in 1989, Barney has been voiced by Jeff Bergman, 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.

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". This version was recorded with a 22-piece big band, and the Randy Van Horne Singers. 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. Many early episodes used the underscores composed for "Top Cat" and "The Jetsons." Episodes of the last two seasons used the underscore of "Jonny Quest" for the more adventurous stories.

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 who 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 was later incorporated into two Flintstones episodes, "The Bedrock Hillbillies" and "The Hatrocks and the Gruesomes"), Romans (Hanna-Barbera eventually created 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.:3 It was a difficult sell, and required eight weeks of daily presentations to networks and ad agencies. Animator Kenneth Muse, who worked on the Tom and Jerry cartoons, also worked on the early seasons of The Flintstones .

The show imitated and spoofed The Honeymooners , although the early voice characterization for Barney was that of Lou Costello. William Hanna admitted that "At that time, The Honeymooners was the most popular show on the air, and for my bill, the funniest. 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."[citation needed ] 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 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 sight gags from that series predated similar situations used by Hanna-Barbera in the Flintstones series by many years. 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 television 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 Flintstone and Barney Rubble 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 know 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."

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 such as Warren Foster and Michael Maltese.

The Flintstones premiered on September 30, 1960, at 8:30 pm Eastern time, and quickly became a hit. It 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 time 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. Around this time, Winston pulled out their sponsorship and Welch's (grape juice and grape jellies) became the primary sponsor, as the show's audience began to shift younger. 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 U.S. connection giving them information about past Flintstone episodes. An American won the contest and received an all-expenses-paid trip to tour Hanna-Barbera Studios. 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 Rubble" (October 3, 1963), established how Bamm-Bamm was adopted. Nine episodes were produced before it but aired afterward, which explains why Bamm-Bamm was not 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 tone and writing became more juvenile and ratings from the adult demographic began to decline. The last original episode was broadcast on April 1, 1966.

The first three seasons of The Flintstones aired Friday nights at 8:30 Eastern time on ABC, with the first two seasons in black-and-white. Beginning with the third season in 1962, ABC televised the Flintstones in color, one of the first programs in color on that network. Season four and part of season five aired Thursdays at 7:30. The rest of the series aired Fridays at 7:30.

In the U.S., syndicated reruns of the series were offered to local stations until 1997, when E/I regulations and changing tastes in the industry led to the show's move to cable television. From the time of Ted Turner's purchase of Hanna-Barbera in 1991, TBS, TNT, and Cartoon Network aired the program. On April 1, 2000, the program moved to Boomerang, where it aired until March 6, 2017 (in its last years on the channel, it had been relegated to a graveyard slot) and returned to the channel on July 30, 2018. Online, the series was made available on the In2TV service beginning in 2006, then the online version of Kids' WB until that service was discontinued in 2015. As of 2017, full episodes are only available in the U.S. on Boomerang's subscription video-on-demand service, with select clips made available on the official YouTube account tied to the revamped Kids' WB website. In 2019, MeTV acquired rerun rights to the series, returning the show to broadcast television for the first time in over 20 years.

Reception

The night after The Flintstones premiered, Variety magazine called it "a pen and ink disaster", and the series was among many that debuted in a "vast wasteland" of a 1960–61 television season considered one of the worst in television history up to that point. As late as the 1980s, highbrow critics derided the show's limited animation and derivative plots. Despite the mixed critical reviews at first, The Flintstones has generally been considered a television classic and was rerun continuously for five decades after its end. In 1961, The Flintstones became the first animated series to be nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series, but lost out to The Jack Benny Program . In January 2009, IGN named The Flintstones as the ninth-best in its "Top 100 Animated TV Shows". The first season of the series received an approval rating of 100% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on five reviews.

Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. , simply known as Hanna-Barbera and also referred to as H-B Enterprises , H-B Production Company and Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Inc. , was an American animation studio founded in 1957 by Tom and Jerry creators and former Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation directors William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, in partnership with film director George Sidney.

For three decades in the 20th century, it was a prominent force and leader in American television animation as it created a variety of popular animated characters and a succession of cartoon series, including The Huckleberry Hound Show , The Flintstones , The Yogi Bear Show , The Jetsons , Wacky Races , Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! and The Smurfs .

Its cartoons won eight Emmys and seven Oscars and for their contributions to media, a star was honored to Hanna and Barbera on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The boys sold the studio to Taft Broadcasting on December 29, 1966. By the mid-1980s, when the profitability of Saturday-morning cartoons was eclipsed by weekday afternoon syndication, Hanna-Barbera's fortunes had declined.

Turner Broadcasting System purchased the studio from Taft (by then renamed Great American Broadcasting) in late 1991 and used much of its back catalog as the foundation and programming for Cartoon Network and later Boomerang. After Turner purchased the company, Hanna and Barbera continued to serve as creative consultants and mentors.

The studio became a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Animation in 1996 following Turner's merger with Time Warner and was ultimately absorbed into Warner Bros. Animation in 2001, existing in name only. As of 2020, Warner Bros. continues to produce new animation based on Hanna-Barbera's catalog using the Hanna-Barbera brand name.

History

1939–1957: Success with Tom & Jerry , birth of Hanna-Barbera

William Hanna, a native of Melrose, New Mexico, and Joseph Barbera, born of Italian heritage in New York City, first met at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio in 1939, while working at its animation division (through its Rudolf Ising unit) and solidified a partnership that would last for six decades. Their first cartoon together, the Oscar-nominated Puss Gets the Boot , featuring a cat named Jasper and an unnamed mouse, was released to theaters in 1940 and served as the pilot for the long-running theatrical short subject series Tom and Jerry . Hanna and Barbera served as directors of the shorts for over 20 years, with Hanna supervising the animation and Barbera in charge of the stories and pre-production.

In addition, being nominated for twelve Oscars, seven of the cartoons won seven for Best Short Subject (Cartoons) between 1943 and 1953, but were awarded to producer Fred Quimby, who was not involved in the creative development of the shorts.:83–84 The pair also directed new hybrid animated and live-action musical sequences for MGM's feature films Anchors Aweigh (notable for its dance sequence featuring Gene Kelly and Jerry), Dangerous When Wet and Invitation to the Dance and wrote and directed a handful of one-shot cartoons, Gallopin' Gals , Officer Pooch , War Dogs and Good Will to Men , a 1955 remake of 1939's Peace on Earth .

With Quimby's retirement in 1955, Hanna and Barbera became the producers in charge of the MGM animation studio's output, supervising the last seven shorts of Tex Avery's Droopy series and directing and producing a short-lived Tom and Jerry spin-off series, Spike and Tyke , which ran for two entries. In addition to their work on the cartoons, the two men moonlighted on outside projects, including the original title sequences and commercials for the CBS sitcom I Love Lucy . With the emergence of television, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer decided in early 1957 to close its cartoon studio, as it felt it had acquired a reasonable backlog of shorts for re-release.

While contemplating their future, Hanna and Barbera began producing animated television commercials and during their last year at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, they had developed a concept for a new animated TV program about a dog and cat duo in various misadventures. After they failed to convince the studio to back their venture, live-action director George Sidney, who had worked with Hanna and Barbera on several of his theatrical features for MGM, offered to serve as their business partner and convinced Screen Gems, a television production subsidiary of Columbia Pictures, to make a deal with the producers.

A coin toss would determine that Hanna would have precedence in naming the new studio. Harry Cohn, president and head of Columbia Pictures, took an 18% ownership in Hanna and Barbera's new company, H-B Enterprises , and provided working capital. Screen Gems became the new studio's distributor and its licensing agent, handling merchandizing of the characters from the animated programs. The duo's cartoon firm officially opened for business in rented offices on the lot of Kling Studios (formerly Charlie Chaplin Studios) on July 7, 1957, two months after the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation studio closed down.

Sidney and several Screen Gems alumni became members of the studio's board of directors and much of the former MGM animation staff — including animators Carlo Vinci, Kenneth Muse, Lewis Marshall, Michael Lah and Ed Barge and layout artists Ed Benedict and Richard Bickenbach — became the new production staff for the H-B studio. Conductor and composer Hoyt Curtin was in charge of providing the music while many voice actors came on board, such as Daws Butler, Don Messick, Julie Bennett, Mel Blanc, Howard Morris, John Stephenson, Hal Smith and Doug Young.

1957–1969: Funny animals, sitcom families and more

H-B Enterprises was the first major animation studio to successfully produce cartoons exclusively for television and after rebroadcasts of theatrical cartoons as programming, its first TV original The Ruff and Reddy Show , premiered on NBC in December 1957. The Huckleberry Hound Show came next in 1958 and aired in most markets just before prime time. A ratings success, it introduced a new crop of cartoon stars to audiences, in particular Huckleberry Hound, Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks and Yogi Bear and was the first animated series to win an Emmy.

The studio began expanding rapidly following its initial success and several animation industry alumni – in particular former Warner Bros. Cartoons storymen Michael Maltese and Warren Foster, who became new head writers for the studio – joined the staff at this time along with Joe Ruby and Ken Spears as film editors and Iwao Takamoto as character designer. By 1959, H-B Enterprises was reincorporated as Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. , and slowly became a leader in TV animation production from then on. The Quick Draw McGraw Show and its only theatrical short film series, Loopy De Loop , would follow that year.

The Flintstones premiered on ABC in prime time in 1960, loosely based on the CBS series The Honeymooners . It was set in a fictionalized stone age of cavemen and dinosaurs. Jackie Gleason considered suing Hanna-Barbera for copyright infringement, but decided not to because he did not want to be known as "the man who yanked Fred Flintstone off the air". The show ran for six seasons, becoming the longest-running animated show in American prime time at the time (until The Simpsons beat it in 1997), a ratings and merchandising success and the top-ranking animated program in syndication history. It initially received mixed reviews from critics, but its reputation eventually improved and it is now considered a classic.

The Yogi Bear Show and Top Cat would soon follow in 1961. The three shows Wally Gator , Touché Turtle and Dum Dum and Lippy the Lion & Hardy Har Har aired as part of The Hanna-Barbera New Cartoon Series then The Jetsons debuted in 1962. Several animated TV commercials were produced as well, often starring their own characters (probably the best known is a series of Pebbles cereal commercials for Post featuring Barney tricking Fred into giving him his Pebbles cereal) and H-B also produced the opening credits for Bewitched , in which animated caricatures of Samantha and Darrin appeared. These characterizations were reused in the sixth season Flintstones episode "Samantha ".

In 1963, its operations moved off the Kling lot (by then renamed the Red Skelton Studios) to 3400 Cahuenga Boulevard West in Hollywood, California. This contemporary office building was designed by architect Arthur Froehlich. Its ultra-modern design included a sculpted latticework exterior, moat, fountains and a Jetsons-like tower. In 1964, newer programs of The Magilla Gorilla Show , The Peter Potamus Show and Jonny Quest aired. Atom Ant, Secret Squirrel and Sinbad Jr. and his Magic Belt came in 1965. Screen Gems and Hanna-Barbera's partnership lasted until 1965, when Hanna and Barbera announced the sale of their studio to Taft Broadcasting.

Taft's acquisition of Hanna-Barbera was delayed for a year by a lawsuit from Joan Perry, John Cohn, and Harrison Cohn – the wife and sons of former Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn, who felt that the studio undervalued the Cohns' 18% share in the company when it was sold a few years previously. In 1966, an animated Laurel and Hardy series, Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles and Space Ghost first aired and by December 1966, the litigation had been settled and the studio was finally acquired by Taft for $12 million. It would fold it into its corporate structure in 1967 and 1968, becoming its distributor.

Hanna and Barbera stayed on with the studio while Screen Gems retained licensing and distribution rights to the previous Hanna-Barbera produced cartoons, along with trademarks to the characters into the 1970s and 1980s. A number of new comedy and action cartoons followed in 1967, among them are The Space Kidettes , The Abbott and Costello Cartoon Show , Birdman and the Galaxy Trio , The Herculoids , Shazzan , Fantastic Four , Moby Dick and Mighty Mightor and Samson & Goliath (a.k.a. Young Samson ).

The Banana Splits Adventure Hour , The Adventures of Gulliver and The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn arosed in 1968, while the successful Wacky Races and its spinoffs The Perils of Penelope Pitstop and Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines aired on CBS, followed by Cattanooga Cats for ABC. The studio had its first (and only) record label Hanna-Barbera Records, headed by Danny Hutton and distributed by Columbia Records. Previously, children's records featuring H-B characters were released by Colpix Records.

1969–1979: Mysteries with comic reliefs, superheroes and The Gathering

Next came Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! in 1969, which blended comedy, action and elements from I Love a Mystery and The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis . Running for two seasons on CBS, it centered on four teenagers and a dog solving supernatural mysteries. Referred to as "The General Motors of animation", Hanna-Barbera would eventually go even further by producing nearly two-thirds of all Saturday morning cartoons in a single year. On the horizon, the studio produced a steady stream of new mystery-solving, prime time, Saturday morning, superhero, action-adventure and spinoff cartoons for broadcast.

These include Harlem Globetrotters , Josie and the Pussycats , Where's Huddles , The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show , Help!... It's the Hair Bear Bunch! , The Funky Phantom , The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan , Wait Till Your Father Gets Home , The Flintstone Comedy Hour , The Roman Holidays , Sealab 2020 , The New Scooby-Doo Movies , Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space , the feature film Charlotte's Web , Speed Buggy , Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids , Yogi's Gang , Super Friends , Goober and the Ghost Chasers , Inch High, Private Eye , Jeannie , The Addams Family , Hong Kong Phooey , Devlin , Partridge Family 2200 A.D. , These Are The Days , Valley of the Dinosaurs , Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch , The Tom & Jerry Show , The Great Grape Ape Show , The Mumbly Cartoon Show , The Scooby-Doo Show , Dynomutt, Dog Wonder , Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels , Clue Club , Jabberjaw , Laff-A-Lympics , CB Bears , The Robonic Stooges , The All-New Super Friends Hour , The All New Popeye Hour , Yogi's Space Race , Galaxy Goof-Ups , Buford and the Galloping Ghost , Challenge of the Super Friends , Godzilla , Jana of the Jungle , The New Fred and Barney Show , Casper and the Angels , The New Shmoo , The Super Globetrotters , Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo and The World's Greatest Super Friends .

While the majority of American television animation were made by Hanna-Barbera, with their major competition coming from Filmation and DePatie-Freleng, Fred Silverman, then-president of ABC, gave them the majority of its Saturday morning cartoon time after dropping Filmation for its failure of Uncle Croc's Block . Along with the rest of the American animation industry, it began moving away from producing all its cartoons in-house in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Joe Ruby and Ken Spears left to start their studio Ruby-Spears Enterprises in 1977, with Filmways as its parent company. In 1979, Taft bought Worldvision Enterprises, which would become Hanna-Barbera's syndication distributor.

Hanna-Barbera would make new shows and movies entirely in live-action, though it had already got into live-action in the late 1960s (mixing it with animation). Their live-action unit was spun off and renamed Solow Production Company, which immediately following the name change, was able to sell Man from Atlantis to NBC. Its most distinguished live-action production by far was The Gathering , an Emmy award-winning TV movie starring Edward Asner and Maureen Stapleton, written by James Poe and directed by Randal Kleiser.

1980–1991: Smurfmania

Super Friends , The Flintstone Comedy Show , The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang and Richie Rich emerged in 1980, then came Laverne and Shirley in the Army , Space Stars , The Kwicky Koala Show and Trollkins in 1981. Taft purchased Ruby-Spears from Filmways the same year. While Filmation, Marvel/Sunbow, Rankin/Bass and DIC introduced successful syndicated shows based on licensed properties (mostly toy lines), Hanna-Barbera continued to produce for Saturday mornings and weekday afternoons, but no longer dominated the TV animation market as it did formerly.

While its control over children's programming went down from 80% to 20%, Hanna-Barbera's next highly successful series The Smurfs , adapted from the comic by Pierre Culliford (known as Peyo) and centering on a group of tiny blue forest-dwelling creatures led by Papa Smurf, premiered and aired on NBC for nine seasons, becoming the longest-running Saturday morning cartoon series in broadcast history, a significant ratings success, the top-rated program in eight years and the highest for an NBC show since 1970.

In 1982, fresh cartoons Jokebook , The Gary Coleman Show , Shirt Tales , Pac-Man , The Little Rascals and The Scooby & Scrappy-Doo/Puppy Hour first aired then The Dukes , Monchhichis , The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show and The Biskitts came to the airwaves in 1983. The studio set up a computerized digital ink and paint system and was innovative for its time. It was the first to use digital coloring, long before other animation studios. This process did not require as much effort as time-consuming labor of painting on cels and photographing them.

Many of Hanna and Barbera's shows were outsourced to Cuckoo's Nest Studios, Mr. Big Cartoons, Mook Co., Ltd., Toei Animation and Fil-Cartoons in Australia and Asia. The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries , Snorks , Challenge of the GoBots , Pink Panther and Sons and Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show all aired in 1984. In 1985, The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians , The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo along with Yogi's Treasure Hunt , Galtar and the Golden Lance and Paw Paws (the three shows introduced in The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera ) debuted while new Jetsons episodes premiered.

The studio also presented The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible , its first new straight-to-video series. In 1986, new Jonny Quest episodes and series of Pound Puppies , The Flintstone Kids , Foofur and Wildfire aired. Sky Commanders , Popeye and Son and the Hanna-Barbera Superstars 10 made-for-television movies debuted in 1987. Meanwhile, Taft, whose financial troubles were affecting Hanna-Barbera, would be acquired by the American Financial Corporation in 1987, renaming it Great American Broadcasting the following year.

A Pup Named Scooby-Doo , The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley , new Yogi Bear episodes, Fantastic Max , The Further Adventures of SuperTed and Paddington Bear followed in 1988 and 1989. Around this time, Great American sold Worldvision to Aaron Spelling Productions, while Hanna-Barbera and its library remained with them. Some of the staff got a call from Warner Bros. to resurrect its animation department, and Tom Ruegger along with his colleagues left to develop new programs there. David Kirschner, known for producing the An American Tail and Child's Play film franchises, was later appointed as the new CEO of Hanna-Barbera.

In 1990, under Kirschner, the studio formed Bedrock Productions, a unit for various movies and shows. Great American put Hanna-Barbera, along with Ruby-Spears, up for sale after being less successful and burdened in debt. New shows Midnight Patrol: Adventures in the Dream Zone , Rick Moranis in Gravedale High , Tom & Jerry Kids Show , an adaptation of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure , The Adventures of Don Coyote and Sancho Panda and Wake, Rattle, and Roll (later as Jump, Rattle, and Roll ) first aired.

1991–2001: Turner rebound and end of a studio

In 1991, while Young Robin Hood (a co-production with Canadian-based studio Cinar), The Pirates of Dark Water and Yo Yogi! debuted on-air, Turner Broadcasting System outbid MCA (then-parent company of Universal Studios), Hallmark Cards and several other big major companies in acquiring Hanna-Barbera Productions while also purchasing Ruby-Spears at the same time.

Both Hanna-Barbera and Ruby-Spears Enterprises were acquired in a 50-50 joint venture between Turner Broadcasting System and Apollo Investment Fund for $320 million. Turner purchased these assets to use in launching an all-animation network aimed at children and younger audiences. Turner's president of entertainment Scott Sassa hired former MTV Networks executive Fred Seibert to head Hanna-Barbera.

Seibert filled the gap left by the Great American-era crew with new animators, directors, producers and writers, including Pat Ventura, Craig McCracken, Donovan Cook, Genndy Tartakovsky, David Feiss, Seth MacFarlane, Van Partible, Stewart St. John, and Butch Hartman. In 1992, the studio was renamed to H-B Production Company and unleashed Fish Police , Capitol Critters and new Addams Family episodes. Turner launched Cartoon Network, the first 24-hour all-animation channel, to air its library of cartoon classics, of which Hanna-Barbera was the core contributor.

In 1993, the studio changed its name again to Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Inc. (though the Hanna-Barbera Productions name would still be used in regards to pre-1992 properties) while Turner acquired the remaining interests in the studio from Apollo Investment Fund for $255 million. A number of new cartoons emerged in 1993 and 1994, including Droopy, Master Detective , The New Adventures of Captain Planet , SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron and 2 Stupid Dogs . At this time, Turner Broadcasting System refocused the studio to produce new shows exclusively for its networks. In 1995, an adaptation of Dumb and Dumber premiered on ABC, becoming the final new Hanna-Barbera show to air on a broadcast network.

What a Cartoon! (first promoted as World Premiere Toons ), an animation showcase led by Seibert, premiered and featured new creator-driven shorts developed for Cartoon Network by Hanna-Barbera's in-house staff. Several new original animated series emerged from What a Cartoon! , including Dexter's Laboratory , Johnny Bravo , Cow and Chicken and The Powerpuff Girls . In 1996, while new series of Cave Kids and The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest premiered, Turner Broadcasting merged with Time Warner.

In 1998, after being on Cahuenga Blvd. since 1963, Hanna-Barbera, its archives, and its extensive animation art collection moved to Sherman Oaks Galleria in Sherman Oaks, California where Warner Bros. Animation was located. The company operated alongside Warner Bros. Animation at Sherman Oaks Galleria until 2001, when both studios were merged together by parent company Time Warner. After the Hanna-Barbera/Warner Bros. merger, Cartoon Network Studios was revived and took over production of Cartoon Network's programming.

Hanna died of throat cancer on March 22, 2001, and Barbera died of natural causes on December 18, 2006. Senior character designer Iwao Takamoto died of a heart attack on January 8, 2007. The Cahuenga Blvd. studio faced demolition after Hanna-Barbera vacated the facilities in 1997, despite the efforts of Barbera and others to preserve it. In May 2004, the Los Angeles City Council approved a plan to preserve the headquarters while allowing retail and residential development on the site.

2001–present: New projects based on legacy properties

After absorbing the Hanna-Barbera studio, Warner Bros. Animation has continued to produce new productions based on Hanna-Barbera's legacy properties, including new Scooby-Doo and Tom & Jerry direct-to-video films and television series. In 2016, Warner Bros. announced the film Scoob! was in the works, based on the classic Scooby-Doo property. The film, originally scheduled for release in September 2018 but later pushed back to May 2020, is intended to be the first installment of a Hanna-Barbera Cinematic Universe. The film is being produced by Warner Animation Group and distributed by the parent studio.

The studio is also developing films based on The Jetsons (with Conrad Vernon set to direct and Matt Lieberman writing the screenplay), The Flintstones , and Wacky Races . In 2016, DC Comics debuted a new comic book initiative titled Hanna-Barbera Beyond , which is a re-imagining of some of the Hanna-Barbera studio's classic cartoons and characters in darker and edgier settings. Additional titles arrived in March 2017 crossing over with the DC Universe.

Production

Production process changes

The small budgets that television animation producers had to work within prevented Hanna-Barbera from working with the full theatrical-quality animation that Hanna and Barbera had been known for at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. While the budget for MGM's seven-minute Tom and Jerry shorts was about $35,000, the Hanna-Barbera studios was required to produce five-minute Ruff and Reddy episodes for no more than $3,000 a piece. To keep within these tighter budgets, Hanna-Barbera furthered the concept of limited animation (also called semi-animation) practiced and popularized by the United Productions of America (UPA) studio, which also once had a partnership with Columbia Pictures. Character designs were simplified, and backgrounds and animation cycles (walks, runs, etc.) were regularly re-purposed.

Characters were often broken up into a handful of levels so that only the parts of the body that needed to be moved at a given time (i.e. a mouth, an arm, a head) would be animated. The rest of the figure would remain on a held animation cel. This allowed a typical 10-minute short to be done with only 1,200 drawings instead of the usual 26,000. Dialogue, music, and sound effects were emphasized over action, leading Chuck Jones—a contemporary who worked for Warner Bros. Cartoons and whose short The Dover Boys practically invented many of the concepts in limited animation—to disparagingly refer to the limited television cartoons produced by Hanna-Barbera and others as "illustrated radio".

In a story published by The Saturday Evening Post in 1961, critics stated that Hanna-Barbera was taking on more work than it could handle and was resorting to shortcuts only a television audience would tolerate. An executive who worked for Walt Disney Productions said, "We don't even consider [them] competition". Animation historian Christopher P. Lehman argues that Hanna-Barbera attempted to maximize their bottom line by recycling story formulas and characterization instead of introducing new ones. Once a formula for an original series was deemed successful, the studio would keep reusing it in subsequent series. Besides copying their own works, Hanna-Barbera would draw inspiration from the works of other people and studios.

Lehman considers that the studio served as a main example of how animation studios which focused on TV animation differed from those that focused on theatrical animation. Theatrical animation studios tried to maintain full and fluid animation, and consequently struggled with the rising expenses associated with producing it. Limited animation as practiced by Hanna-Barbera kept production costs at a minimum. The cost in quality of using this technique was that Hanna-Barbera's characters only moved when absolutely necessary.

Its solution to the criticism over its quality was to go into movies. It produced six theatrical feature films, among them are higher-quality versions of its television cartoons (Hey There, It's Yogi Bear! , The Man Called Flintstone and Jetsons: The Movie ) and adaptations of other material (Charlotte's Web , Heidi's Song and Once Upon a Forest ). It was also one of the first animation studios to have their work produced overseas. One of these companies was a subsidiary started by Hanna-Barbera called Fil-Cartoons in the Philippines. Wang Film Productions got its start as an overseas facility for the studio in 1978.

Sound effects

Hanna-Barbera was noted for its large library of sound effects, which have been featured in exhibitions at the Norman Rockwell Museum.

• Condition: Ungraded
• Set: Hanna-Barbera
• Character: Fred Flintstone, Wilma Flintstone, Barney Rubble, Betty Rubble
• Country/Region of Manufacture: United States
• Card Size: Standard
• Card Number: 31
• Material: Card Stock
• Card Condition: Near Mint
• Graded: No
• Type: Non-Sport Trading Card
• TV Show: The Flintstones
• Year Manufactured: 1994
• Vintage: Yes
• Manufacturer: Cardz
• Language: English
• Modified Item: No
• Original/Licensed Reprint: Original
• Genre: Classic Animation, Hanna-Barbera, Animation, Action, Adventure, Comedy
• Approximate Size of Card: 3.5 inches by 2.5 inches
• Subject Type: TV & Movies
• Franchise: Hanna-Barbera
• Autographed: No

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