The Flintstone Comedy Hour
The Flintstone Comedy Hour | |
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Genre | Animation |
Directed by | William Hanna Joseph Barbera |
Voices of | Alan Reed Mel Blanc Jean Vander Pyl Gay Hartwig Jay North Mickey Stevens |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
No. of episodes | 18 |
Production | |
Producers | William Hanna Joseph Barbera |
Camera setup | Dick Blundell, Tom Barnes, Ralph Migliori, Roy Wade, George Epperson |
Running time | 60 minutes |
Production company | Hanna-Barbera Productions |
Original release | |
Network | CBS |
Release | September 9, 1972 January 26, 1974 | –
The Flintstone Comedy Hour (re-titled The Flintstone Comedy Show in 1973–74) is a Saturday morning animated anthology series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions. The program originally aired on CBS as an hour-long show from September 9, 1972 to September 1, 1973 and rebroadcast for a second season of reruns as a half-hour show from September 8, 1973 to January 26, 1974.
Summary
The show's first half-hour featured two shorts with Fred & Barney, one short with the cast of Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, and in-between segments included Laugh-In style one-liner jokes and riddles, a brief "Your Horoscope" segment and two songs performed by the new Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm band called "The Bedrock Rockers"; the second half-hour featured four new episodes and reruns of The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show. The show also featured Moonrock, Penny, Wiggy, bad-luck Schleprock and the Bronto Bunch (Bronto, Noodles, Stub and Zonk) from The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show.[1][2]
Mickey Stevens replaced Sally Struthers as the voice of Pebbles in four new episodes of The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show and in brief in-between segments, Struthers at the time being fully committed to her role as Gloria Stivic on the sitcom All in the Family. This was the final spin-off to feature Alan Reed as the voice of Fred Flintstone before Reed's death in 1977.
For the 1973–74 television season, CBS dropped The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show episodes and repackaged the first half-hour segments of The Flintstone Comedy Hour for a second season of reruns under the new title The Flintstone Comedy Show from September 8, 1973 to January 26, 1974. The "Fred & Barney" shorts and "The Bedrock Rockers" segments were later featured on the syndicated weekday series Fred Flintstone and Friends in 1977–78.[3] The program continued to air in rebroadcasts under The Flintstone Comedy Show title on USA Cartoon Express, Cartoon Network and Boomerang.[4]
Like many animated series created by Hanna-Barbera in the 1970s, the show contained a laugh track created by the studio.
The Bedrock Rockers
The Bedrock Rockers were Pebbles Flintstone on keyboard, Bamm-Bamm Rubble on bass and their friends: Moonrock on drums, Penny and Wiggy on tambourines. They performed two songs per episode which included:
- "And I Love You"
- "Sunshine Man"
- "Summertime Girl"
- "Yabba Dabba Doozie"
- "Being With You"
- "Singing Song"
- "What's Your Sign?"
- "Hop, Skip and a Jump"
- "Oh, How I Love You"
- "Sunny Sun Day"
- "Keep in Time"
- "Flying So High"
- "It Should Always Be Saturday"
- "Shadow, Shadow"
- "Rock N Roll Circus"
The music was written by various Screen Gems staffers, which at the time included David Gates (later of "Bread") penning the popular "Summertime Girl" and Tony Dancy (of Tony's Tygers) writing with Craig Fairchild & Jackie Mills on "Being With You". Mills would also write "Sunshine Man" with Leonard Pettit, and "Yabba Dabba Doozie" with Tom Jenkins. The actual group on the recordings were known as the Ron Hicklin Singers featuring Tom Bahler on lead (he would later go on to pen the classic Michael Jackson song "She's Out of My Life"), John Bahler, Jackie Ward and Stan Farber. This lineup would record on hundreds of commercials, TV themes and The Partridge Family recordings. Bahler's lead vocals are also prominent with the group "The Love Generation" who had a few LPs in the late 1960s as well.
Voices
- Alan Reed - Fred Flintstone
- Mel Blanc - Barney Rubble, Dino, Zonk, Stub
- Carl Esser - Fabian Fabquartz
- Gay Hartwig - Betty Rubble, Wiggy Rockstone, Cindy Curbstone
- Don Messick - Schleprock
- Mitzi McCall - Penny Pillar
- Jay North - Bamm-Bamm Rubble
- John Stephenson - Mr. Slate, Noodles
- Mickey Stevens - Pebbles Flintstone
- Jean Vander Pyl - Wilma Flintstone
- Lennie Weinrib - Moonrock Crater, Bruno Bronto
Episodes
# | Original airdate | Episode titles |
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FCH-1 | September 9, 1972 |
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FCH-2 | September 16, 1972 |
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FCH-3 | September 23, 1972 |
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FCH-4 | September 30, 1972 |
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FCH-5 | October 7, 1972 |
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FCH-6 | October 14, 1972 |
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FCH-7 | October 21, 1972 |
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FCH-8 | October 28, 1972 |
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FCH-9 | November 4, 1972 |
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FCH-10 | November 11, 1972 |
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FCH-11 | November 18, 1972 |
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FCH-12 | November 25, 1972 |
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FCH-13 | December 2, 1972 |
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FCH-14 | December 9, 1972 |
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FCH-15 | December 16, 1972 |
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FCH-16 | December 23, 1972 |
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FCH-17 | December 30, 1972 |
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FCH-18 | January 6, 1973 |
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Home Media releases
The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm episodes ("Squawkie Talkies", "The Suitor Computer", "Beauty and the Beast", "Bedlam in Bedrock") were released as bonus episodes on the 2-disc DVD set The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show: The Complete Series by Warner Home Video on March 18, 2008. Note that these are simply the shows, they do not feature the musical selections of The Bedrock Rockers, which have not been released in any commercial form. It is unknown when Warner Archive will plan a release of the entire complete series in its original form.
References
- ^ Copyright Encyclopedia - The Flintstone Comedy Hour #1, retrieved February 16, 2015
- ^ Copyright Encyclopedia - The Flintstone Comedy Hour #2, retrieved February 16, 2015
- ^ The Big Cartoon Database - Fred Flintstone and Friends, retrieved February 16, 2015
- ^ The Big Cartoon Database - The Flintstone Comedy Hour, retrieved February 16, 2015
External links
- The Flintstones television series
- Television spin-offs
- 1970s American animated television series
- 1972 American television series debuts
- 1974 American television series endings
- Television series by Hanna-Barbera
- American comedy television series
- CBS network shows
- USA Cartoon Express
- English-language television programming
- Television series set in prehistory