You may have seen this. Back when Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera were trying to sell their new animated stone age sitcom, they whipped up this short (minute and a half) "demo" film. At the time, the show was called The Flagstones. It would later be called The Flintstones, which was a better name — two "rock" references instead of one — and one that didn't duplicate the surnames of the family in the Hi & Lois newspaper strip, thereby appeasing lawyers. Also at some point in there, it was also going to be called The Gladstones.
But let's discuss the voices in this film. Jean Vander Pyl, who'd been doing female voices on other Hanna-Barbera shows, played Wilma…and would forever after. June Foray, who had not worked for H-B before (and didn't work much for them after) did the three lines as Betty Rubble. Daws Butler — who was the voice of Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw and all the other major H-B animated stars at the time — supplied the voice of Fred. A lot of folks say he used the same voice he'd used impersonating Jackie Gleason in those "Honeymouser" cartoons Warners had produced a few years earlier. I think it's a similar voice but that Daws consciously altered it a bit, perhaps at Bill and Joe's request, so it wasn't dead-on Gleason. (If you want to compare 'em, here's a link to what he did for Warner's.)
So is that about it? No, we haven't discussed who did the voice of Barney Rubble.
No one seems to know. A lot of sources say it was Daws…and it would be logical for them to have Daws do it since he did such a great impression of Art Carney. He did it in for "The Honeymousers" and he did a version of it, also modified so as not to be too close to the source, for Yogi Bear. But those of us who profess to be experts at this kind of thing seem to all agree it ain't Daws except maybe for the chomping sounds Barney makes at the end. Those noises were probably lifted by the sound editor from some other cartoon where Daws supplied them.
We also seem to agree it's not Doug Young or Don Messick or anyone else who was heard in H-B cartoons of the day. It's possible it isn't even a known professional voice actor. It sounds a little amateurish…like they grabbed one of the writers or animators and shoved him in front of the microphone. If you have any better idea, let me know.
Since I've gone this far, I might as well discuss what happened later with Flintstones voice casting. When the series sold, Bill and Joe decided to not use Daws or June or the mystery Barney. Daws and June were both somewhat rankled at that. Bea Benaderet was cast as Betty Rubble. Bill Thompson was cast as Fred. Hal Smith was cast as Barney. If you know the kind of roles Thompson and Smith usually played, you might think it was the other way around. Smith, who was best known as Otis the Town Drunk on The Andy Griffith Show, usually played loudmouthed big guys. Thompson, whose most famous animation voice was probably Droopy Dog (or using much the same voice, Smee in Disney's Peter Pan) usually played wimpy little guys. But H-B actually recorded the first five episodes with Thompson playing Fred and Smith playing Barney. This is not, by the way, where the Smith Barney investment firm got its name.
Then Bill and Joe decided they'd made a casting mistake. The stated reason was that Thompson was having trouble doing the "gravel" (roughness) they wanted in Fred's voice…but that wouldn't explain why Hal Smith was replaced by Mel Blanc or why Thompson's replacement, Alan Reed, didn't do a particulary gravelly voice. I think Hanna and Barbera just decided they could do better. Anyway, Reed and Blanc were brought in and they re-recorded the Fred and Barney lines that Thompson and Smith had done. You can still hear Thompson and Smith playing some small roles in the early episodes.
That may not be the entire story. The late character actor Cliff Norton used to tell people that at one point, he was going to be the voice of Fred Flintstone. If or when this happened is unknown to me. It wouldn't surprise me if there were others before they settled on Reed.
So here's the Flagstones demo, complete with crayon markings. The markings are because the only copy of this film that seems to have survived is one that a film editor marked this way. And maybe I should mention the time around 1980 when I asked Joe Barbera if they named Barney Rubble that because they were trying to imply he was a Carney Double. I can't adequately describe his reaction but it was a lot like the wolf in a Tex Avery cartoon finding Droopy where he wasn't supposed to be. Mr. B swore to me that no one else had ever mentioned that to him and I believe him. But inasmuch as I thought of that when I was ten, I can't believe no one else ever noticed.
