This is the minute-and-a-half pilot/sales film that Hanna-Barbera produced in either late 1959 or early 1960 to try and sell a show called The Flagstones. This, of course, soon morphed into The Flintstones, a weekly series on ABC that was originally marketed more for adults — complete with a cigarette sponsor some of the time — than for kids.
Had it been for younger audiences, ABC would have programmed it for 7:30 PM, which is when "prime time" then began. Instead, it debuted at 8:30 on Friday evening, September 30, 1960 where it was a surprising hit. By this point, the recently-opened Hanna-Barbera studio had sold The Ruff and Reddy Show (NBC Saturday morning) and then Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw (both syndicated) but this was the series that really put them on the map.
Before anyone asks: It is said that the name was changed because in the Hi & Lois newspaper strip — by Mort Walker and Dik Browne, which debuted in 1954 — the family was named The Flagstones. And that may be true, though some question that reason.
The voice of Wilma was supplied by actress Jean Vander Pyl, who continued through the series and almost every other time Wilma Flintstone spoke until Ms. Vander Pyl left us. Betty Rubble was voiced in this pilot by June Foray, while Fred and Barney were both by Daws Butler, doing much the same voices he did as the mice in the Warner Brothers "Honeymousers" cartoons which aped the Honeymooners TV show starring Jackie Gleason and Art Carney.
June and Daws did not go on to do the series — Daws reportedly because that might have made the show close enough to Mr. Gleason's series to prompt a lawsuit…a move which Gleason once said in an interview had been contemplated. Again, there might be more to the story than that. Daws did play Barney for a few episodes later on when Mel Blanc had his infamous, near-deadly auto accident. And Daws was certainly capable of inventing a voice for Fred which did not sound as much like Ralph Kramden.
Two decades later when I was working for H-B, I made a comment to Joe Barbera about how Barney Rubble had obviously been named as a sly way of saying "Carney Double." Mr. B, as most of us younger folks called him, did a "take" that would not have been out of place in a Tex Avery cartoon. He then swore to me that that had never occurred to anyone at the time and I was the first person he'd ever heard point that out. I still find that hard to believe.
But enough background. Here's the pilot/sales film in question…