Over the course of this year there have been several uploads on YouTube shining the spotlight on the half hour syndicated series, Flintstone Frolics. The title of this blog entry encompasses the years that The Flintstone Comedy Show happened to be on network television under a variety of titles.
The series debut on NBC on November 22, 1980. The reason for the late start-up date is because 1980 happened to be a strike year for television writers and the 1980-1981 season didn't get underway until November (instead of the usual month of September). This particular series expanded on the concept of several Flintstones programs that had aired in the years preceding the debut of this 90 minute, Saturday morning series. During the 1979-1980 season NBC aired a half hour cartoon series titled The New Fred and Barney Show. In one of the episodes, titled "Fred and Barney Meet the Frankenstones", the ghoulish family is introduced. This happened during a September 1979 air-date. Episodes of The New Fred and Barney Show aired from February to October 1979 on NBC's Saturday morning line-up.
The Flintstone Comedy Show consisted of six segments per episode. The main segment titled The Flintstone Family Adventures contained adventures/stories similar to the 1960's episodes of The Flintstones focusing on Fred, Wilma, Barney, and Betty. Bedrock Cops is a segment that features Fred and Barney as patrolmen on prehistoric motorbikes...perhaps a spoof of the live-action series, CHiPs. In the segment Fred and Barney are aided by Shmoo, a shape-shifting glob of alien species. Their boss is Sgt. Boulder. The Pebbles, Bamm-Bamm, and Dino segment revolved around Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm solving mysteries in which Dino acted as comic relief. The segment often come across like Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm's previous series of adventures in the early '70s on The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show including appearances from Moonrock, Penny, and Wiggy.
A fourth segment, titled Captain Caveman, told the adventures of Captain Caveman's years in Bedrock before being frozen in ice and discovered millions of years later by Dee-Dee, Taffy, and Brenda in the Captain Caveman and Teen Angels series. In the 1980 series Captain Caveman is the alter-ego of Chester, a mild-mannered copy boy at The Daily Granite. Chester turns into his alter-ego, Captain Caveman, during times of crisis and danger...and is often cheered on by both Betty and Wilma (co-workers of Chester's at the paper) even though he's just as klutzy and clumsy as ever. Their boss is Lou Granite. In this series Chester's facial area is clean-shaven but after he transforms into Captain Caveman he looks as he should...covered completely in hair. This segment keeps with The Flintstones tradition of taking modern-day culture and events and placing them in a prehistoric setting. A fifth segment of the 90 minute series centered around The Frankenstones. In this segment Frank Frankenstone's been transformed from a lovable, easy-going monster into a devious and short-tempered agitator. In previous incarnations of the Frankenstone character the depictions had been more or less similar to Boris Karloff's legendary performance as The Frankenstein Monster in the Universal Studios horror movies. Ted Cassidy, and later, John Stephenson, voiced Frankenstone prior to this 1980 series. Charles Nelson Reilly became the new voice of the character and therefore the character's personality changed to match the vain, prissy, and easily annoyed characterization that Reilly was noted for. A sixth segment of the 1980 series centered on Dino...the segments having been called Dino and Cavemouse. In the segment (2 per episode) Dino and a character named Cavemouse battle one another in Tom and Jerry/Road Runner and Coyote-style adventures.
Syndicated internationally The Flintstone Comedy Show received a different title in the form of The Flintstone Frolics. Under this title the original 6 segments from the 90 minute version that were airing in America became repackaged in 30 minute installments. This meant that each half hour broadcast of the Frolics featured 2 segments chosen at random. One episode may feature The Frankenstones and Bedrock Cops, another may feature Bedrock Cops and The Flintstone Family Adventures, another may contain a Captain Caveman adventure along side a Flintstone Family Adventures segment, etc. etc. There happened to be 11 individual episodes produced for 5 of the 6 segments during the ninety minute 1980-1981 season. As mentioned previously the Dino and Cavemouse segments had 2 chase adventures per episode for a total of 22 installments. An additional 7 ninety minute episodes aired during the 1981-1982 season. In total 5 of the 6 segments added up to 18 episodes each. Dino and Cavemouse enjoyed a total of 44 segments during that same period. The Flintstone Comedy Show series, in America, left the NBC Saturday morning line-up on September 11, 1982 but the segments continued to air...
As international audiences seen the program as The Flintstone Frolics a different re-packaged, half hour series aired in America beginning on September 18, 1982 on NBC under the title of The Flintstone Funnies.
As you can see from the title card the series spotlighted the segments originally seen on the 90 minute series. Like the Frolics incarnation overseas, the domestic Flintstone Funnies randomly aired segments of the 90 minute series out of sequential order in a 30 minute time-slot on NBC. This meant that segments produced in 1980 and 1981 aired back-to-back in most half hour installments. This Saturday morning re-packaged series aired on NBC until September 8, 1984. It would be the last time The Flintstones and The Rubbles appeared on network television as adults...ABC aired The Flintstone Kids (1986-1988)...and that series marked the last time The Flintstones and it's related characters appeared on network television in a series (moving to reruns on cable-TV over the next 25+ years). The characters of Fred and Barney continued to air on network TV in the form of commercials for Pebbles cereal throughout much of the 1990s.
The voice cast for the original 90 minute series is rather large as you could imagine. Henry Corden starred as the voice of Fred Flintstone; Mel Blanc also starred as Barney Rubble, Dino, and Captain Caveman; Jean Vanderpyl starred as Wilma Flintstone; Gay Autterson starred as Betty Rubble and Wiggy; Russi Taylor voiced Pebbles Flintstone and Cavemouse; Michael Sheehan voiced Bamm-Bamm Rubble; John Stephenson voiced numerous characters but his main one happened to be Mr. Slate. Also in the cast...Don Messick as Bad Luck Schleprock. Frank Welker as Shmoo and Rockjaw. Lennie Weinrib as Moonrock and Sgt. Boulder. Charles Nelson Reilly as Frank Frankenstone, Ruta Lee as Hidea Frankenstone, Zelda Rubenstein as Atrocia Frankenstone, Paul Reubens as Freaky Frankenstone, Kenneth Mars as Lou Granite, and Mitzi McCall as Penny.
30 minute episodes of the repackaged 90 minute series are on YouTube at the moment. Unfortunately the person that uploaded the episodes has the wrong titles posted for whatever reason. For example there's an upload called "The Ghost Sitters Sands of Saharastone" (which isn't even a title of any of the segment episodes!) but the 2 segments that appear on that upload are "A Night on the Town" (a Frankenstones segment) and "Monster Madness" (a Pebbles, Bamm-Bamm, and Dino segment). You can see that episode HERE. Count Rockula, in that episode, is voiced by Don Messick. I uploaded that one because it's got the best audio, so far, of the other uploads available.
I hadn't put together a memorial blog for John Stephenson because of the limited resources available regarding his personal life and the lack of information surrounding his timeline. I've posted several blogs over the years focusing on Stephenson's under-rated career and the last one I posted centered around Scooby Doo's 45th anniversary last year. In that particular blog entry it features the numerous collage's I created that spotlighted the various characters that John Stephenson voiced during his association with the Scooby franchise. Little did anyone (outside of his family) really know at that time that John Stephenson was battling a serious disease.
You can take a look at that particular Scooby Doo/John Stephenson blog entry I wrote last year by clicking HERE.
Rumors of John's 'death' had circulated numerous times on the internet...one such rumor that gained traction not too long ago eventually was proven to be false.
According to reports John Stephenson died of Alzheimer's Disease at a
nursing home on May 15th at the age of 91. The articles I'd read never mentioned how long he'd been
diagnosed with the disease but it couldn't have been too long because
his last screen credit arrived in a bit part in 2010 on a Scooby Doo
project. I've heard the audio and he seemed to be in fine voice but the
role, generically referred to as The Sheriff, is super brief but the
vocal is immediately recognizable. It could have been an archived recording and placed in the animated film as a salute to him but I don't think we'd ever know.
He had a reputation of avoiding the media...giving very little to no interviews for any publication or television broadcast...but you could hear his voice on numerous radio broadcasts and see him pop up as a guest star in television dramas of the '50s and '60s. One of his most visual roles happened to be his participation in Johnny Carson's 1950s comedy program. In that series Stephenson portrayed a fictional news reporter usually reading absurd stories in a serious tone and in each scenario it set up a forthcoming sketch that Carson and other members of the cast participated in.
In the Carson series John Stephenson acted out his part as a stressed news anchor. Only a couple of clips of Carson's mid '50s program exists on YouTube. I have some of those episodes on DVD but unfortunately the disc's must have been made by an inferior company because they stopped playing several weeks after I purchased them and I hadn't been able to play them since. It's a shame, too, because those fictional newsbreaks helped set up various Carson sketches; more than one "Catch Up with the News" segment aired in a single episode but YouTube only has clips of the mid '50s program and so there's not many to see on-line. The program aired on CBS for a single season, 1955-1956, and there happened to be 10 kinescopes of the program issued on DVD in 2007. More than likely those are the same programs that I have on a admittedly low-budget compilation DVD of assorted comedy programs from the early days of television (the DVD that stopped playing). Hopefully those episodes of Carson's mid '50s program become available on a better quality DVD project.
In addition to the visibility John Stephenson experienced as a part of Johnny Carson's CBS series he also gained some visibility in the sitcom The People's Choice starring Jackie Cooper. In that particular sitcom, running from 1955 to 1958 and producing 108 episodes, Cooper portrays a character named Socrates Miller...called "Sock" for short. He marries a woman named Mandy Peoples...she happens to be the daughter of the local Mayor. The running gag for most of the episodes stems from Sock and Mandy's attempts to keep their marriage a secret from her father (Sock and Mandy eloped in Nevada). John Stephenson portrays the program's resident antagonist, Roger Crutcher, on a recurring basis. A capture from one of Stephenson's scenes has him looking on as Patricia Breslin (Mandy) and Jackie Cooper (Sock) are in the middle of some sort of comical revelation.
If one happens to visit the Internet Movie Data Base or other on-line sources in the search for "John Stephenson + actor" you're going to be hit with a lot of television credits. Stephenson appeared in several episodes of Perry Mason, Hogan's Heroes, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Gomer Pyle, USMC just to name a couple and he appeared as a semi-regular in the soap opera, Morning Star. Yes, for an actor that shunned the media and didn't grant interviews he certainly appeared on a number of programs during the early years of television...but given the lack of publicity surrounding his vast amount of work he didn't get the recognition or rightful attention he deserved.
John Stephenson's greatest impact exists in cartoon voice overs.
Many a villain in the Scooby Doo franchise have Stephenson to thank for providing a voice. Also many a red herring (someone suspected of being a bad guy but ends up being innocent) also have Stephenson's voice to thank. In the blog entry I provided a link to you can gaze upon the many characters that John Stephenson gave voice to...but I left off characters that weren't a part of Scooby's various cartoon mystery programs of the '70s and '80s. Some may find it interesting that Stephenson voiced Col. Wilcox in the first season of Super Friends and then returned later to provide incidental voices...most notably The Sculpin in a 1977 episode featuring Superman and Aquaman. In that first season of Super Friends the overall narration came from Ted Knight...reprising a role he previously held for Filmation in the mid-late '60s on their run of superhero cartoons.
In a series called Scooby's All-Star Laff-a-Lympics (not a mystery cartoon) Stephenson provided the voices for a series of characters. The late '70s series spoofed the Olympics, Battle of the Network Stars, and ABC sports. Three teams of "athletes" composed of The Yogi Yahooeys, The Scooby Doobies, and the Really Rottens competed in Olympic-style events.
A talented mimic he provided a Paul Lynde impression for the character Mildew Wolf (co-host of Laff-a-Lympics). Lynde had originally voiced the character in the late 1960s but didn't reprise the role for the Scooby series and so Stephenson did an impression. John's mimicry is also on full display as The Great Fondoo, an inept magician of The Really Rottens team. Fondoo's voice is highly reminiscent of Bela Lugosi. A good guy character from The Yogi Yahooeys team, Doggy Daddy, is Stephenson's impression of Jimmy Durante. Stephenson returned to the character in several animated specials in the 1980s.
The human leader of The Really Rottens, Dread Baron, is another Stephenson vocalization...not exactly an impression of any celebrity in particular but it's apparent it's his vocal characterization of a slick, con-artist type complete with the sort of "nya, ha ha" sinister laugh that harkens back to 1930s and 1940s melodramas.
Stephenson's vocal impressions of Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Paul Lynde, and Joe Flynn played a vital part in a lot of his voice-over performances in an assortment of cartoons throughout the '60s and into the early '90s. Stephenson's natural speaking voice being pretty great, too, enabled him to act in his natural voice or in an affected voice with equal proficiency. If you're familiar with the late '60s version of Dragnet you could hear John Stephenson's natural voice at the end of every episode providing the lead-up and the details of the outcome of that episode's unseen court trial. A typical line went like this: "On Saturday August 4th trial was held in Los Angeles for the State of California...in a moment the results of that trial". After the commercial break you'd hear Stephenson giving the details of the conviction or the acquittal.
In the mid-late '70s era Stephenson provided voices for an assortment of villains in The Dynomutt, Dog Wonder series including The Red Vulture, The Blimp, Eric von Flick, The Glob, and at various times the Chief of police (sometimes referred to as Chief Grimsley and other times as Chief Wiggins).
In the Inch High Private Eye series Stephenson could be heard in a variety of roles but his main role happened to be the irascible Mr. Finkerton (Stephenson doing his Joe Flynn impression). In another cartoon, using the same Joe Flynn impression, Stephenson gave voice to Mr. Peevely in Help! It's the Hair Bear Bunch series. The high nasal Joe Flynn impression apparently became a favored, go-to voice because Stephenson used it a couple of other times for different but similar characters. In Galaxy Goof-Ups the Flynn inflection infected the commanding officer, Captain Snerdley. In the Inspector Mumbly series of cartoons Stephenson gave the Flynn impression to the antagonistic Officer Schnooker. The highlight of those characters happened to be the inevitable explosion of anger that built under the surface. Popularly referred to as "slow burn", these characters would work themselves up into a state of bombastic stress before blowing their top in a comedic kind of way. In the opening minutes of this episode of Galaxy Goof-Ups titled "Whose Zoo" you'll hear what I mean. As is the case in a lot of Hanna-Barbera cartoons the voice actors and actresses often provided the voices for multiple characters within an episode. This one is no different. Not only is John Stephenson voicing his regular character, Captain Snerdley, but he's also the voice of the villain monster bent on poaching the planet of animals. You'll hear and see that character first along with the sidekick.
In the video's image below there's Captain Snerdley on the monitor giving a harsh lecture to Huckleberry Hound (Daws Butler) and Quack-Up (Mel Blanc).
As far as longevity goes, arguably, John Stephenson's greatest impact in cartoon voice overs is in the role of Mr. Slate in numerous episodes of The Flintstones. From the debut of Mr. Slate in the 1960s and lasting into the 1990s virtually every animated appearance of Mr. Slate had a voice provided by John Stephenson. Promos for Cartoon Network included Stephenson being recruited to deliver a line or two as Slate in that distinctive John Stephenson voice. The ultimate event in Flintstones lore is the release of The Jetsons Meet The Flintstones on November 7, 1987
The reason that the Jetsons received top billing is because their series happened to be in first-run production and the plot of the animated movie deals with Elroy Jetson inventing a time machine...and during a moment of harmless experimenting all of the other Jetsons (George, Jane, Judy, and their talking dog, Astro) decided to humor Elroy and pretend that they were headed to the future. However, much to their horror and disbelief the time machine ended up working...taking the Jetsons into the past rather than into the future. Eventually the Flintstones get zapped into the future and they meet Rosie, Henry, and Spacely while the Jetsons, themselves, remain stuck in Bedrock.
John Stephenson returned to his familiar role as Mr. Slate. Ironically, George Jetson's emergence in Bedrock creates an economical boost to whatever business aligns itself with the stranger's futuristic gadgets. Jetson ends up working for Slate while Fred ends up working for Mr. Spacely in the future. Fred's car becomes a huge hit. Barney becomes a spokesperson for Spacely's competitor, Cogswell. Unfortunately neither Mr. Slate nor Mr. Spacely come face to face considering Slate remained in Bedrock and Spacely remained in the Jetson's futuristic universe.
Some of Stephenson's 1980's work can be heard in various episodes of The Transformers and G.I. Joe and various cartoon specials from Hanna-Barbera requiring him to revive classic characters such as Mr. Slate and Doggie Daddy.
John Stephenson's contributions to animated cartoons from Hanna-Barbera had a major impact on generations of people and they are going to continue getting discovered as the years go by. John Stephenson's voice was immediately recognizable and a familiar presence for generations of cartoon fans.
I made a special collage just for this blog entry...the larger picture is the Chief from the Dynomutt series. The other remaining seven characters are Col. Wilcox, zoo keeper Mr. Peevly, Mr. Finkerton, Mr. Slate, Captain Leech, Col. Fuzzby, and Chief Wenchly. I'll more than likely make another collage because I have other characters saved on my computer that John Stephenson gave voice to.
I'm often on the look for video of voice actor, John Stephenson, and once I come across something I share it. I came across this YouTube video clip the other day...in several of his biographies it makes mention that he hosted an early outdoors series titled Bold Journey. I don't know why I never thought to look up videos of the series until recently but I came across several episodes but only one, so far, did I come across featuring John Stephenson as host and here it is...
Some of the film/audio at the beginning jumps around a little...but it's watchable. John appears on camera introducing that episode's guest and then he appears again near the end after the guest is finished describing his nature film.
I post this because of John's largely obscure early career on TV. He appeared on many episodic television programs of the '50s and '60s...often in dramatic anthology programs and occasionally on sitcoms...but it's often impossible to find the specific episodes of television programs that he actually appeared on. Sometimes one will pop up on-line. If you've seen any of the late '60s episodes of Dragnet, you'll hear John Stephenson's voice often reading the results of the trial.
If you're familiar or a fan at all of a certain cartoon franchise it's impossible to separate that voice from many, many, manyScooby-Doo cartoons (1969-1991). I often cite that series first but he had been providing voices for Hanna-Barbera since at least 1960...that's the year The Flintstones debuted...and John Stephenson voiced Mr. Slate and other authority figures. In the middle part of the '60s he became one of the regular voice artists in the Hanna-Barbera circle providing vocals for authority figures and villains. His natural speaking voice, as you hear in the video clip, is heard often in those cartoons but he would also elevate it into a higher or lower tone (depending on the character's personality) for various other characters. Very seldom did he have 2 characters speaking to one another...unless the vocalizations happened to be drastically different from one another...given the distinction of his natural voice sprinkling through his characterizations.
Most often his characters were interchangeable given their authoritative demeanor.
In one series for Hanna-Barbera in the mid '60s spotlighting characters by the name of Breezly Bruin and Sneezly Seal, Stephenson provided the voice of additional characters but his main role happened to be that of Col. Fusby...always fussing about Breezly's mayhem and rule breaking at a military camp. Howard Morris voiced the Bruin and Mel Blanc, in a cold in the nose vocal, played the Seal. In another series, Squiddly Diddly, Stephenson voiced the perpetually put upon Chief Winchley of the tourist attraction, Bubble Land, and Paul Frees provided the voice of the starring character. One of John Stephenson's truly vicious, evil, snarling, and amoral characters happened to be Captain Leech in the cartoon series, The Adventures of Gulliver. He not only had the distinction of voicing the evil Captain Leech but the scatterbrained King Pomp. There are several episodes of that series on YouTube.
In another series, Arabian Knights, John provided the voice of the comical genie, Fariek, and the evil Bakaar. That animated series is also on YouTube. I'm embedding this one, specifically, due to John Stephenson having some pretty hefty vocal work in this particular episode.
You'll also hear the vocals of Jay North, Sherry Lewis, Henry Corden, Frank Gerstie, Don Messick, and Paul Frees...
Later on, in various Scooby-Doo episodes, John Stephenson demonstrated his skilled mimicry of Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Joe Flynn. Still later he did impressions of Paul Lynde (Scooby's All-Star Laff-a-Lympics) in the role of co-host, Mildew Wolf. Lynde had originated the vocal performance in an earlier cartoon series (a segment called "It's the Wolf!!" on the Cattanooga Cats series) but he didn't return for the Laff-a-Lympics series. In the same Laff-a-Lympics series, Stephenson did a Jimmy Durante impression...becoming the new voice of Doggy Daddy (a character that Hanna-Barbera originally produced in the early '60s and voiced by Doug Young). Around the same point in time (mid '70s), Stephenson began voicing numerous villains and secondary characters in the Dynomutt, Dog Wonder series. One such villain, The Blimp, allowed Stephenson to do a vocal impression of Alfred Hitchcock.
I hope you all continue to enjoy the marvelous work of the elusive legend, John Stephenson!!
