Rolling like a boulder into the “spy craze” of the 1960s came The Man Called Flintstone. The full-length, musical, animated feature starring the popular citizens of Bedrock, who had made their debut in 1960, in Hanna-Barbera’s landmark animated series.
The film, which celebrates its 60th anniversary this summer, was produced just as The Flintstones series completed its run in April of 1966, at a time when Sean Connery had just starred in four James Bond hits, starting with Dr. No in 1962, and NBC’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. became a TV phenomenon, along with British TV import Secret Agent with Patrick McGoohan. In early 1966, James Coburn played Our Man Flint on the big screen, and Diana Rigg and Patrick Macnee created a sensation with ABC-TV’s The Avengers.
Hanna-Barbera took full advantage of the spy-fiction popularity as a backdrop for The Flintstones full-length feature. The title was a twist on Our Man Flint, with Fred in a Coburn-like pose on the original poster.
Directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, and written by TV sitcom veterans Harvey Bullock and R.S. Allen, The Man Called Flintstone takes Fred, Wilma, Barney, Betty, Pebbles, and Bamm-Bamm from the “the Town of Bedrock” for a globe-trotting adventure to Paris and Rome, rendered beautifully in the Hanna-Barbera/Flintstone style (Dino and Hoppy are boarded at the vet’s.).
Noah Bell, writer, animation historian, and creator of the Hanna-Barbera blog, The Exposure Sheet, said, “It’s easy to forget how big of an undertaking the film was for the crew at Hanna-Barbera. The movie was in production for eighteen months, over twice the time needed for an episode of the series. Three thousand drawings were made for the film. And though the story may not seem like much these days, the spy and vacation aspect made it far different than anything seen in the series, even if it still relied on the ‘Fred is mistaken for somebody else’ plotline the show loved to use.”
“The ongoing process of bringing a TV series to a theatrical film goes back to radio,” said our fellow Cartoon Research writer, Greg Ehrbar. “The Great Gildersleeve starred in several films and other radio stars made special appearances, like Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy in Walt Disney’s Fun and Fancy Free. On the other hand, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet premiered as a feature film called Here Come the Nelsons, to assert the appeal for the long-running series. Either way, the TV adaptations often took the characters out of their typical settings to open up their environment for the movie screen.”
In The Man Called Flintstone, Rock Slag, the world’s most famous spy, looks like Fred, and when Slag is injured, it’s discovered that Fred bears a striking resemblance to Slag, and Fred is recruited to take Rock’s place on assignment to stop the villainous Green Goose and devious plans involving a missile.
Fred keeps his mission a secret, and his family and friends think that trip is a vacation. However, the Green Goose’s second in command, Tanya, tricks Fred and Barney and leads them to Green Goose’s headquarters, where Rock Slag eventually arrives, and the Green Goose’s scheme is foiled.
“By design Hanna-Barbera added a bit more dimension to Fred for The Man Called Flintstone, as they did particularly with Yogi in his 1964 feature, Hey There It’s Yogi Bear,” added Greg, who with Jacqueline Stewart, hosted the Turner Classic Movies premieres of both films last December. “Yogi was the rascal we knew and loved but was also capable of more compassion and heroics. In addition, Fred has his regular concerns about job, money, family, and friendship, but in the film he literally has the weight of the whole world on his shoulders, and not in a satiric ‘Madame Yes’ way.”
The Man Called Flintstone boasts a greater percentage of fuller animation and more lush, detailed backgrounds than those usually seen in the weekly TV show. After the main title song, which parodies the typical Shirely Bassey-type spy movie tune, the opening moments include dramatic prehistoric backdrops and a well-choreographed car chase between Slag and the film’s villains.
There are also creative animation montages in the film’s musical numbers, including the psychedelic “Spy Type Guy” and the Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm song, “(Someday) When I’m a Grown-Up,” which utilizes images with childlike drawings.
The songs in The Man Called Flintstone, from songwriters John McCarthy and Doug Goodwin, add to the adventurous plot and give the film a grander scale, making it feel much different than an episode of the show.
“John McCarthy impressed Hanna-Barbera with his two songs for the ‘Christmas Flintstone’ episode,” Greg added. “Doug Goodwin was recommended by Friz Freleng when he worked at Hanna-Barbera briefly as a consultant. Goodwin was the primary house composer for DePatie-Freleng.”
A year before he would voice King Louie in Disney’s The Jungle Book, singer Louis Prima performs Goodwin’s “Pensate Amore (Think Love)” over the film’s soundtrack, accompanying a Shakespearian Fred’s attempts to romance Wilma, a gag sequence reminiscent of Hanna and Barbera’s MGM days.
The regular Flintstones cast returned for the film: Alan Reed as Fred, Mel Blanc as Barney, Jean Vander Pyl as Wilma, and Gerry Johnson as Betty, who had taken over for Bea Benadaret, in the fifth season of the series.
Henry Corden would provide the singing voice for Fred in The Man Called Flintstone, as he did in H-B’s Alice in Wonderland the same year. Corden would go on to take over the role of Fred after Alan Reed died in 1977.
Additionally, Harvey Korman (who would voice The Great Gazoo in the series and become a regular on The Carol Burnett Show) was the voice of the Chief, and Paul Frees, a ubiquitous voice actor at the time, provided several voices, including Rock Slag and the villain, Green Goose. June Foray, who, like Frees, would become a voice acting legend, portrays the femme fatale Tanya (a performance reminiscent of her work as Natasha on Rocky & Bullwinkle).
Released by Columbia Pictures to theaters on August 3, 1966, The Man Called Flintstone brought plenty of the hallmarks of the show to the big screen, particularly the series’ “prehistoric technology” – a dinosaur is creatively used to operate an elevator, and spy gadgets have to be filtered through The Flintstones’ “world.”
Sixty years later, the film is still seen as a milestone for the “Modern Stone-Age Family.”
“The greatest impact The Man Called Flintstone left was on The Flintstones going forward,” said Noah. “No longer did Flintstones movies and shows have to be Fred and the gang living ordinary lives in Bedrock. If they could go on spy adventures, practically anything was on the table. The next twenty years of Flintstones spin-offs saw the characters reimagined as police officers, kids, and everything else in between. They met the Thing, the Shmoo, and the Frankenstones. Love or hate these later projects, it’s safe to say the Flintstones’ later years would’ve looked a lot different had it not been for The Man Called Flintstone, and the show’s final seasons for that matter, stretching the possibilities. At the very least, it’s an impressive legacy for such an oft-forgotten moment in the Flintstones history.”
“Hanna-Barbera did not have the luxury of lingering time and expansive budgets to make theatrical features like this,” said Greg. “Yes, Columbia gave them the means for songs, an original score, and more elaborate art, but the fact that they were carrying an increasing workload and still created a enduring, entertaining feature like this, is a remarkable and significant accomplishment. All I know is that I never missed it when it showed at matinees, and it continues to impress and endure.”
Michael Lyons is a freelance writer, specializing in film, television, and pop culture. He is the author of the book, Drawn to Greatness: Disney’s Animation Renaissance, which chronicles the amazing growth at the Disney animation studio in the 1990s. In addition to Animation Scoop and Cartoon Research, he has contributed to Remind Magazine, Cinefantastique, Animation World Network and Disney Magazine. He also writes a blog, Screen Saver: A Retro Review of TV Shows and Movies of Yesteryear and his interviews with a number of animation legends have been featured in several volumes of the books, Walt’s People. You can visit Michael’s web site Words From Lyons at: 
On its initial release, “The Man Called Flintstone” did not play in downtown Seattle, only in the suburban areas like Kirkland and Renton. It also never reached our little neighborhood theatre in Magnolia. Thus those kids who lived closer to the inner city never got to see it. There was also the concern that many parents had of having to pay to watch characters who appeared on television for free. In any event, the movie did not linger in theaters. This is a shame, because we were definitely a Flintstones household, having made it a Friday night ritual for years.
A few years later, I noticed it was playing in a local theatre but once again it was a suburbanites only run, miles from the city center. And by the time I was in junior high school, I did not feel comfortable begging my parents to take me miles away to see a cartoon film. In addition as I was getting older, my interest was waning. This changed within a couple of years, when I woke up one morning to hear my brother watching a rerun of The Flintstones in the next room. It was the episode when they won a boat. I was impressed by the clever writing, sharp wit, and excellent voice work, since I was only hearing but not seeing the program. I decided the series was worth another look now that I was nearly in my teens. That sparked my return to Bedrock, which has been constant and loyal ever since.
It wasn’t until Thanksgiving of 1984 that I finally got to see the feature film “The Man Called Flintstone.” It was run on TBS, the Turner station, including the now lost and forgotten opening logo with Wilma holding the Columbia torch. This was in the VHS era and I made sure to tape the movie, cutting out the commercials, so that I could rewatch it as often as I chose. For some reason, the first several scenes had a yellowish cast to them, but during the Paris scene, this anomaly corrected itself and the colors appeared to be truer. This was a very minor problem, as by this time in my life I was ready for this film in whatever form I could see it.
Needless to say, I loved the film and immediately wished to see it play on a double feature bill with a James Bond movie (this was a few months ahead of the release of “A View to a Kill”). A context such as this could give the film greater currency with adult audiences, or so I figured at the time.
“Pensante Amore” has generally been the film’s apex for me–a love scene that plays in one way for kids and in another way for adults. It is one of the most stunning sequences ever created by Hanna-Barbera. And a reminder that Fred and Wilma remain in love with each other.
I have a few quibbles. Fred loses all of his hair when a dagger is thrown and just grazes him, but seconds later the hair has grown back. This kind of inconsistency may be acceptable in a cartoon short, but for a feature film it just seems wrong. Several people who have watched it with me have pointed this out. Similarly, Fred uses up his tie to try to help Barney escape from the tower where they are being held by the villains, but after their escape the tie is restored. (I keep telling myself that he stopped to grab some fresh cloth while they were tying up the guard.) Also, once the scene has shifted to the abandoned amusement park, the Italian setting seems to be dropped, because the climactic sequence has no specific references to taking place in Italy. Finally, would Fred be celebrated by the citizens of Bedrock for his part in a top-secret mission that was to be kept under wraps? It also seems a bit of a cop-out ending for him to be chased by Roberta and Mario at the end. Aside from these relatively minor complaints, I still derive much delight from the film I waited eighteen years to see!
The film is quite a bit edgier than the original series, and the comic violence quotient higher. The backfiring murder attempts of Ali and Bobo are more like something you’d see in a WB cartoon. Warren Foster is credited with “additional story material”, so those may be his contribution given all the slapstick abuse he piled on Sylvester, Yosemite Sam, and numerous H-B characters in their short subjects.
It’s like an expansion of “Dr. Sinister” from the next to the last season.
True story: On the first weekend after the 9/11 attacks, this movie aired on Cartoon Network. It aired in its entirety, including the scene with the knife attack in an airplane. I was watching at the time, and my immediate thought was, “Whoa! Too soon!”
We really need “The Man Called Flintstone”(1966) to be restored from the original camera negative (with references to Columbia Pictures left intact) and released on Blu-Ray by Warner Archive Collection!
“The movie was in production for eighteen months, over twice the time needed for an episode of the series.”
Huh ??? An episode of the series took nine months to create ? Surely he means season , rather than episode…
“Three thousand drawings were made for the film.”
I’ve heard of limited animation but surely this is incorrect as well…
???
If Michael had ever actually WATCHED this film, he would have know that wasn’t accurate in the least.
The first half of TMCF is fairly lush, but not nearly as much as HEY THERE IT’S YOGI BEAR is. However, about halfway through, TMCF suddenly looks like one of the poorer episodes of THE FLINTSTONES, with way too much stock animation. Either there budget ran out or their deadline was moved up. I even noticed that when ran at theaters and having worked on a ton of Flintstone projects, it’s truly embarrassing.
I remember seeing this in a drive-in with brother, cousins, and uncle who persuaded the ticket lady we were big for our age. We were all around 11, evidently over the limit for Kids Free. It was on a double bill with “Who’s Minding the Mint?”
Also recollect that the Flintstones and Yogi Bear newspaper comic strips had moviemaking gags to plug their movies. Fred and Yogi were each recruited to play themselves, leading to Sunday gags about stunts and such.
Yogi also did a public service ad about not playing on construction sites, taking a moment to pose by a marquee for his movie.
Don’t remember merchandise for either feature. Beyond the soundtrack album, was there any? Perhaps the market was already saturated with those characters.
I can take or leave A Man Called Flintstone and for that matter, seasons 5 and 6 of the series. Once Bea Benaderet was no longer involved, I lost interest.
There were a few different versions of this feature with various small cuts around the characters of Ali and Bobo which could be deemed as a bit racist as Ali has this Muttley-like Asian gobbledegook he utters whenever he gets annoyed.
The VHS release had this cut version but the DVD version re-instated the gags. Strangely, the line “Let’s squish him!” when “Fred” is cornered at the dead end alley which WASN’T on the vhs WAS back for the DVD. Odd? I have both versions but can’t upload them here…..or can I? Anyway censorship choices can be fascinating!