BOOTLEG FILES 931: “The Flintstones on Ice” (1973 television special mixing the Bedrock bunch with ice dancing).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Who knows?
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Nope, sorry.
Back when I was a kid in the 1970s (yes, I am that old), the only time that ice skating appeared on television was during the Winter Olympics or in an occasional special anchored on an ice dancing spectacular production. In 1973, the Hanna-Barbera fun factory licensed their Flintstones characters for a one-shot ice skating special. The resulting work was among the most bewildering but strangely entertaining specials to air on 1970s television.
For starters, “The Flintstones on Ice” was not produced in the United States. Instead, it was shot in Hamburg, Germany – or West Germany, as it was known back in those Cold War days – with Hollywood player Joseph Cates as the producer. The characters of Fred and Wilma Flintstone and Barney and Betty Ruble were played by skaters wearing creepy costumes that only had a passing resemblance to their animated sources. Indeed, Wilma Flintstone was inexplicably given blonde hair instead of the red hair she sported in the cartoons.
But to maintain some degree of connection with their animated origins, the live action faux-Flintstone characters had the voice actors from the cartoons reciting dialogue on the soundtrack. Alan Reed, Mel Blanc, and Jean Vander Pyl were recruited to voice Fred, Barney and Wilma, while Gay Hartwig continued her duties of the voice of Betty in the 1970s cartoons. A very mild laugh track was added to remind viewers that the dialogue was meant to be funny.
The concept of “The Flintstones on Ice” felt like it was lifted from one of the episodes of “The Flintstones” series. Fred and Barney get jobs in an ice show, but they decide not to share their side hustle with their wives. Meanwhile, Wilma and Betty get jobs in the same show but opt to keep their gig as a secret to their spouses. Throughout most of the show, the husbands have no idea the wives are part of their production and vice versa.
As for the ice skating show itself – eh, it is fine if you like ice skating spectaculars. Some of the numbers feel like old-school Las Vegas revues on ice and others feel like rejects from Ed Sullivan’s show. The problem is that the Flintstones characters don’t really fit into these big numbers. It is never explained how these prehistoric characters wound up in a 1970s ice skating show, and there is nothing in the characters’ antics that ties back to their classic animated series. And having the voice actors drop silly observations (with laugh track approval) on the soundtrack only adds to the confusion – it is obvious their talk is not being heard by the German audience watching the ice skating.
In fairness, “The Flintstones on Ice” have some genuinely entertaining segments. There is a fun number with the skaters dressed in 1920s-style beachwear while bouncing oversized beach balls on the ice, as well as a lengthy comic interlude with an admiral character in a “swabbing the deck” sequence that involves water-soaked mops getting swatted about. This is old-school slapstick as the admiral goes into the audience at one point to shake out the mop, and it seems most of those in attendance at this performance were elderly ladies. There is also an old-school silly/funny segment with chimpanzees doing skating tricks – that’s something you don’t see on television anymore!
The concept for this show ends with Fred and Barney discovering that Wilma and Betty were in the same show, but their paths never crossed until the big finale when the four costumed characters participated in the show’s send-off. For the record, the skaters who pretended to be the Bedrock denizens were ice skaters Lothar Dobberstein as Fred, Teri Tucker as Wilma, Malcolm Smith as Barney, and Mitsuko Funakoshi as Betty. It is a shame they were not allowed to show themselves after the production ran its course.
“The Flintstones on Ice” premiered on CBS on February 11, 1973, airing at 8:00 p.m. EST after a repeat broadcast of “Play It Again, Charlie Brown.” CBS rebroadcast the show on July 29, 1973, preempting a “M*A*S*H” rerun, and that was the end of its television lifespan.
To date, “The Flintstones on Ice” has never been made available on any home entertainment format. A slightly blurry black-and-white dupe of the original color broadcast is on YouTube in an unauthorized upload, and sadly that is the only way to experience is strange little hiccup in the Flintstones canon.
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