Quote of the Day (C. V. Wedgwood, on the Past Quest for Certainties)

“Men wanted certainties, not more causes for doubt, and since the discoveries of science perplexed them with strange theories about the earth on which they walked and the bodies they inhabited, they turned with all the more zeal to the firm assurances of religion.”― English historian C. V. Wedgwood (1910-1997), The Thirty Years War (1938)

Quote of the Day (John Buchan, on Poetry and ‘A Time of National Crisis’)

“A time of national crisis is the very time to turn to poetry. A poet writes, not for the common round only, but for the great moments of life. The greatest poets, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Dante, have written not in times of peace but amid war and unsettlement. There is something in such epochs of crisis which quickens the imagination and the mind, and brings the spiritual world of the poet closer to our common life.”—Scottish novelist, memoirist, soldier, and Canadian Governor-General John Buchan (1875-1940), “The Immoral Memory” (address to the London Burns Club, Jan. 25, 1918), The John Buchan Journal, Spring 2004, Issue 30

TV Quote of the Day (‘Frasier,’ on What Qualifies Him to Run for Condo Board Prez)

[Frasier has decided to run for president of his condo board.]

Niles Crane [played by David Hyde Pierce]: “Surely you're not actually thinking of running? You've never held an elective office in your life!”

Frasier Crane [played by Kelsey Grammer]: “Are you forgetting I served two terms back in high school as Grand Panjandrum of the Vocabulary Club?”—Frasier, Season 4, Episode 11, “Three Days of the Condo,” original air date Jan. 21, 1997, teleplay by Michael B. Kaplan, directed by David Lee

Oh, who could forget that?

Quote of the Day (Joseph Addison, on ‘When Vice Prevails’)

“Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honor is a private station.” —English essayist and playwright Joseph Addison (1672-1719), Cato: A Tragedy (1713)

Quote of the Day (Matt Emerzian, on Feeling Better About Yourself)

"If you want to feel better about yourself and your life, stop focusing on yourself. It is so simple but so hard for us to understand."— Matt Emerzian, founder and Chief Inspiration Officer of the not-for-profit organization Every Monday Matters, quoted in “Points to Ponder,” Reader’s Digest, January 2014

This Day in Television History (‘The Flintstones’ Premieres)

Sept. 30, 1960— The Flintstones, the first animated cartoon to run on primetime network television, premiered on ABC.

William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, annoyed that critics labeled as “children’s entertainment” their first two TV cartoons, Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound, conceived of this show as a way to attract adult audiences as well.

The creators were originally inspired by a 1955 Tex Avery animated short, The First Bad Man, on the history of Texas 1 million years ago.

But Hanna—much to the irritation of his partner—openly admitted that Fred Flintstone bore many than a passing resemblance to Ralph Kramden, another loud, burly guy with an endlessly understanding wife and with a neighbor and sidekick, from The Honeymooners.

If Honeymooners’ star and creator Jackie Gleason ever felt like suing for plagiarism, he soon got over it, realizing that millions of youngsters would have blamed him for driving their favorite show off the air. (Such fears did not prevent the creators of the comic strip “Hi and Lois” from squawking that the original name of the series, “The Flagstones,” was all too reminiscent of their own couple, the Flagstons.)

For adults, there were winking references, throughout the series’ six-season run, to celebrities (often guest-starring as themselves) such as “Stony Curtis,” “Gary Granite,” “Ann-Margrock,” “Liberocki, “Arnold Palmtree,” and “Wednesday Tuesday.”

The prototype set by The Flintstones—a jerk of a dad with a more level-headed wife—wasn’t irretrievably lost when the show went off the air. More than two decades later, it would be revived by The Simpsons.

The quartet who created Fred and Wilma Flintstones and neighbors Barney and Betty Rubble had extensive acting experience, especially of the voice kind:

*Alan Reed, who preferred radio to film work, was the voice of “Boris” in Disney’s Lady and the Tramp before taking on the role of Fred—a character whose ample physical dimensions were modeled on his.

*Jean Vander Pyl played not only Wilma but Pebbles, before going on to The Jetsons, Top Hat, The Secret Squirrel Show, and The Magilla Gorilla Show.

*Bea Benaderet, the voice of many female characters in Warner Brothers Looney Tunes, had to withdraw from her role as Betty Rubble because of scheduling conflicts with a new series, Petticoat Junction.

*Mel Blanc, my favorite of the group—nicknamed “The Man of a Thousand Voices” for his long and versatile career in animation—not only gave vocal form to Barney and Flintstone pet Dino, but also to more than 40 other characters on the show. So integral was he to the show that, after he was involved in a near-fatal accident several months into the show’s run, his colleagues gathered at his hospital bedside so he could participate in episodes as he recovered.

A close relative, hearing that I’d be creating this post, said, “You can’t write about the show without discussing the theme song.”

True enough. I readily confess to being more than a little hazy about some episodes and characters after all these years, but “Meet the Flintstones” is engraved in my memory, as it is, I suspect, for more than a few baby boomers.

That catchy tune, with lyrics by Hanna and Barbera and an irresistible melody by composer Hoyt Curtin, wasn’t heard until Season 3. But it’s the way that everyone has recalled ever since.

Central to the appeal of The Flintstones are its cheerful anachronisms.  Start with that “Meet the Flintstones” line about the “modern Stone Age family. Think also of “The Barney Copter,” an experiment in flight that Fred promptly takes control of (and dooms) as “The Flintstone Flyer”: Dino (dinosaurs, scientists say, had disappeared well before homo sapiens came along); and Christmas (the Stone Age was, of course, centuries before Christ).

Oh, one more thing you might wonder: Where did Fred’s catchphrase, “Yabba Dabba Doo!", come from? Reed improvised it, improving on the script’s “Yahoo!”, inspired by the Brylcreem slogan, "A little dab'll do ya."

Quote of the Day (Anthony Powell, on Decisive Events in Life)

“For reasons not always at the time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly to take on a significance previously unsuspected, so that, before we really know where we are, life seems to have begun in earnest at last, and we ourselves, scarcely aware that any change has taken place, are careering uncontrollably down the slippery avenues of eternity.”—English novelist Anthony Powell (1905-2000), A Buyer’s Market: A Dance to the Music of Time, Second Movement (1952)