Long before “The Simpsons” hit the airwaves, “The Flintstones” were America’s favorite animated family.
The primetime show about Fred and Wilma Flintstone and their buddies the Rubbles captivated primetime audiences when it aired from 1960-1966. It’s still special to Kathy Conte, whose uncle was one of the show’s animators.
Conte, a teacher, even has a Carlo Vinci room in her northeast-side home, featuring the artwork and animation cels (short for celluloid) he gave her.
“I grew up watching them,” Conte says of “the modern Stone-Age family.” “My dad would always say, make sure every time you watch the cartoons, look at the credits so you see the name Carlo Vinci.”
Conte will share anecdotes about her uncle — who also worked on “Tom and Jerry” and “Scooby-Doo” cartoons and passed away in 1993 — and his artwork will be on display as part of the Children’s Museum Tucson’s S.T.E.A.M. Sundays event on Aug. 28.
Conte’s beloved uncle didn’t talk about his work.She suspects there may have been some sort of confidentiality clause with the animation studio he worked for, Hanna-Barbera, but the similarities between her family and the Flintstones popped up throughout series.
Fred and Wilma’s daughter Pebbles arrived midway through the show’s run and had flaming-red hair, just like Conte did as a baby, and they both had the same nickname, Pumpkin.
She recalls one show in which Fred complained to his best buddy Barney Rubble that Pebbles didn’t talk.
“I didn’t talk until I was about 3,” Conte said.
Her dad was known to tell his kids to “get to work” — a catchphrase of Fred’s. And just like the Stone-Age patriarch, Conte’s dad loved to bowl.
“My dad was a huge bowler and he taught all of us kids how to bowl,” she said.
Conte’s grandma always wore “these great big white pearls” a la Wilma Flintstone, and she has an aunt who was the spitting image of Betty Rubble.
Conte regularly visited her uncle and his wife in California and after graduating from high school, she met Joe Barbera, who co-founded Hanna-Barbera. He told her he’d give her a job if she decided to come to UCLA for college. Conte’s dad, a mechanical engineer who worked for the mines, wouldn’t go for it.
She still calls up the show on YouTube every once in awhile.
“It’s just hysterically funny all the things they do,” Conte says. “It’s just a great show.”
