I've got a nice little surprise for you guys today. Here's not one, but two newspaper interviews with Hanna-Barbera voice actors. Featured here are Henry Corden (second voice of Fred Flintstone) and Janet Waldo (Judy Jetson). These come from the June 3rd, 1990 edition of The Toronto Star, and were part of a larger piece that saw the outlet interview a whole host of children's entertainment creators. Several writers worked on the piece, but Jane Hawtin was the individual who did both of these. I'll start with Corden's section first and then follow it up with Waldo's.
For whatever reason, Henry Corden's name was erroneously written as "Henry Cordon" in this piece. As for the content itself, this section has Corden discuss his voice-acting beginnings, his relationship with OG Fred Flintstone Alan Reed, dubbing over Jackie Gleason, and the evolution of The Flintstones characters. Enjoy!
Henry Corden: Fred Flintstone
He leaves Montreal, gets his stage training in Montreal and then knocks on the door of Hanna Barbera in California. "I was kind of drifted into Hanna Barbera in 1961, doing odd voices for The Flintstones and Jonny Quest, Henry Corden explains. "Then, I got to take over the voice of Fred in 1977, when Alan Reed passed away."
Reed and Corden had been pretty good friends. They had some pretty good rivalries and found that their careers had followed similar paths. However, being friends didn't make it any easier for Corden to take over the voice. "That was the hardest part," he says. "You see, Alan used his natural voice. I still have to pump myself up and push to get Fred's voice to sound right."
Corden did have to practice with the model for Fred Flintstone in the early '70s. "Fred Flintstone is based on Jackie Gleason and The Honeymooners and I used to be hired to dub Jackie's voice for films." It was a strange job. "I was hired by Universal to dub over Jackie's voice for the Smokey and the Bandit movies. I would basically redo the script without the bad words that Gleason would have added while the film was shooting. So I got to know his inflections pretty well."
Corden is now in his 60s, and Fred is the only character he still performs. "I love Fred. He is a very stable character. He's a family man. He isn't as sexist as he used to be in the earlier cartoons, and I think it's great the way the audiences have accepted the changes. But, I also think it was good when Fred was on the wrong side of things because then the drama came from everybody else setting him straight."
Now, we move on to Janet's interview. Once again, there are a few instances of names being written incorrectly. Daws Butler is "Dos Butler", while Jean Vander Pyl is "Jean Vanderpile." I have no idea how these errors made their way to print quite frankly. Waldo spends most of this interview discussing the enduring legacy of The Jetsons. Oddly enough, there's not a single mention of the animated Jetsons feature, despite this being written right before its premiere.
Janet Waldo: Judy Jetson
"That was almost 25 years ago," remembers Janet Waldo, the voice of daughter Judy. "It was a quirky little show that became a national rage. But there were only those 24 episodes, so they kept playing them over and over on Saturday mornings."
Three years ago, Hanna Barbera rounded up the cast once more. "We made 65 episodes and a couple of full-length videos," Waldo says, "but what I think is amazing is that we made them with the entire old cast! Everyone who did The Jetsons originally did it again.
Unfortunately, since that time, we have lost dear George O'Hanlon, who played George Jetson, and Daws Butler, who played Elroy, so we have soundalikes for them. But the rest of us are alive and talking!"
The cast is extraordinary. Rosie the Robot is played by Jean Vander Pyl, also the voice of Wilma Flintstone. Don Messick, who does Scooby-Doo, is Astro. Jane is played by Penny Singleton and Waldo has a whole closet full of characters.
She slides into each character's voice to play her resume. "I play Judy and Miss Brainmacker and Miss Galaxy on Jetsons, Josie on Josie and the Pussycats. I'm Penelope Pitstop and the evil mother-in-law on The Flintstones and the one that's really fun, I play Hogatha on The Smurfs. She is a wicked but ravishing witch."
Waldo thinks she knows why The Jetsons revival has worked so well. "We're all into nostalgia. And let's face it, The Jetsons is sort of like Father Knows Best. The old-fashioned family is very hot. Especially an old-fashioned family in outer space.
Plus, people love to see the outer space gadgets that were dreamed up by our writers and are now household items. W head slidewalks, talking watches. We had the foodarackacycle, which of course, is now the microwave oven. Remember, this was 25 years ago and these things were unheard of, so now they're watching to see what we'll predict for the next 25 years!"
