Bowling Ballet

Bowling Ballet
Details
Show	The Flintstones
Season	3
Episode number	64
Production number	P-65
Original airdate	October 5, 1962 (ABC)
Recording Date	April 3, 1962
Crew
Animated by	George Nicholas Carlo Vinci George Goepper Edwin Aardal
Layout	Dick Bickenbach Walter Clinton
Background	Richard H. Thomas
Written by	Warren Foster
Chronology
Previous	"Barney the Invisible"
Next	"The Twitch"

"Bowling Ballet" is the fourth episode of the third season and the sixty-fourth overall episode of the original series, The Flintstones. It aired on October 5, 1962.

Synopsis

Fred enrolls in ballet school to help him get his bowling form back for a big bowling tournament.

Plot

To use Barney's analysis of the situation, Fred is "temporarily out of rhythm". He is hitting his yard fence with his car, dropping rock quarry boulders on and crushing Slate's expensive trucks, falling down stairs, and even being in the wrong place at the wrong time- as Betty is swatting at a fly with a stone journal. Every day for two weeks, Fred has been practicing his bowling technique with Barney during his lunch hour and is aghast and hysterical when his closest score to "breaking 100" is a mere 64!

Slate forgives Fred's chronic tardiness after Fred's lunch-hour bowling because the company has wagered on Fred's Water Buffalo bowling team defeating the Rockland Rockets in an impending crucial game, and Fred's hulky, poor-loser co-workers have bet a month's wages on the same anticipated outcome of the game. Fred's gloomy mood brightens when he sees a television commercial for the Bedrock Dance Studio, stating that ballet can help in improving one's coordination at bowling. He decides to attempt the graceful dance. His instructor at the Bedrock Dance Studio is a portly Russian lady, Miss Cobblehov, and Wilma and Betty become suspicious when Fred secretly leaves home by night to attend his ballet lessons.

Barney is requested by Wilma and Betty to follow and spy- with fake moustache- upon Fred, and Barney discovers Fred at the ballet school and summons Wilma and Betty there to observe Fred in the process of dancing on his tip-toes with Cobblehov's glamorous proteges. Fred confides his problem and its hoped-for, unorthodox solution to Wilma, who is dubious about the explanation but agrees to give the benefit of the doubt to Fred- pending Fred's performance at the bowling game in which Fred is expected to lead his team to victory. Fred's first thrown ball goes into the gutter, and Barney offers to aid Fred by starting a recording of classical music on a jukebox, to which Fred bowls "ballet style" and impresses everyone with his best bowling string. His team wins.

Characters

• Fred Flintstone
• Wilma Flintstone
• Barney Rubble
• Betty Rubble
• Dino
• Mr. Slate
• Miss Cobblehov (only appearance)
• Ballet Dancers (only appearance; The unnamed tan-brown ballet dancer and Natasha have laughing lines and the other unnamed white-haired ballet dancer has no lines.)
• Miss Kay (only appearance)
• Charlie (only appearance)
• Joe Rockhead

Locations

Bedrock

• Flintstone home
• Rubble home
• Bedrock Gravel Company
• Bedrock Bowl
• Bedrock Dance Studio (only appearance)

Objects

• Stone cymbals (only appearance)
• Bowling balls
• Fly swatter (only appearance)
• News-slab
• Rock Bell Phone

Animals

• Snorkasaurus
• Brontosaurus (as a Bronto-Crane, BBQ Bronto-Ribs and a Bronto-Bone)
• Flyasaurus
• Parrotsaurus
• Beeasauruses

Vehicles

• Flintmobile
• Loggin Continental

Cast

Alan Reed	Fred Flintstone Joe Rockhead
Jean Vander Pyl	Wilma Flintstone Natasha
Mel Blanc	Barney Rubble Dino Guy Parrotsaurus
Bea Benaderet	Betty Rubble Miss Kay Miss Cobblehov Ballet Dancer #1
John Stephenson	Mr. Slate Charlie Announcer Guy #1
Hal Smith	Teammate Rock #1 Guy #2 Voice #2

Notes/Trivia

• This time, Fred works for the Bedrock Gravel Co.
• One of the other guys on the bowling team is Joe Rockhead.
• The dance teacher's name is Miss Cobblehov. One of the other dancers is Natasha.

Errors

• Fred, Barney, Wilma and Betty are walking home after the bowling game but Fred and Barney had driven there.
• The phone at the dance studio has a regular shaped receiver but other phones have a long curved cone-shaped shell for the receivers.
• Fred's black ballet suit is smooth the first time he is shown wearing it but it has little hairs sticking out in subsequent shots.
• In the new intro song Fred is shown clocking out of "The Rockland & Quarry Construction Co." but in the show he works for "The Bedrock Gravel Co.".