Few knew what she looked like, but most knew her voice: Vander Pyl was the voice behind Wilma Flintstone on Hanna-Barbera’s cartoon series, The Flintstones. The show ran in prime time from 1960 to 1966, and has run in syndication since. Her son, Michael O’Mera, said she was “an anonymous celebrity. You could go out with her and nobody would recognize her.” But “all she’d have to do was go ‘Fr-ed!’ and people would say, ‘Wilma Flintstone! I grew up with you!’ She’d light up the room.”
She indeed lit up too much: “Everybody on The Flintstones smoked and all of them ended up dying of smoking-related diseases,” O’Mera said. Vander Pyl, who also was the voice of Rosie the Robot and Mrs. Spaceley on The Jetsons, died of lung cancer April 10 in Dana Point, Calif. She was 79.