Stan Freberg

Stanley Victor Freberg (born August 7, 1926 in Los Angeles) is a voice actor, comedian, and advertising creative.

Related Topics:
August 7 - 1926 - Los Angeles - Voice actor - Comedian - Advertising

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He began as a voice actor in a number of old-time radio shows and in animation as well. At the age of eighteen, he was cast as the voice of Junyer Bear in Chuck Jones' 1948 Looney Tunes cartoon What's Brewin', Bruin?, featuring Jones' version of The Three Bears. He often found himself paired off with Mel Blanc while at Warners, where the two men performed such pairs as the Goofy Gophers, Hubie and Bertie, and Spike the Bulldog and Chester the Terrier. Freberg also worked for Walt Disney Productions as a voice actor for films such as Lady and the Tramp (1955),

Related Topics:
Old-time radio - Animation - 1948 - Looney Tunes - What's Brewin', Bruin? - The Three Bears - Mel Blanc - Goofy Gophers - Hubie and Bertie - Spike the Bulldog and Chester the Terrier - Walt Disney Productions - Lady and the Tramp

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During 1950-1955, he and frequent collaborator Daws Butler provided voices on Time for Beany, an early puppet version of characters created by Bob Clampett who are better known in their later animated incarnation, Beany and Cecil.

Related Topics:
1950 - 1955 - Daws Butler - Puppet - Bob Clampett - Beany and Cecil

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Throughout the 1950s he made a name for himself writing and performing both original songs ("Television") and parodies of popular tunes ("The Yellow Rose of Texas", "Day-O", "Heartbreak Hotel") and radio shows (John and Marsha, St. George and the Dragon-Net, the latter with Butler).

Related Topics:
1950s - Parodies - The Yellow Rose of Texas - Day-O - Heartbreak Hotel - John and Marsha - St. George and the Dragon-Net

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Freberg's popularity landed him his own program, The Stan Freberg Show, on CBS Radio in 1957. The show failed to attract a sponsor, however, at least in part because Freberg did not want to be associated with the tobacco companies who had sponsored Jack Benny, whose time slot he inherited. In lieu of actual advertisements, Freberg mocked commercials in general by "advertising" such products as "Puffed Grass" ("It's good for Bossie, it's good for me and you!"), "Food" ("If you haven't any teeth you can gum your food with your gum, gum, gummy-gum gum"), and himself ("Freberg — the foaming comedian! Bobba bobba bom bom bom" — a parody of a well-known Ajax laundry detergent commercial). The lack of sponsorship forced the cancellation of the show after a run of only fifteen episodes.

Related Topics:
The Stan Freberg Show - CBS - 1957 - Tobacco - Jack Benny - Advertisement - Ajax

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The radio show is most famous for a bit in which, through the magic of sound effects, Freberg drained Lake Michigan and refilled it with hot chocolate, whipped cream, and a cherry, saying, "Let's see them do that on television!"

Related Topics:
Sound effects - Lake Michigan - Television

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Another sketch from the CBS radio show, entitled Elderly Man River, anticipated the Political Correctness movement by decades. Daws Butler plays "Mr. Tweedly," a representative of a fictional citizens' radio review board, who constantly interrupts Freberg with a loud buzzer as Freberg attempts to sing "Old Man River," accompanied by the orchestra of his longtime collaborator Billy May. Tweedly objects first to the titular word "Old", "which some of our more elderly citizens find distasteful." As a result, the song's lyrics are progressively and painfully distorted as Freberg struggles to turn the classic song into a form which Tweedly will find acceptable "to the tiny tots" listening at home: "He don't, er, doesn't plant 'taters, er, potatoes/he doesn't pick cotten, er, cotting/and them-these-those that plants them is soon forgotting," a lyric of which Freberg is particularly proud. Even when the censor finds Freberg's machinations acceptable, the constant interruption ultimately brings the song to a grinding halt, furnishing the moral and the punch line of the sketch at once.

Related Topics:
Elderly Man River - Political Correctness - Billy May

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Freberg also tackled political issues of the day. For instance, one extended sketch parallelled the Cold War gamesmanship between the USA and the Soviet Union by portraying an ever-escalating public relations battle between the El Sodom and the Rancho Gomorrah, two casinos in the city of Los Voraces (Spanish for "The Greedy Ones" -- a thinly-disguised Las Vegas). The sketch ends with the ultimate tourist attraction, the Hydrogen Bomb, which turns Los Voraces into a barren wasteland. (Network pressure forced Freberg to remove the reference to the hydrogen bomb and destroy the two cities with an earthquake instead. The version of "Incident at Los Voraces" released later on Capitol Records contains the original ending.)

Related Topics:
Cold War - Gamesmanship - USA - Soviet Union - Public relations - Las Vegas - Hydrogen Bomb

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Freberg continued to skewer the advertising industry after the demise of his show, producing Green Chri$tma$ in 1959 (again with Butler), a scathing indictment of the overcommercialization of the holiday. Freberg, the son of a church minister and very religious himself, made sure to point out on that novelty record "Whose birthday we're celebrating."

Related Topics:
Green Chri$tma$ - 1959

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Green Chri$tma$ also foreshadowed 1961's Stan Freberg Presents The United States of America, Volume One in that both combined dialog and song in almost musical-like style. (One can almost imagine Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin performing the big Broadway finish on "A Man Can't Be Too Careful What He Signs These Days"). Then there was this little exchange, as Freberg's Christopher Columbus is "discovered on beach here" by a Native American played by Marvin Miller. Being skeptical of the Natives' diet of corn and "other organically grown vegetables", Columbus wants to open "America's first Italian restaurant" and needs to cash a check to get started.

Related Topics:
1961 - Stan Freberg Presents The United States of America, Volume One - Thomas Jefferson - Ben Franklin - Broadway - A Man Can't Be Too Careful What He Signs These Days - Marvin Miller

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• Native: "You out of luck today. Banks closed."
• Columbus: "Oh? Why?"
• Native: "Columbus Day!"
• Columbus: "Oh, yeh." "We going out on that joke?"
• Native: "No, we do reprise of song. That help, but..."
• Columbus + Native: "...not much!"

While much of Freberg's writing was for radio, he also wrote and produced numerous legitimate television commercials for products such as:

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• Contadina tomato paste: "Who put eight great tomatoes in that little bitty can?"
• Jeno's pizza rolls: A parody of a contemporary commercial for Lark cigarettes that used the William Tell Overture, here ending with a confrontation between a cigarette smoker and Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger over the use of the music.
• Sunsweet pitted prunes: Depicted as "the food of the future" in a futuristic setting, until science fiction icon Ray Bradbury (a friend of Freberg's) butts in: "I never mentioned prunes in any of my stories." Another commercial features Ronald Long as a picky eater: "They're still rather badly wrinkled, you know." ("Today the pits...tomorrow the wrinkles!")
• Heinz Great American Soups: Ann Miller is a tap-dancing housewife whose husband asks, "Why do you always have to make such a big production out of everything?" At the time (1970), this was the most expensive commercial ever made — so expensive, in fact, that there was little money left over to buy air time for it.
• Encyclopædia Britannica: The boy in these commercials is Freberg's son Donavan. Freberg talks to him from offscreen.

Today, these advertisements are considered classics by many critics, and Freberg is usually credited as being the first person to successfully introduce humor into television advertising. Freberg asserted that a truly funny commercial that did not insult the intelligence of the viewer, and that perhaps revealing a bit more information about the product than the advertiser had in mind, would draw the buying public in droves. He was often proved right: famously, the owner of Jeno's Pizza Rolls paid off a bet over the success of a Freberg advertising campaign by drawing Freberg through the streets of San Francisco in a rickshaw.

Related Topics:
Humor - Rickshaw

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Freberg is still actively doing advertising and other projects today. In 1996 he released Stan Freberg Presents The United States Of America, Volume Two. He is most visible these days as the host of a syndicated anthology of old-time radio shows, When Radio Was.

Related Topics:
1996 - Stan Freberg Presents The United States Of America, Volume Two - Syndicated - When Radio Was

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Freberg also played the J.B. Toppersmith character in "Weird Al" Yankovic's The Weird Al Show.

Related Topics:
"Weird Al" Yankovic - The Weird Al Show

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Freberg recounts much of his life and career, including his encounters with show-biz legends such as Milton Berle, Frank Sinatra and Ed Sullivan and the struggles he endured with radio and TV networks to get his material on the air, in his autobiography It Only Hurts When I Laugh (Times Books, 1988).

Related Topics:
Milton Berle - Frank Sinatra - Ed Sullivan

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