Stan Freberg

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

He began as a voice actor in a number of old-time radio shows. 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.

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).

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.

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!"

Freberg continued to skewer the advertising industry, 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."

Green Chri$tma$ also foreshadowed 1961's Stan Freberg Presents The United States of America, Part 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.

• Native: "Can't cash check today. Banks closed."
• Columbus: "Oh? Why?"
• Native: "Columbus Day!"
• Columbus: "Oh, yeh." [pregnant pause] "Well, are 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:

• 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 Donovan.

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

In addition to his work in radio and advertising, Freberg has also voiced a number of animated cartoon characters over the years. He often found himself paired off with other talents such as Mel Blanc at studios like Warner Bros., where the two men performed such pairs as the Goofy Gophers, Hubie and Bertie, and Spike the Bulldog and Chester the Terrier. He has also worked with Walt Disney Studios on movies, such as Lady and the Tramp, and television projects, such as The Wuzzles.

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

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).