Actors - Stan Freberg

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	Actors - Stan Freberg

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

The son of a Baptist minister, Freberg grew up in Pasadena, California. His traditional upbringing is reflected both in the gentle sensitivity which underpins his work (despite his liberal use of biting satire and parody), and in his refusal to accept alcohol and tobacco manufacturers as sponsors (which was to be an impediment to his radio career when he took over for Jack Benny on CBS radio in the early 1960s as Benny moved to television.)

The Early Days

Stan Freberg began as a voice actor in a number of old-time radio shows and in animation as well. He won his first part by taking the advice of his uncle, a stage magician, who advised him to take a bus into Los Angeles and have the driver let him off "in central Los Angeles," whereupon Freberg was to walk into the first building he saw and ask for an audition. At the age twenty-one, 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 Bros., 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).

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"). He also parodied the melodrama of radio soap operas with the breathy John and Marsha and (with Butler and June Foray) produced a medieval parody of Dragnet' called St. George and the Dragon-Net. The latter recording was a #1 hit for 4 weeks in late 1953.
Radio
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.

After the radio show, he created an album, which was supposed to be similar to his radio show. This album 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!"

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.
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Actors - Stan Freberg

The Early Days

Radio

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