Very good obit, Howard. I've seen several but none this wonderfully 
detailed. Thanks. Lou
Lou Kolb
Voice-over Artist:
Radio/TV Ads, Video narrations
Messages On-hold:
www.loukolb.com
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "howard kaufman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, April 12, 2015 3:31 PM
Subject: FW: Stan Freberg


>R I P
>
>
>
> obituaries. stan freberg, 1926 - 2015. master of comedy parodies and ad
> campaigns OBITUARIES. STAN FREBERG, 1926 - 2015. Master of comedy parodies
> and offbeat ad campaigns. By Dennis McLellan, McLellan is a former staff
> writer.. Stan Freberg, an influential master of the lampoon who channeled
> his off-the-wall sensibility into groundbreaking radio shows, comedy 
> albums
> and hundreds of humorous television commercials for products such as chow
> mein and prunes, died of natural causes Tuesday at UCLA Medical Center in
> Santa Monica. He was 88. His death was confirmed by his family, who said 
> he
> had a number of age-related ailments, including pneumonia. Freberg's path 
> to
> the nation's funny bone was unconventional: Unlike stand-up comics who
> recorded comedy albums of their nightclub acts in front of live audiences,
> Freberg went straight into the studio at Capitol Records in Hollywood and,
> bolstered by actors, musicians and sound effects, created what he called
> "audio moments. With totems of popular culture as his preferred targets, 
> he
> created his own satirical hit parade from sendups of chart-toppers such as
> Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel"
>
> and venerated TV series such as "Gunsmoke," "The Honeymooners" and Edward 
> R.
> Murrow's "Person to Person. His 1953 spoof of Jack Webb's "Dragnet," 
> called
> "St. George and the Dragonet," captured the cop show's famously staccato,
> monotone delivery and was widely considered his finest work as a mimic and
> parodist.
>
> Announcer:The legend you are about to hear is true -- only the needle 
> should
> be changed to protect the record. St. George:This is the countryside -- my
> name is St. George; I'm a knight. Saturday, July 10th, 8:05 p.m. I was
> working out of the castle on the night watch when the call came in from 
> the
> chief
>
> -- a dragon had been devouring maidens -- homicide. My job -- slay him!
>
> Freberg's irreverent take on the series produced the fastest-selling 
> single
> in history -- more than 1 million copies in three weeks, according to
> Variety -- and earned its mastermind a gold record. "There has been 
> nothing
> comparable to Freberg's ability to seize on a pop fad and, while it was
> still hot, capitalize on it," Gerald Nachman wrote in "Seriously Funny: 
> The
> Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s. Freberg's satiric vision made him 
> an
> idol to fans as diverse as the Beatles, Anthony Hopkins, Steven Spielberg
> and Tom Hanks. Barry Hansen, the radio host and musicologist known as Dr.
> Demento, told Nachman that Freberg's spoofs "were the true forerunners of
> the satirical style of National Lampoon and 'Saturday Night Live.' " To
> which Nachman added: "But with many more bull's eyes. His 1961 musical
> comedy album "Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America" is often
> described as his masterpiece. The droll revue covers American history from
> Columbus through the Revolutionary War, with Freberg in roles such as
> Benjamin Franklin, who is heard calling the Declaration of Independence "a
> little overboard" in the lead-in to the song "A Man Can't Be Too Careful
> What He Signs These Days. In 1996, the humorist released a sequel, "Stan
> Freberg Presents The United States of America, Volume 2:
>
> The Middle Years. When he first performed some of his parodies, the 
> reaction
> was not always positive. The original recordings of his barbed spoofs of 
> Ed
> Sullivan and Arthur Godfrey -- two of television's biggest stars in the
> 1950s and early '60s -- were locked in the Capitol Records vault after
> vehement protests by lawyers for both entertainers. That led to Freberg's
> frequently quoted comment on censorship: "My records are not released; 
> they
> escape. The son of a Baptist minister, Freberg was born in Pasadena on 
> Aug.
> 7, 1926.
>
> Gangly and introverted, he spent hours lying on the floor with his ear 
> next
> to his family's console radio. "I was such a big radio buff when I was
> growing up that when the other kids ran out to play baseball, I ran inside
> to listen to the radio," he told the New York Times in 1983. "My idols 
> were
> Jack Benny and Fred Allen. Freberg's own offbeat sense of humor began to
> blossom at Alhambra High School. During his senior year, he ran for 
> student
> office on the promise that he would install an 80-foot picture window in 
> the
> girls'
>
> locker room
>
> and turn the principal's office into an automatic carwash. "I was elected 
> in
> a landslide but found it hard to deliver on my campaign promises," he
> recalled in "It Only Hurts When I Laugh," his 1988 autobiography. He also
> performed a one-man show at a school assembly, playing all of the parts in
> "an original Freberg radio show," complete with background music and sound
> effects.
>
> When his fellow students gave him a standing ovation, he was hooked.
>
> Although he
>
> earned scholarships to both the University of Redlands and Stanford, his
> college career was permanently sidetracked shortly after high school
> graduation in 1944 when he landed a job at the Warner Bros. animated 
> cartoon
> unit as the voice of a cartoon dog based on President Roosevelt's famous
> pooch, Fala.
>
> He went into radio supplying animal sounds on a CBS network Sunday show
> "Tell It Again," which dramatized a classic children's story each week.
>
> Later,
>
> he was an actor on the Armed Forces Radio Network. After a post-World War 
> II
> Army stint in Special Services, Freberg did stand-up routines with the
> comedy orchestra Red Fox and his Musical Hounds. He left the band in 1949 
> to
> team up with former Warner Bros. animation director Bob Clampett on the 
> KTLA
> show "Time for Beany. Working with Daws Butler, who supplied the voices of
> Beany and Captain Huffenpuff, Freberg spent the next five years as Cecil 
> the
> Seasick Sea Serpent (and the villainous Dishonest John) on the Emmy- and
> Peabody Award-winning puppet show. In 1950, he launched his comedy 
> recording
> career with his classic soap-opera satire "John and Marsha," in which two
> lovers (both voiced by Freberg) repeat each other's names again and again 
> in
> varying degrees of grief, anxiety, joy and lust. He also ruffled the 
> status
> quo of the Eisenhower era with parodies of rampant consumerism ("Green
> Chri$tmas$"), the Army-McCarthy hearings ("Point of Order") and payola 
> ("The
> Old Payola Blues"). In 1957, after scoring a hit with his spoof of Harry
> Belafonte's "Banana Boat Song (Day-O)"
>
> record, Freberg landed his own comedy show on the CBS Radio Network,
> replacing the departing Jack Benny. Critics loved it, but he had run-ins
> with CBS executives over his refusal to be sponsored by tobacco companies
> and other "undesirables. CBS canceled "The Stan Freberg Show" after about 
> 15
> weeks. Freberg later said the cancellation led him to concentrate on
> advertising work.
>
> He formed his own company, Freberg Ltd. (but not very), whose motto was 
> Ars
> gratia pecuniae (Art for money's sake). One of his most memorable early
> spots was a 1956 radio commercial for Contadina Foods, a small San
> Jose-based tomato-paste maker that was taking on the giant Hunt's company.
> Freberg came up with a jingle -- "Who puts eight great tomatoes in that
> little bitty can? -- and sales of Contadina tomato paste increased
> dramatically within weeks. Later dubbed "the father of the funny 
> commercial"
> by Advertising Age, he won more than 20 Clio Awards for his television and
> radio spots. Freberg later promoted such varied products as Sunsweet 
> pitted
> prunes ("Today the pits, tomorrow the wrinkles; Sunsweet marches on!") and
> Heinz's Great American Soups, for which he created a lavish Busby
> Berkeley-style production number with a tap-dancing Ann Miller atop a 
> giant
> can of chicken gumbo soup. He summed up his advertising philosophy simply:
> "Hey, folks, this is pizza we're selling, not the Holy Grail. His wife,
> Donna, whom he married in 1959 and who served as his editor and producer,
> died in 2000. He is survived by his wife Hunter Freberg, whom he married 
> in
> 2001; a son, Donavan; a daughter, Donna; and a granddaughter. --.
>
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