Stan Freiburg was one of my favorite creator of humorous records and commercials. I never knew he broke into the business as a voice actor for cartoons. It makes sense that he started there since he could do so many different character voices. Thanks for the video and giving me more information about his great career.
My uncle John was his recording engineer. Stan had my uncles name on all Stans records. I heard lots of stories but....I shouldnt share them. Stan was so creative. His mind was constantly buzzing with ideas. RIP Stan Freburg. RIP Uncle John
Write them down. Someday it will be appropriate to share. I've been a fan of Stan Freberg since I was a teenager back in the 1980s. I would love to hear the stories.
It’s absolutely true - Stan Freberg INVENTED the “funny commercial”. He wrote and produced so many of them (starting in radio), I don’t think anyone has a fully accurate count of just how many he made. But you can trust me when I tell you that they number in at least the high one-hundreds… and more like THOUSANDS, BEFORE he ever got to TV! He also was under contract to Capitol Records, and he used to tell people that his comedy records weren’t released - they ESCAPED! So in the late 1970’s, when I started in radio, I was the lucky guy who got over 10,000 assignments to write and produce radio commercials at my first radio job. I didn’t realize this until years later, but I had actually been studying Stan’s work since I was FIVE YEARS OLD (in 1960)! I was able to do imitations of several of Freberg’s voices, as well as some of Daws Butler’s voices (which he did for Jay Ward’s “Fractured Fairy Tales” on the Rocky and Bullwinkle show) along with some of his voices from the Hanna-Barbera cartoons he did, and if I were to try to list those voices by character name, we’d be here all day! In addition, I did many character voices of my own. In my various radio gigs, besides working six days a week as a DJ, I had to make a number of commercials every day. I once did a conservative estimate of the number of those commercials, and it came out to somewhere over TEN THOUSAND of them! And Daws had worked with Stan for many years, both on commercials and The Stan Freberg Show on CBS Radio! Again, little did I know that Daws would end up being my voice acting coach! When I finally met Stan Freberg, it was in 1988 at Daws’ funeral. I consider myself VERY lucky to have known the famous voice actors who counted themselves among my friends - such as the great June Foray (the voice of Witch Hazel for Warner Bros., Walter Lantz [producer of the Woody Woodpecker cartoons] and even for Walt Disney! June told me that as far as she knew,she was the ONLY voice actor who had played the same character for THREE STUDIOS! There were many other cartoon voices who were or are friends, but this is too long already. To all the great Voice Actors who befriended me, I can only say, “Thank You!”.
I had the pleasure of seeing him in raconteur mode more than once, including the 70th anniversary career tribute in Hollywood ten years ago. ( Also managed to get his autograph on a few rare items - "Come on and put your name on the dotted line..." ).
Before he got a job doing voice overs for movie cartoons,performing on his own radio comedy show and being a puppeteer on"Time For Beany"..Stan was a comedy assistant for his uncle's magic act"Believe It Or Else?".
I just posted a link to this in Facebook. Here's my intro: Now that my daughter is a teen and calling me "old" all the time, I have started to embrace it. For no connection I recall, she reminded me of Stan Freberg the other day. I was familiar with Stan as a fan of comedy recordings when I was in high school. He wrote really funny pieces that may have originally been radio programs, the main one sticking in my mind was "Flackman and Reagan" a spoof of the camp Batman TV show where Ronald Reagan was cast as Robin before he was, you know, president. Heck, maybe even governor. Another was "John and Marsha," where the entire dialogue is two characters saying each other's names, but doing a full range of drama and emotion via their voices and the background sound track. "St. George and the Dragonet," "Banana Boat," "Dey Took Away My Diner's Club Card"... if you're a kindred spirit who listened to comedy shows on the radio in the 70s, you remember these. So, spurred on by these memories, I searched for him on RU-vid, and wouldn't you know it... there was an upload 11 days ago interviewing him as a pioneer of television. There's really nothing in there about the stuff I knew, but he talks about how he literally took a bus to Hollywood to try to break in before starting school at Stanford (which he never did). There's also an explanation about how he was the pioneer of writing the first funny radio and television commercials!
I got Mr. Freberg on the phone by accident after his autobiography came out (1988 or 1989). He actually answered the phone at his own office. The honesty in the man's character was honest and true. Amazing!
1968 I was in a high school class called music appreciation. We were a small class, and the teacher didn't seem to care to teach so he just played records and we would talk about what we liked about the music. About midway in the semester the teacher told us he was going to do something different. He told us the record was a Stan Freberg production and more of a comic work. We the students loved it. For the rest of the school year at least once a week was a Stan Freberg class.
What an incredible story! Thanks Stan. I loved my Dad's 45 of "St George and the Dragon Net" when I was a kid. Those God given talents would have never done him (or us) any good if he had not been confident enough to pursue his dreams.
Among other parts of his work I very much enjoy Stan's performance in the Monkees episode "Monkee vs. Machine". One of the best in the series and a great use of Stan's talents.
If you've never heard Stan's comedy albums, go out and rectify that; they are brilliant and hilarious. His radio show was a hoot, too, for the short time it existed. Then watch and listen to some of his commercials, especially the Sunsweet Pitted Prunes. If you are old enough to remember the Encyclopedia Britannica commercials (early to mid 90s), with the kid responding to the narrator, that was Stan and son Donovan.
12:24 The talent agency that's empty. In Hollywood. Agents that will pray with you. An agent that will drive you in her car to an audition. These things are unthinkable today, Hollywood is very hostile environment now...So to say it was a different era, is very true!
Passenger trains were losing patronage in the late 1950's. Stan came up with the idea to drop leaflets saying, "Save the Lark", over San Francisco when Southern Pacific applied to discontinue that train.
The morse code blinking light on the Contadina roof spot is copied from the Capitol Records Building. The Capitol Bldg's spells "Hollywood" in blinking morse code... Stan was king of spoken word at Capitol.
Stan's a little mixed up on Bugs; Chuck Jones didn't create him and it was quite a while before he directed a Bugs cartoon. Ben "Bugs" Hardaway directed the first (along with Cal Dalton) He was then refined by Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, Chuck Jones, Bob McKimson and Frank Tashlin, as directors, as well as by the writers and Mel Blanc, in his performance. Chuck originated Pepe Le Pew., Ralph Phillips, The Road Runner& Wile E Coyote, Marc Antony and the Kitten, Claude the Cat, Marvin the Martian, Sniffles and the Three Bears. Even so, it was in collaboration with a lot of other people in the unit and with the other drectors, writers, animators, and other production people.
Addendum: If you have a talent for *ANYTHING,* the credit for that talent belongs to *YOU,* not some mythical being that no-one has ever seen or heard and *CLEARLY DOES NOT EXIST!*
@@neilforbes416 If HE does not exist, then neither do YOU, because you essentially are your DNA, and your DNA did not just “magically” come together by luck!!! To deny God and His existence is to deny your very substance; your DNA!! Fool!!
@@robertmac7833 The *fool* here is *YOU!* your god is merely a figment of primitive imagination. When you are a child, if lonely you invent an imaginary playmate. Trouble is, that when christians become adults(in body only), their mind, and yours as well, wants to hang on to that same imaginary playmate. so, *"GROW UP!!!* and stop wasting our time with your religious *BULLSHIT!*
@@neilforbes416 No. The fool is YOU! The FOOL hath said in his heart “there is no God.” If you have accepted into your heart the bullshit LIE that the very God who designed your mind bogglingly complex DNA is not who He says He is, then the fool is YOU!!
2:03 Freberg makes the same mistake that *ALL AMERICANS* make when walking into multi-storey buildings - the "Lobby" is on *GROUND FLOOR* and the next level up is *FIRST FLOOR* and with this building he's in, the top floor is *SECOND FLOOR* as there is *NO THIRD FLOOR!*
Different countries have different conventions and numbring systems for floors. Believe it or not. It's not a matter of right or wrong. You can press the button for the 13 floor in elevators in Qatar. In North America there is a 12th and 14th floor but supposedly no floor named "13".
