Stan

One of the things that amazes me about my silly life is how I got to know and even work with a lot of people who were very inspirational to me when my age was in single digits. There was a myth (probably) that when a woman was pregnant, if she listened to a lot of Mozart, the kid then inside her would be born with great musical talents. My mother used to say that when she was expecting me, she watched the Time for Beany TV show which then starred two brilliant comic actors — Stan Freberg and Daws Butler. I dunno how anyone would describe my sense o' humor but it has obvious connections to both men and I got to know and work with both men.

I also got to know and work with most of the people responsible for Warner Brothers cartoons, the early Hanna-Barbera cartoons, the comic books from the fifties and sixties based on those cartoons, Jay Ward cartoons, The Dick Van Dyke Show, MAD magazine, DC and Marvel comic books from my childhood, a number of favorite comedians, Charles Schulz…well, it's a long list, longer than I have room for here right now.

I know when I write about these people here, some take it as namedropping but I just want to share what I know about them with anyone who'd be interested. One of the folks I was most thrilled to know was Stan Freberg, who was born this day in 1926. Stan was a brilliant actor and writer and it's hard to describe just what he did that set him apart from others working in animation, radio and television when he did. The video I've embedded below may give you a sense of the satiric skepticism with which he plied his trades.

Much of Stan's best work was made possible by patrons and sponsors who appreciated what he did so well and were willing to back him, no matter what the financial cost, to enable him to do it. For a while, one of the best things on television were commercials that he made for Chun King Chow Mein — a company that, oddly enough, was run by a man named Jeno Paulucci, who was also responsible for Jeno's Pizza Rolls. (Another of the best things on TV were the commercials for Jeno's Pizza Rolls, also produced by S.F.).

Stan's services as a producer of commercials were expensive but Mr. Paulucci thought he was worth it. At one point, they allegedly made a wager — and Stan admitted to me this was a publicity stunt that didn't really happen the way it was reported. The bet was that if a given ad campaign didn't boost Chun King sales by 25%, Stan would pull Jeno in a rickshaw down La Cienega Boulevard here in Los Angeles. If it did, Jeno would give Stan a ride. This photo — which you can enlarge by clicking on it –shows you the outcome…

Those of you familiar with La Cienega Boulevard will spot Norms Restaurant in the background. That's the one a lot of people fought to save recently and I'm happy to report that it is still there.

Getting back to Stan and Jeno: Another thing that Jeno gave Stan to play with was an hour on a Sunday night in 1962. Paulucci bought the hour on ABC that normally housed one of its top-rated shows, Maverick, and let Stan made a sixty-minute infomerical long before that term was coined. Its goal was to sell chow mein but it was enormously brilliant and entertaining and if you start watching it, you'll probably get hooked and watch the whole thing.

Stan went, as he always did on everything he did, way over budget but Jeno sold enough canned Chinese Food that he didn't mind. It features the whole Freberg stock company including Sterling Holloway, June Foray, Shep Menkin, Billy Bletcher, Jesse White, Peter Leeds, Howard MacNear, Arte Johnson, Naomi Lewis, Byron Kane, Mike Mazurki and many others, including a cameo by Frank Sinatra. We used a clip of the big production number that starts about eleven-and-a-half minutes in as the opening to a tribute evening I helped assemble in November of 2014. It was one of Stan's last public appearances…