And folks, that was just the TIP of the Freberg.

In addition to Gary Owens, master satirist and actor Stan Freberg (August 7,1926, Pasadena California-April 2015) has also died..

Freberg started out hopefully to do radio and did radio and early Columbia/WB cartoons starting around the 1940s., then Lantz/Universal and others.

Played a Kangaroo in "Kongoroo"(Columbia,1946)
A Horse, Charlie, in "You're a Grand Old Nag"(Bob Clampett/RKO,his only short,1946)
The early puppet Cecil the Sea Sick Sea Serpent from the same mastermind, who of course with Freberg ALSO worked at WB. Speaking of which:

MOST people TODay, THOUGH probably most know his 1940s-1950s Warner work the most:
Bertie the mouse to Mel Blanc 's Hubie in late 40s Hubie and Bertie cartoons

Grover the Groundhog from "One Meat Brawl" (1947)

Post-"Bugs Bunny and the Three bears" Junyer (voiced by Mel Blanc originally)

Elmo, the mouse "at 2706" where his gal is, and the cat chasing him in the end (with the Jimmy Durante voice) in "A Hick,  A Slick, and a Chick" (with Mel Blanc doing the "drunk" voice)(1948)

Pete Puma, the hapless cougar after that little chipmunk like rabbit and talking with a Frank Fontaine voice (EEEEEE) in "Rabbit's Kin" (1952)

The Gambling Bug from "Early to Bet"("Oh no, not that! NOT the POST!") (1951)


The lead of the Goofy Gophers in ALL their shorts prior to their weak final one, the inexplicably angry and teamed Daffy-Gophers short "Tease for Two" where Mel Blanc did both voices (the Gopher twins being a reversal with Freberg and Blanc in order unlike Hubie and Bertie,in addition
to various earlier actors like writers Tedd Pierce and Mike Maltese then actor-mimic Dick Nelson an d Freberg as Hubie and Bertie)

The namelsss beagle who acts as the "Foxy by Proxy"(1951) foxhound. (1952)

Credited for once, the "Three Little Bops" though the old GAC forums who I'm on as Pokey J.,Anti-Blockhead still disputes it, saying Daws Butler was some of those.

 Here's some more (as of Sunday, April 12,2015)
The gander who acutally DID lay a golden egg in "Golden Yeggs"(1950) and credits Daffy with it.(HOW HE, a GANDER and NOT a female goose COULD, let alone a GOLDEN one...well, say along: it's......only......a........God.....what.........beavers.......make.........cartoon

The hungry little mouse who tried to make a meal of Sylvester ("I forgot what food tastes like!" LOL) in "Snow Business"(?)

The American and Richard Haydn/Shepard Menken Brit Professor mouse in "By Word of Mouse" (Mel was the German mouse).

The piano mouse in "Pizzicato Pussycat"

and so many more..

Freberg hated rock m,usic but hated censorship even more,also a target of his, so instead of banning rock, he satirized THAT.."That's good enough for jazz"..!




and others.



Freberg may have subbed for Daws Butler in early Pixie, Dixie and Jinks shorts as Jinks the cat, he also did the goofy bird Bert for those two Disney limited-animated music shorts with Prof.Owl(Bill Thompson), both from 1953:"Melody" and the Oscar winner of 1954,"Toot whistle plunk and Boom", and even at MGM, in a story similar to WB's "A Hick, AQ Slick", in a "Hick Chick" as the title character. Stan incredibly was quite young..interesting, amongst his many pet peeves at the time, he hated, HATED dimwit voices (even Junyer?)

By 1952, Stan Freberg was now getting known on Capitol as a recording artist:
John and Marsha (a parody of soap operas)\
Try (a parody of Johnny Ray)
His many spoofs of ads and rock and roll songs
and also Ertha Kitt!!
C'est Si Bon"

FREBERG:"Awright, misieu"(he's playing a  Frenchman here)"Zi Bon Zi Bon, like ZAT!"
SINGERS:"Zi Bon, Zi Bon, like zat!"
FREBERG (furious) (inarticulate babbling)(relaxed now)"No no, not zi zi bon like zat. Just Si Bon Si Bon, Forget ze like zat."
SINGERS (imitating too much)"Zi Bon, Zi Bon Forget ze like zat!"
FREBERG (outraged):"NO NO! JUST ZEEE BON ZEEEE BON PERIOHDDDD:
SINGERS (again taking things too far):"ZEE ZEE BON PERIODDD:
FREBERG (completely snapping):ARRGGGGGGHHHH YOU (curses)
(offering to do it himself) LIKE ZIT
(orchestra swells)
(later)
SINGERS:Zi Zi Bon
FREBERG: WHY YOU NOT WAIT FOR ZE COTTIN PEEKING SIGNALL
(Freberg later feels okay to let the singers, or, zee zingels, in French, do the song  and Freberg, speaking, ad libs additional words)

Spoofing rock and advertising, he actually pretended, as a true satirist, to endorse it, which was what got Capitol Records (1958) worried about that year's 2 parter extraStan-vragaStanza "Green Christmas"-I mean, "Chri$tma$". Two "esses" in them and they are both dollar signs.

It was just exactly things like that spoof that worried Capitol Records, but they released Freberg's records and he himself made a ton of cash and then some (but isn't that, uh, counterproductive?:D)
and became rich./

However ironic his money may have been,. Freberg's was well earned, and earned more from later ads all the way through the 80s-early 90s with son Donovan. He also appeared on the show Garfield (which is out of my hobby to-do list though..) and later WB cartoons as the studio went through the 1990s (and invited comparative comments from folk like me with all due respect along the line of "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" regarding the original Warner studio, as it had by 1969 when it closed already contributed true quality. Those  truly outlasted anything that WB or anything else had done through the 1990s and remain among, not the only, but among Stan Freberg's true hiofts..

He also influenced many, including clearly Phil Hendrie of radio fame with HIS talk show with thew fake characters, in the "Bud Dickman/David G.Hall" sketches. See Phil Hendrie show . (If you've ever heard David G.Hall, YOU try to separate that from a Freberg Capitol song spoof sketch!) Pretty eerie similiary...and that..wraps that up..Oh wait..>Ann  Miller's tomotatoes haven't come in....All I can say is, ya gotta play hot, and Stan did.,.RIP.

And NOW from Beautiful downtown Burbank, Going to heaven

As by now, you've no doubt heard, Gary Owens, known for Laugh In, Space Ghost, and many other shows has died. In my very humble opinion this is the best thing he ever did and one of his first famous roles: Roger Ramjet.
http://youtu.be/SIbFJmCUxsA

Well, Bless My Soul....It's BOTTLES (1936)

Sorry for the nearly year long absence...I was sidetracked with many other on and off line projects.


Anyway.

Like any animation studio, The early, Harman-Ising (post-Warner Bros.) MGM cartoons experimented with Disney type happy/scary musical thingies come to life.

One such was in their second full release season (1935-1936), "Bottles" (named just that). It's the famous story of a pharmarcist who gets shrunked down by a skeleton (veteran radio/cartoon voice
Martha Wentworth)
right like the following year's "Snow White" (Disney)'s Wicked Witch (post-Queen) and the skeleton in her dungeon combined and then meeting happy bottles, then scary ones.

Apparnetly both produced and directed by Hugh Harman & Rudy Ising, this runs 10-1/2 minutes long and relies generally on a version of the old song "Little Brown Jug"
and an original piece called "Diapies" sung by three baby bottles (Bereneice Hansell in ALL roles). Graham Webb's only semi-reliable 2000 "Animated Film Encyclopedia"
(McFaarlne Press, Jefferson, N.C.) (in terms of some credits) identifies Frank Nelson (who would've been WAY pre-his famous "Yesss!"), Elmore Vincent (presumably as our hero) and some others.

Aforementioned Miss Wentworth (1889-1974) also recognizably plays Witch.....Hazel. (even then, that name used and it was originally a medicine!)

At the end it's all a dream with the shortest post-wake up come around ending.."Well..BLESS MY SOUL!"(our hero the druggist.)

These 3-color (full color) 30s Technicolor MGM cartoons soon competed with WB (who was going form B&W to CInecolor to 2coilor Tech to 3CTech, which Warners was doing with "I wanna play house" and slowly others following
Disney with "Band Concert" fully were doing..Columbia, and with Looney Tunes, Warner Brothers, ever the penny pincher - with all due respects :D -  continued in B&W, and Paramount./Fleischer was doing this for a while more.)

Scott Bradley put all those songs and music themes together...msuci for druggists to run from...

DON'T BLAME THE COW!

Many companies used animated commercials often using many Golden Age Cartoon-or GAC-people in them. Here, here's a 1960s Kix ad using Frank ("Yessssss") Nelson (or imitator thereof) as the cow who did a few ads-"Don't blame the cow"! Would YOU blame a COW....it if got YOUR milk SOGGY?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vyyf0GmJcl0
PS UPDATE: Thanks to fellow Facebook friend Dann Pryce, it turns out Punchy (Hawaiian Punch) and Batfink and Karate of Batfink's Len Maxwell is the Frank Nelson-like cow.......[5/17/14].

RIP DIANE DISNEY MILLER, 1933-2013.

She was dedicated to the history of her late famous dad, Walter Elias Disney. She was dedicated to Disneyland.

Diane Disney Miller has passed away had the age of almost 80 (d.12/18/33). . Walt's only actual biological child (along with stepsister Sharon Disney, who already died in 1993), Diane was
one of the biggest fans of her own legendary dad in order to preserve the legacy of the Disney Archives and studio, and the
various academies that Disney supported. Her death was provoked by a fall off a ladder, but it wasn't what killed her, but
it did aggravate it.  She also helped a lot with the Disney Family Museum.

Hanna-Barbera Records Drop-Ins Volume One - Side 2 (RARE!)

Flintstones..We'll have a SCARY time?

Like any series...The Flintstones had happy moment,s especially as  sitcom. But especially as the type
it is, and coming with fantasy and monster shows (not to mention
outlaws and hillbillies and motor-bikers and spies!) many disturbing adventures and exploits.

I've decided to come up with a list of what would be the most disturbing or harrowing Flintstone episodes, especially with car chases and such.
This, of course, is only limited to, to paraphrase its model "The Honeymooners"'s famed vernacular, the "Classic 166", and the quotes would be
really neccesary when getting to the last few seasons.

SEASON 1:
"The Flintstone Flyer". This might be called scary, since toward the end, Fred and Barney run the risk of being caught by both Betty and Wilma,
and once Barney (with Mel Blanc doing a hilarious change of voice from nasal, and still to be "deepened" to a foriegn accent janitor in disguise)
,who's been disguised and working with Fred to lay low amongst the girls, gets caught still with the diguise back home...the girls in unison:
"IT WAS THEM"LOL Then they get on their eggbeater, the "Flintstone Flyer" nee "Barney Copter", gettin' tired as the wives notice..and make snide
commentary to each other.

SEASON 2:
"The Impractical Joker". Since Fred pulls practical jokes on Barney, Barney, once he wins "The Sudsy Wudsy Contest", wins money that he uses
to play Fred a practical joke, a "intstant money" maker that legally scares Fred, with a "bad guy" giving a surprise ending (the others can fill
it in)..Betty goes along to set it up, feigns freaking out...with early Hoyt S.Curtin music to help set things up....
"The Mailman Cometh": Fred's unintentionally denied a raise and his hair raising attempts (with Barney) after writing a nasty anti-Mr.Slate
letter to Mr.Slate (now in his official deisgn and voice by John Stephenson) then hearing the happy truth from Wilma to retrieve it winds up
with a cop straight out of that season's one-season "Top Cat", a shorter version of Officer Dibble (voiced by Herb Vigran rather than the real thing's
Al Jenkins), who himself eventually has to plead after the local Bedrock Seargeant (John Stephenson), then things are tense betwween Fred and Wilma and barney as
things go from bed to worse to bad with Fred faking illness in bed, till Wilma savesthe day. VERY disturbing in some cases...
"Alvin Brickrock Presents": ANYTHING with Alfred "The Master of Suspence" Hitchcock is gonna send shivers, in case WIlma being a possible murderer.
Fred and Barney even read a book description of a neighbor who talks like Hitchcock and who is similiar to their Hitchock like near neighbor.

SEASON 3:
"Ladies's Day Out"-It's Baseball seaosn and our rockheadd friends will do anyhting, even go in drag to see the game, but when the wives show up, and when
Barney and Fred have to chase each other past some cops at the baseball stadium, the cops starting peeking around and once the men confess to the wives,
the big problem is how to work around the cops.

SEASON 4:
"Groom Gloom" It's what we've waited for: teenage Pebbles..(voiced by Janet Waldo and THANK GOD NOT that &R%$#! FREAKIN' Sally STRUTHERS!) eloping with
Arnold the newsboy while Fred and oyther adults are now lderly to the...little CHURCH? Yes, and all the chapels bells rung as the song from 1959 A.D. went.
Don't worry, this is the first dream that Fred has that I've mentioned, he's shown going to sleep on his hammock after a busy morning which involved
kid Arnold's "crush on" Pebbles and Fred nagging him about it. As the dream ends Fred suggests to Pebbly Poo NEVER EVER to grow up! Betty is
hardly in this episode. The Jetsons started and ended its production already but Judy Jetson, though with a mixed record of exposure plus the debut
Jet Scramer focus, definitely went over enough to showcase Janet Waldo's disvtint teenage girl voice for Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna, fortauntely for them and for fans.
Don Messick plays Arnold as a kid and teen just innocently being nice to mean old Fred to the hilt!
One of the true classics. Fred's nightmare can be disturbing, but check on the debut of Season 6. Written by veteran TV sitcom scribe (though whether or not he'd written for
series blueprint "The Honeymooners" is forgotten to me) Herb Finn

SEASON 5:
"A Haunted House is Not a Home"-Hal Smith's Uncle Giggles is bothering Fred and Baney who, benefiting from an uncle's inheritnace, have to live in his haunted house,
and this is an Uncle Giggles, a typical rich eccentirc uncle, and it is HIS haunted house. Fred hears nightmarish gargling but fortunately it is only Barney (Mel Blanc doing gargling
that makes it seem that though Looney Tunes gargles were his too) and he is found by Fred who socks him on the head!(Causing Barney to swallow his mouthwash.). Axes come out of the wall
and we even get the usual bunch of weirdos with weird instruments (probaly inspired by those weird singing creeps in UPA's 1962 "Mr.Magoo's Xmas Carol"), the famed Uncle Giggles portrait giggles, and
the eye-rolling picture bit. That can be disturbing..
"Shinrock a Go-Go" Fred's bang his foot, causing him (a la Warner's Cool Cat in 1969's "Bugged by a Bee") to (very oddly) serendipitously wind up on "Shindig"(just like at that time, also on
ABC like our heroes), hosted (like in real life) by Jimmy O'Neill(Stone), and with that (once agsain REAL LIFE) Beau Brummel(stones)(ironically NOT on studio labels Colpix or HBR but on Warner Bros.-though
that company would buy HB much later) doing (ONCE AGAIN mirroring real life) their 1965 hit "Laugh Laugh". That song's petty Brit-rock payback is small compared to what Fred wishes on the
cast for exploiting his painful "Yabba Dabba Die (what he might wish on the cast on Shindig)" Ay yi yi" He even has a dream, not a nightmare though about teaching the dance. But this is pretty much
Hanna-Barbaer's prototype for its imitaor, late 60s Warner Bros.(Seven Arts)'s Cool Cat short mentioned above, as Fred goes thorugh (and we can only sympathise with him_) pain, cracking down at the before the commercials
then running out and flopping with his wig on, so the teenagers have a new reason to dance to Fred, and come the coda ANOTHER painful dance just for his family. Barney even jokes. This episode is almost the epitomite
of what people, even fans, call a Flintstones episode, especially in this time, that is so unsympathetic to poor Fred (not to mention now dated with the TV ref, despite the significance these dance shows have)., and shows Bsarney Rubble
of what a stupid best friend he is (Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbersa even allow Barney to do a "3-D" style close up to the screen to tell Wilma and Betty about Fred's new dance. Thanks a lot, Barney.(angry)

"Dr.Sinister". Spies are now coming on [just like today with Daniel Craig, ironically through MGM and Columbia Pictures, respectively through Tom and Jerry and HB Hanna and Barbera's respective employers back then!]

 Possibly the most nightmarish ending. Fred and Barney wind up being
1) adbucted
2)confronted by a Madame She type out of the 007 flicks who is "too important to be captured"
3) presented before the evil master himself, Dr.Sinister
and the brute himself is one of the scariest chafracters ever..this is the kind of things nightmares are made of. All kinds of things while Betty and Wilma and pebbles DON'T EVEN KNOW!
Fred and Barney are even thrown into a volcano on an Island. Don't ask. No Laugh track in this or a few others. Don't even ask how they get out. But they do get back and just in case WILMA questions, someone
too important to be captured appears. Hoyt Curtin's famous danger sting (what you'd hear, if he was so inclined to use these early Hanna Barbera stingers, on Johnny Quest) already familiar at the time, closes
the episode.

SEASON 6:
"No Bix Like Show Biz". Okay, here's what you've been waiting for. Not! Joanna Lee's story has Fred and Barney watching a plethora of modern day music shows including one that plugs an early incarnation o what would be
1968-1976 supergroup 3 Dog Night, Danny Hutton's The Enemies, with their HBR "Roses and Rainbows" record, and a show with Stuart Hamblen's catchy 1954 "Open Up Your Heart, and Let the Sunshine In"[obviously not to be
confused with the 1980s Madonna or the 1969 Fifth Dimension song], then finds Pebbly-Poo and Bamm Bamm singing it. This is the famed and hated story that shows the destruction of both Fred and Barney's lives, but ironically no one else's,
and the franchise only in its first season, and we even haven't GOTTEN to GAZOO yet. Oh. It's just a dream. Yeah, right. I actually like some parts, and the nightm,arish chase @night @the climax is a kick ass one, but I gotta go with a
few others on the downfalls of this premise, and the song, while very catchy, doesn't seem fair to the FATHER!(just like this episode, unusual for the time).

 At least we could wait in peace till September 11,1971 when the kids became teens only Fred and Barney wouldn't have to be with them every step. Bernard Fox (sister company Screen Gems Productions's "Betwitched")
plays Beatle manager (till 1967)  Brian Epstein, here renamed "Eppy Brianstone."
"Stonefinger Caper". Having been introduced to (ahem, wreck) the show, (though Harvey Korman's voice is first rate and half the character's adventures such as this work a lot better and I don't rate him as half bad),

The Great Gazoo is, besides being banished from Planet Xetox, also banished by Fred and Barney for being even worse than his own leader gave him credit, or demerit for. Barney is such a dead ringer for the never appearing
Bedrock spy Agent Stonefinger that an ace evil secret agent hires his goons to capture him (Like Gazoo, the evil agent and one of his henchen are both voiced by Harvey Korman and Mel Blanc voices the other goon).

Fred and Barney have a very scary spy problem (Barney:"But I don't even have" what the top agent wants). The identity crisis+ Gazoo's heading the boys's explusion of him=what is obviously on hella dead ennd, even with the boys yelling (to the confounded state
of the villians, of course) when who should up but..(Fred and Barney in unison as one.) "GAZOO". Of course he puts the evil guys in the states where they will not be a problem, likewise the sabertooth cat chasing them.

I think this episode that is another case of Betty Rubble snubbing Fred, a la putting her words in Wilma's mouth in SEASON 1's "Rooms for Rent", and it is another example of Betty hating Fred, answering Fred's question by calling him Barney.."Our kind of fun Barney" to FRED? Snubbing of Fred (or Barney?) by proxy. (May be a good topic. Internet Movie Database: THE FLINSTONES: MESSAGE BOARDS:FLINTSTONES [1960] is where I posted [as gcarras] on this, once somebody started a thread on Betty vs Fred. I also posted these Flinstone examples, without these modifications, on that board, Toonzone and after this, on Sitcoms online. [On those, I'm Steve Carras if you want to peruse..]

The evil top spy who mistakes Barney for Stonefinger (ala Goldfinge,r the top
007 villian), has the best line after Banrey tries a formula which he's FORCED by the baddies to impart which he does not know!-The spy:"THAT is a BABY formula"(Barney thinking of Bamm Bamm....very similiar to the 1947 Bugs short "Hotcross Bunny").

"The Story of Rocky's Raiders" A wartime story of Fred's ancestors, like Casablanca and such, that turns into a viloent slaptick chase continuing into the present, with the Flintstones and Rubbles being chased.

"My Fair Freddy". The tale of the Stonyside Country Club from Tony Benedict shows a lot of fun part with the Gazoo, even having him help Fred, who, through a misunderstanding involving Dino having to please
the country club folks, do so in a silly ballerina outfit with Joe Rockhead getting the boys at the Water Buffalo Lodge. The nightmarish part for me as a child was when Fred and his "lodge friends" saw each other literally
eye to eye in Fred's garage and they make him a laughingstock and he shrinks to the size of a mouse..which to a child or an adult would be relieved only by it being a nightmare (a la the season opener) but Tony Benedict
here (and producer-directors Joe Barbera and William Denby Hanna, RIP to both) do not let one off the hook, but there's fortunately (after scenes that inlcude Fred making a silly paraphrase on Phil Harris's old song "Ain't Nobody Here but Us Chickens", replacing the last with "Bushes" as he has indeed, out of shame, hidden behind a bush), a happy ending as the snobs get rocking. Gazoo can take off but he was so fun, and Barney didn't even say goodbye!
I'll also add any episode with the Addams characters or the Hatrocks (with Howie "Ernest T.Bass" Morris reprising his lisping. whistling hillbilly from CBS's "The Andy Griffith show". Yee-Haa!)