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STAN FREBERG FINDS TELEVISION PERFECT TARGET FOR DISC SATIRES been “St, George and the Dragonet,” a broad satire on Dragnet. “We got Jack Webb’s permission,” Freberg says, “and fortunately he’s a guy with a sense of humor. Maybe it’s a coin¬ cidence, I don’t know—but the fact remains that Dragnet was the No. 3 rated show imtil that record came out, and then it jumped into a virtual tie with Lucy for first place, and in a lot of cities actually passed Lucy.” Freberg, however, has not been so fortunate with his other attempts to satirize TV shows and stars. Given a verbal okay from Ed Sullivan to bur¬ lesque Toast of the Town, Freberg and Capitol Records went ahead and made an expensive recording. They sent a copy to Sullivan for routine clearance. Result: no clearance. “We just kidded his way of talking,” says Freberg. “But he didn’t like it.” Freberg fared no better with other satires. Ralph Edwards, whose This Is Your Life has often been kidded on the air, wouldn’t okay a record. “A one-shot is one thing,” he told Fre- berg, “but the constant repetition of a record would hurt the show. That show is my bread and butter, boy. I can’t afford to take any chances. I’d walk out there with that book under my arm and they’d bust out laughing.” Capitol’s own legal department cut Freberg’s satire of Arthur Godfrey in¬ to so many ribbons that it resembled a maypole in a hurricane. “Godfrey approved it,” Freberg says sadly, “but I didn’t. To me, a watered-down satire is worse than no satire at all.” What really pains Freberg is the sudden freeze given his “Point of Order,” after what seemed a whirl¬ wind start. Based on the Army-Mc- Sgt. Friday Freberg; no drag on Dragnet. Carthy hearings, the record got a tre¬ mendous play in its first days. “But all of a sudden,” Freberg says, “the or¬ ders went out from the networks and the’ stations to the disc jockeys. Noth¬ ing vicious, understand. They weren’t out to get me. They were just afraid to poke fun at anything political.” A native of California, Freberg had hung around the fringes of show busi¬ ness all his life (his uncle had been a magician), finally getting his break as the voice of Cecil the Seasick Sea Ser¬ pent on the Time for Beany puppet TV show. Here he met Dawes Butler, who now helps Freberg write most of his material and furnishes vocal char¬ acterizations on the Freberg records. “Dawes and I think alike,” Freberg says. “Which is to say he doesn’t think like network and ad agency execu¬ tives. Which is to say, he has a sense of humor.” 21