Stan, the Man

Radio is the last refuge of the airborne satirist. Television today is inhospitable to funnymen of any sort, and has long since proved that it wants little or no part of such biting comics as the late

Fred Allen, Henry Morgan, Bob and Ray --or a lesser-known funnyman named Stan Freberg.

Though braver than TV, radio still intends to stay friends with convention. In putting on last week's opening Stan Freberg Show (Sun. 7:30-8 p.m., CBS Radio), network executives eased their hypertension by scissoring out topical references to the Gaza Strip (it might offend Arabs and Zionists) and a simulated H-bomb explosion over a fictionalized Las Vegas (it might offend the State Department, the Atomic Energy Commission, the governor of Nevada, or somebody's aunt in Iowa). "Now I know what killed Fred Allen!" Stan Freberg cried, and complained of "panicky network people and panicky sponsors hanging like a tapioca curtain between the public and a comedian."

Tuned Sheep. But he went on with the show, served up nearly 30 minutes of his brand of exaggerated, wildly allusive humor. The first sketch was a pleasant conceit about a hot block of "tuned sheep," whose neck bells rendered a spirited version of Lullaby of Birdland. The second, "Incident at Los Veroces," was a live sermon about the self-destruction "of a thoroughly evil city" that is as revealing of Freberg's Baptist upbringing as of his zany imagination.

This week's show was another melange, at once funnier and tamer than the first. Freberg's interview with an Abominable Snowman ("I'm 10 1/2 ft. tall, but you should see my brother! He jumped center for Abominable State") had a deadpan quality equal to the best of Bob and Ray; he slipped a little in a talk with a sculptress, recovered nicely in a blackout skit about a maniacal phonecaller. The only item in the show that might have disturbed the most timid network vice president was a one-minute "Behind History" skit about Barbara Fritchie. "Here's the flag, Barbara, so stick that old grey head out the window." Says Barbara: "You pay me the money first, then I'll stick the old grey head out the window."

Scope for Scope. Freberg, 31, is a very funny fellow who is clearly torn between his need for an audience and his desire to speak his mind. His orneriness was planed down over the past year when he and Producer-Writer Pete Barnum wrote and rewrote a long succession of TV shows for NBC. All were rejected because they lacked "scope." When the sardonic pair then submitted a new effort entitled Scope, NBC wished them a cold farewell.

Freberg's drive is not for money. He has done well with his own recordings, mostly burlesques (Point of Order, Yellow Rose of Texas, The Rock Island Line, St. George and the Dragonette), in personal appearances on TV and in nightclubs, and as an advertising copywriter (a commercial he did for Contadina Tomatoes made Sponsor magazine's ten best list). He calls radio his favorite medium and says: "I like the idea of responding to a challenge, and certainly that's what this is going to be--first a guy's got to go out to his garage and find his radio, dust it off, and then snap it on at a given moment." But if the network censors will just stay out of his hair, he promises to deliver "a fresh, bright new sound that'll wrench people away from the TV set."

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