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Every once in a while I dream about a scene I’d like to see on television. Here’s one that’s been recurring lately.
Dragnet‘s Sergeant Joe Friday sits in an interrogation room and says to Kellyanne Conway, “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.”
There are three reasons why this will never happen:
1. Joe Friday (Jack Webb) is dead;
2. He’s talking to Kellyanne Conway;
3. Joe Friday never said “Just the fact, ma’am, just the facts.”
That line about the facts is an alternate fact. Even though Friday’s admonition has long been part of the canon of cultural catch phrases, attributing the facts line to him simply isn’t factual.
With his dour demeanor, Ross Dress-for-Less sport jackets, and sentences that were shorter than his crew cut, Joe Friday begged—just begged—to be held up to ridicule.
The fact is, the line sprang from an innocent-looking young man with horned-rimmed glasses who was well-acquainted with facts because he made a career out of twisting, mangling, and reinterpreting them.
His name is Stan Freberg, and other than hearing about him in passing—his passing, that is, in 2015—most people associate his name with the NPR radio series, Stan Freberg Here.
But Freberg was a brilliant satirist who plied his trade from the 1950s to the 80s. Throughout his career, he didn’t skewer institutions and practices, he filleted them. From television censors to fairy tales, he illuminated biases and incongruities with a prescience that is downright eerie.
Listen to Green Christmas or Elderly Man River. They may sound strange to the ear—1950s radio and records’ aesthetics are different from those of television and standup comedy—but with a bit of freshening Freberg’s work cuts as deeply as Saturday Night Live or John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight.
Dragnet premiered on radio in 1949, with Webb playing Sgt. Friday. When it moved to television in 1951, fans could finally put a face to the show’s hero.
For Freberg, though, the move was like striking oil in your bathtub.
With his dour demeanor, Ross Dress-for-Less sport jackets, and sentences that were shorter than his crew cut, Jack Webb (Sergeant Joe Friday) begged—just begged—to be held up to ridicule.
So Freberg decided to do it.
He approached Webb for permission to use the Dragnet theme. Webb, a Freberg fan, quickly agreed.
In 1953, Freberg released a 45-rpm record with a Dragnet parody, St. George and the Dragonet, on the A side. The record sold two million copies, propelling it to the top of both the Billboard and Cash Box record charts. The B side of the record, Little Blue Riding Hood, also contained a Dragnet parody more or less unknown today.
Except for one moment when Sgt. Wednesday was in bed impersonating Little Blue Riding Hood’s grandmother:
LITTLE BLUE RIDING HOOD: But grandma, what big ears you have.
SGT. WEDNESDAY: All the better to get the facts. I just want to get the facts, ma’am.
Much to Freberg’s delight, and I suspect much to Webb’s chagrin, Sgt. Wednesday’s “I just want to get the facts, ma’am,” slightly shortened with use, became unshakably attached to Dragnet, and to Webb as well.
Freberg went on to star in his own CBS radio show in 1957, when he was the summer replacement for Jack Benny. He produced 15 half-hour broadcasts, but his humor was too edgy for CBS executives, who did not enjoy the way he pushed back against the network and its sponsors. He never had a network radio show again.
(Nine years later, CBS would find satire still hard to digest and cancel the Smothers Brothers’ television show.)
Freberg didn’t leave radio, however, he simply moved to the other side of the pay check.
He was a pioneer of the humorous radio commercial, many of which were fully-produced sketches featuring memorable characters such as gypsies who went on strike when they discovered Salada Tea teabags didn’t leave tea leaves in cups; and the New Prince Spaghetti Minstrels, a quintessential folk group that promoted Prince Spaghetti with lyrics such as “Gold is the color of my true love’s noodles.”
For Chun King Chow Mein, Freberg created a commercial in which a vocal group, in a rousing performance, informs listeners that 95-percent of the people in the U.S.A. don’t buy Chun King’s chow mein.
When he died, Freberg was working on volume three of Stan Freberg presents the United States of America, a brutally satirical look at American history that’s developed a cult following among public school history teachers. They use it to strip the dryness out of teaching important events in U.S. history.
And what about Webb? He remains a television folk hero who drew the line on alternate facts.
A tip of a large hat to Jonathan Wolfert of JAM Creative Productions for graciously allowing me to use one of his company’s classic radio jingles in the podcast episode of this story.
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Mind Doodle…
The theme music Freberg used for his Dragnet parodies was conducted by Walter Schumann, Webb’s conductor, and performed by the same orchestra that Schumann used on the television show.
Fabulous story, Jay… combining Freberg and Jack Webb. My favorite Freberg ad was the one for “radio advertising,” where he showed that radio could do anything by dramatizing the filling Lake Michigan with whipped cream and then bringing in the choppers to drop a gigantic cherry on top. Didn’t like his daring ad campaign though for western airlines (or was it PSA) where he decided to tackle fear of flying by having the flight attendants (don’t think they were called that then) pass out cuddle blankets to anyone who said they were afraid to fly and – as part of the demo – instructed passengers on how to suck their thumbs and press their blankey to their ears.. The airlines just went back to using sex to sell airline seats (We really move our tail for you, to make your every wish come true, at continental airlines, we really move our tails for you.) Sung by a bevy of mini-skirted flight attendants.
Hi Nick…
I’ve been a big Freberg fan since college, but I never new he was responsible for “Just the facts, ma’am” line.
When I was a radio disc jockey in Northern California, I used to play that commercial you referenced. For fun, you can listen to the whole “Who Listens to Radio” package by clicking here.
Freberg was the Woody Allen of radio in that he was so creative, and his projects were so different, celebrities were willing to work on them for a low fee . Sarah Vaughn sang the vocals on the “Who Listens to Radio” series. As I noted in the post, Walter Schumann and his orchestra performed on the Dragnet sendups. Clayton Moore, TV’s Lone Ranger, appeared in a Freberg TV commercial for Gino’s Pizza Rolls.
Freberg showed that something besides sex sells, and that something was creativity. Unfortunately, being creative is hard work, which means it’s expensive, which means clients are reluctant to pay for it. It’s cheaper, easier, and less risky, to fall back on old standbys, such as sex, and then use any absence of failure (not to be confused with success) to “prove” that the standbys work.
The legendary ad man David Ogilvy used to talk about the importance of relevance in advertising. He said he could get almost anyone to stop at an ad featuring a gorilla in a jock strap. But what did it have to do with the product (unless you were selling gorillas or jock straps)?
After nearly 20 years in advertising I learned that you can’t cheat your audience and expect them to respond by buying and/or being loyal to your product.
It’s a lesson the advertising business seems destined to learn over and over again.
— jay