Joe Gulick wrote with this question…
Because you know a lot about both Stan Freberg and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, I don't think there is anyone more likely than you to provide some information I would love to know. Freberg is in the movie as an employee of the sheriff played by Andy Devine. He had no lines in the DVD version that I have, but I know there is a lot of footage missing from various versions of the film — and some that I believe has been lost forever.
Did Freberg have lines in scenes that may have been filmed but left out of my inexpensive version? I can't imagine casting Stan Freberg without the intention to use that marvelous voice of his. And assuming he had lines, does anyone know how many lines he had and what he might have said in them?
In every version of this movie which was ever seen by mass audiences, Stan Freberg did have a line…but you can be forgiven for not knowing this. For decades, Stan didn't think he had any lines in the released version and one day when we were recording Garfield cartoons and he was in the cast, I hauled out a DVD and played his one line for him. He was amazed…but for some reason, he went on telling people that all his lines had been cut. I'll tell you where it is in the film in a moment.
I told the story of Stan being cast in the film on the commentary track of the semi-recent Criterion DVD or Blu ray edition — which, by the way, is the only version you should buy if you're going to buy a copy of this film to have and to hold 'til death do you part. Here's how it goes and I got this straight from the Freberg's mouth…
Stan, who was then mainly in the advertising business, was engaged to make some commercials for the film. Stanley Kramer planned to find a role in the film for Stan but he hadn't as of Friday, November 26, 1962. Stan visited the set, which was on Stage 29 of Revue Studios on what we now call the Universal Studios lot. He was there to talk with Kramer about promos but the director had a more immediate concern. They were about to shoot the scene in Andy Devine's office — his end of the phone conversation with Spencer Tracy.
The script called for someone else to play Devine's deputy but that actor was a no-show for some reason. Kramer asked Freberg, "What size shirt do you wear?" and Stan was pressed into service to play the deputy. He recalled having dialogue but didn't remember what it was. He also recalled that the actor he replaced was Pat Buttram…which makes sense from a casting standpoint. Still, as much as I love Stan, I learned to not trust his memory 100% so in the commentary track, I said the absent actor was "reportedly Pat Buttram." As far as I know, there's no firm proof he was the no-show.
One reason I'm a bit suspicious is that the Daily Production Report for that day's shooting makes no mention of an actor not showing up…and that's the kind of thing that should be in a Daily Production Report. I did work several times with Pat Buttram — a very funny man onstage and off — but unfortunately, I didn't ask him about Mad World because this was before Stan told me what he told me.
That day's Daily Production Report shows Devine and Freberg "on set" at 9 AM and dismissed at 11:30 AM. It also has a note that Spencer Tracy was ill and did not report for work that day. The two-way phone conversation between the sheriff and Captain Culpeper must have been filmed with Andy Devine trading lines with someone else off-camera reading Tracy's part. That night have been how it would have been filmed even if Tracy had been around.
By the way: As I was flipping through the Daily Production Reports to get the date of the Devine/Freberg scene, I noticed that two days before on 11/14/62, they were filming scenes in Spencer Tracy's office with all the actors who were seen on camera in there, and with Selma Diamond and Louise Glenn, who were only heard on phone calls with Tracy. Also listed as having been on set from 9 AM to 2:30 PM is Morey Amsterdam, who I believe recorded his end of another phone call. There is no trace of it or Morey in the finished film.
Now then: What were Stan's lines? Well, cut from the film before it was ever released were three or four lines with him on the radio talking to various officers and folks out in the field — technical-type stuff. And then there's one such line that stayed in but it was used as a voiceover so unless you recognize Stan's voice, you don't know it's him. It comes right after the scene where Jerry Lewis runs over Spencer Tracy's hat. Then we cut to a police car out on the road following an ambulance and we hear Stan over the police car radio. In the script, the line looked like this —
— but in the film, what you hear outta him is just "Item: One large furniture van…item: one red Volkswagen…" Nevertheless, it's Stan Freberg's voice and it's in the movie, despite what he said before and after I showed it to him and he said, "Hey, that's me!"
