Intensely Silly Jeno’s Frozen Pizza Advertising from Stan Freburg

This gem for Jeno’s Frozen Pizza was put together by the great Stan Freburg in the late sixties, and at over a minute it is a fairly epic piece of advertising. In it, a husband rushes into the home, kicking in the door, he immediately starts discussing pizza.

Which is not all that weird, it is actually how I prefer to make an entrance.

But he isn’t here to talk about just any pizza. He is here to talk about frozen pizza. And not just any frozen pizza, but Jeno’s Frozen Pizza. The whole ad is an over the top farce that reminds me of the Airplane! films with its wordplay and non-stop odd silliness.

Freburg did multiple Jeno’s commercials that brilliantly parodied existing products like Lark Cigarettes and Scope Mouthwash. The Lark Cigarettes parody was so well-regarded that it was considered one of the most well-conceived ads of its time. After running on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, Carson stated that it was the first commercial he had ever seen to receive spontaneous applause from the studio audience.

I am trying to figure out what Freburg is parodying in this commercial, but I have yet to find an original work that matches it.

If the actors in this commercial look familiar, you probably watch a lot of old TV. The wife is played by Joyce Jameson, who in addition to doing some great cartoon voice work, also had a recurring role on The Andy Griffith Show. The husband, played by Richard “Dick” Peabody, not only looks like a cross between Leonard Nimoy and Lee Marvin, but was also on the TV show Combat!, where he played Private First Class Littlejohn.

Stan Freberg was an American actor, write recording artist, voice artist, comedian, radio personality, puppeteer, and advertising creative director. He started his career in 1943 and remained active in the industry well into the new millennium. On April 7, 2015, Freburg passed away at the age of 88.