This is from Ed Sullivan's TV program on September 27, 1953. The video says it's from The Ed Sullivan Show but in '53, it was still called Toast of the Town. It emanated from New York and back then, it was very common to refer to California — as Ed does here — as "The Coast." Something could happen in the Mojave Desert but to New Yorkers, it was happening on "The Coast," as if the Eastern United States didn't have a coastline of its own.
Stan Freberg and Daws Butler then had a best-selling comedy record. Both sides parodied Jack Webb's popular series, Dragnet, which was a radio series from 1949 to 1957, and which added a TV version in 1951. One side of the record was "St. George and the Dragonet" (Dragnet in medieval times) and the other was "Little Blue Riding Hood" (a Dragnet version of the children's story). Here's the latter with Ed assuming the announcer role done on the records by Hy Averback.
June Foray, who also appeared on both sides of the record, plays Little Blue Riding Hood and her grandmother. Daws Butler plays the other cop back at the station. It took a certain amount of ingenuity to do this live on stage with no sets or props and minimal costuming. On Ed's show that night, they also did the flip side of the record with the same no-budget staging.
The records were very popular and Jack Webb — who as Ed says, gave permission for it all — was delighted and felt that the parody upped the popularity of his series. But he was a bit annoyed that it planted in many minds that "We just want to get the facts, ma'am" or similar lines were heard often (or even at all) on his show. That was a Freberg/Butler invention which became part of Dragnet lore.
I was privileged to know and work with Stan, Daws and June…three people of awesome talent, amazing careers and vast amounts of sheer niceness. I miss all three of them very much…
