It's the Metaphors

Fibber McGee and Molly had a wonderful run on radio for over 20 years, though the show was slowly dismantled as the 1950s wore on and the big money of sponsorships moved into television. NBC turned it from a half-hour weekly sitcom into a 15-minute daily semi-serial, with no studio audience, no orchestra, no Harlow Wilcox (he was replaced with John Wald) and a limited number of secondary players. Eventually, it was turned into a short and pretty lifeless dialogue segment on Monitor.

Writer Don Quinn was long gone by this point. Quinn was praised in the press through the 1940s (and the following decade for his work on Ronald and Benita Colman’s radio series, The Halls of Ivy). Critic John Crosby felt the writing was the reason for the success of Fibber, though in the column below from December 11, 1946, he doesn’t find room to mention Quinn.

RADIO IN REVIEW
by JOHN CROSBY
79 Wistful Vista
The task of saying anything coherent about Fibber McGee and Molly is made extremely difficult by the fact that millions of people know them even more intimately than their own relatives and are as familiar with the goings-on at 79 Wistful Vista as they are with the gossip at the local cake sale. In fact. Fibber and Molly's great contribution to the listener is another set of neighbors to add to the ones they already have.
About the only things different in the Fibber and Molly show this year are the metaphors, which are as weird and unlikely as ever, and Fibber's own brand of home-grown insult. "You smell like a fracture ward and you have the manners of a Zulu," he says to Doc Gamble. Fibber has been insulting the Doc for a great many years and this is only the 1946 variant.
He has lots of other variants including "bandage bandit," "medical misfit" and "witch doctor," and the good doctor refers to him variously as "bean brain," "droop snoop," "limber lip" and "parrot face."
"A curt nod of dim recognition to you, you low bucket," the Doc is likely to greet him.
"Listen, you bandage bandit," Fibber will reply, "you're just a human telephone extension with a bag of benzedrine attached. As a psychoanalyst you'd make a good cottontail moccasin."
He doesn't reserve this patter entirely for Doc Gamble. His other old friend, Mayor La Trivia, gets his share, too, and gives as good as he gets. "How are things down at City Hall, La Trivia?" Fibber will inquire. "You stealing much? You're as well groomed as an alley cat and smell like a livery stable and have the manners of an underprivileged water buffalo. Yow family tree is such a slippery elm you couldn't hang a horsethief on it."
All those metaphors sound a little strained in print The McGees get away with it on the air only because they take a lusty delight in kidding themselves. Even Molly, a much cooler head than her husband, delights in the far-fetched metaphor.
"You get in more jams than an ant at a picnic," she says. She refers to her own dear friends as "that little group of public enemies I play bridge with."
The McGees can also get by with, in fact, go out of their way to indulge in, some of the corniest jokes on the air. "The fellow who tried to sell me a Doberman turned out to be a Pinscher himself," cracks Fibber.
" ‘Taint funny, McGee," says Molly, and laughs at it anyhow. That's the secret of it all. It may not be funny but it's extraordinarily human.
“Aren't you Fibber and Mrs. McGee?” asks a floorwalker at the Bon Ton Department Store.
“No, I'm Mr. Molotov and this is Catherine of Russia. We're shopping for an iron curtain,” replies Fibber.
People still pop in and out of 79 Wistful Vista like fleas at a dog show (now he's got me doing it) and some of the faces are reasonably new. There's a beauty parlor operator who speaks pure Brooklynese:
“When she came in she was the spittin' image of General Grant but we took years off her age. When she left she looked just like General Eisenhower.”
And, of course, there's always Mr. Wimple, a sort of Cal Coolidge with a dash of Titus Moody. "How's your wife?" Fibber inquired of him the other day.
"I've never seen her in better shape. She's been in bed for a month."
"Touch of flu?"
"No, touch of a truck."
Then there's Marian (Molly) Jordan's characterization of an extremely literal little girl whose humor is extremely hard to put into print. Her father, she said, won a turkey in a wrassle, and it turns out that's just how he won it.
Don't bother your heads about the plot. There isn't much. Currently, most of the jokes revolve around Mayor La Trivia and Doc Gamble's pursuit of a toothsome babe named Fifi Tremaine, who never appears. This can go on indefinitely and probably will just as Fibber will forever be remarking:
"Where's that muffler? Oh yes, right here in the hall closet."
"No, no, McGee! I haven't had a chance to" . . . . . . . .
But I guess everyone knows what happens then.



The other Crosby columns for the week:
December 9, 1946: Bill Paley at CBS waves the flag as he responds to radio’s critics.
December 10, 1946: “The Falcon” and “Big Town.”
December 12, 1946: Mutual’s “Exploring the Unknown” and “Crimes of Carelessness.”
December 13, 1946: Moss Hart takes on the New York Daily News’ John Chapman on “Broadway Talks Back,” a local New York radio show.
Click on each column below to read them. (The artwork in this post accompanied the Crosby columns in the Los Angeles Daily News).