Fibber Mcgee And Molly Quotes

Fibber McGee and Molly boasted one of the strongest line-ups of any comedy program. Harold Peary, Bea Benaderet, Gale Gordon, Dick LeGrand, and Arthur Q. Bryan possessed some of the better-known voices on the air; Bill Thompson alone owned a handful of them.

Fans who insist that the voice of Myrt was never heard on the show will learn that she did appear one time at 79 Wistful Vista to wish the McGees well for the summer.

Broadcast just two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, this episode provides ample evidence that everyone involved with Fibber McGee and Molly is behind the war effort, from Wilcox’s reading a telegram from Johnson’s Wax authorizing NBC to break in with any news bulletins to Harlow’s appeal to buy defense bonds at the close which leads into a stirring version of the first verse of a patriotic hymn sung by everyone in attendance.

A Quinn quote of note that Fibber hopes will make Reader’s Digest is an explanation of why nature is always referred to as she: “Nature is inconsistent, unstable, unpredictable, beautiful, mean, gorgeous, appealing, nasty, and nobody yet has ever understood her.

Dissatisfied with the Christmas cards at Kremer’s Drugstore, Fibber and Molly look over a selection brought to their home by one of Wallace Wimple’s acquaintances. Writer: Phil Leslie Sponsors: Prudential, RCA Victor; promo for NBC programs Comments: This episode brings back the “those were the days” feeling when only drugstores were open on Sundays and greeting cards cost a dime each.

Using the malapropisms percolator and prefabricated and going full speed ahead relentlessly, Fibber and the writers are in fine form as they usually are when McGee plays that old familiar strain “I fought the law and the law won.

Fibber is probably the only adult in Wistful Vista who prefers a synopsis of a cartoon to that of a feature film.

Anyone who remembers licking stamps before the days of self-adhesives will appreciate Fibber’s description that the last batch he had “tasted like a rubber floor mat out of the engine room of a diesel-powered Scandinavian tuna boat.

Ed’s reason for breaking up with Debbie Lynn (played by Gloria McMillan) is that she got married. Actually, Gloria was busy doing episodes of Our Miss Brooks for television and radio as was Gale Gordon which is why Gordon appears in only thirteen Fibber McGee and Molly episodes during the 1952-1953 season and three of those are repeats of shows from previous years.

Although Fibber has put on airs a number of times speaking in a formal British dialect, this is the first time he adopts sixteenth-century language, the topper being his question after he breaks a knickknack: “What the hecketh was that?

The story told to Teeny is also different, the 1950 tale about rabbits because of it being closer to Easter and this story about cuckoos. Transcriptions of earlier shows were used to produce this episode. When Marian was still not well enough to return after three weeks of repeats, new shows were written.

Summary: The McGees endure a harrowing experience trying to get off a freeway filled with fast-moving vehicles. Writers: Phil Leslie, Len Levinson Sponsors: PSAs for American economic system, Easter Seals; promo by Jay Stewart for It Pays To Be Married Comments: This show was heard very early in the freeway era, at a time when McGee felt he was cruising at forty-five miles an hour, a speed motorists adopt on city streets today.

Fibber’s statement of “If I ever get to be 91…” is prophetic for that is the age Jim Jordan was when he died in 1988. The Old Timer celebrates his birthday on January 1st and claims to be 89 years old. Judging by the cost of the dinner, an evening of food and film for three adults in 1954 was about $6.00, less than the price of admission for one at a cineplex today.

The reminiscing that the McGees do invokes one of the laws of nostalgia: nothing today tastes (or looks or smells or feels) as good as the way we remember it in our youth.

Years before Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club, Fibber is preaching the advantages of buying in volume, selling for less than competitors, and using a club which provides savings for members.

LaTrivia delivers a Quinn and Leslie quote of note when he draws this line of distinction: “A statesman is always out to get his country the best deal he can. A politician is always out to get his.

The writers tease listeners a bit by having Fibber mention something in the closet twice before lowering the boom with LaTrivia. The Old Timer claims to be 116.

Betty Wand, who complements the King’s Men nicely on “Dearie,” was an unseen presence in a number of motion pictures, most notably dubbing songs for Leslie Caron in Gigi and Rita Moreno in West Side Story.

Except for some topical references to styles or political events, the show ages well due to the skill of the writers in conceiving funny situations which are still pertinent. Even many of references to World War II rationing are still amusing because of the way the lines are phrased such as Molly’s comment about Fibber on November 10, 1942: “He’s as proud and happy as a man who doesn’t own a car, can’t eat sugar, and hates coffee.

When Marian was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, the Jordans in essence retired and closed the hall closet for good. She died on April 7, 1961. Jim lived to be 91, succumbing on a date in 1988 that seems appropriate for one of radio’s best jokers: April 1st.

Fibber delivers a Quinn quote of note in this definition: “A scoop is when you get there first to give some second-rater the third degree for the fourth estate.

The brogue in Molly’s speech and the harshness in her attitude are virtually gone now. Fibber is introduced as “Squire of 79 Wistful Vista,” a title he will be given a number of times over the coming years.

Molly delivers a Quinn quote of note: “A heel never gets anywhere without some good soul to lead the way.

This “lost episode “ contains an exchange between the loan officer and Fibber that pointedly answers the question of our hero’s occupation when Sharkey asks, “What kind of work do you do?” and McGee replies, “We do a radio show, Fibber McGee and Molly.” Although Fibber repeatedly professes his belief that Teeny is a pint-sized adult, on this occasion he mutters “she’s a forty-year-old midget” because she would have to be that old to remember the hoary gag she recites before her exit. Alec Templeton makes a brief appearance to promote the summer replacement series, The Alec Templeton Show.

Jim Jordan as Fibber McGee of 79 Wistful Vista, teller of tall tales, incurable windbag. Marian Jordan as Molly McGee, his long-suffering wife. Marian Jordan as Teeny, the little girl who dropped in frequently to pester McGee. Isabel Randolph in miscellaneous “snooty” parts, beginning Jan. 13, 1936, and culminating in her long-running role as the highbrow Mrs. Abigail Uppington. Bill Thompson as Greek restaurateur Nick Depopoulous, first heard Jan. 27, 1936. Bill Thompson in various con man roles, first named Widdicomb Blotto and later Horatio K. Boomer, mimicking W. C. Fields from the show of March 9, 1936. Bill Thompson as the Old Timer, beginning May 31, 1937. Bill Thompson as Wallace Wimple, henpecked husband and bird fancier, introduced April 15, 1941.

In the first episode the highly-regarded team of Tackaberry, Josefsberg, Balzer, and Perrin scripted for Benny (October 10, 1943), they paid homage to Fibber McGee and Molly by having the pilot (played by John Brown) engage in a Myrt bit with the person in the control tower. The Benny bunch knew that allusions to Fibber and Molly were like money in the vault. That fabled vault, first heard on January 7, 1945, could be considered a noisy stepchild of the McGee closet.

(Another illusion is that listeners probably assumed that Marian and Jim read their lines side-by-side. Throughout most of the program’s run Marian sat at a table with her own microphone facing Jim and other members of the cast who came up to his microphone to speak their lines.)

Although some of the predicaments McGee found himself in were downright silly, they never seemed as contrived as those entangling the Aldrich and Bumstead families. Once listeners bought Fibber, they bought the whole package. What sold the show was Fibber and Molly and, in Jim and Marian Jordan, the writers had two of the best comic actors on the air to bring their dialogue to life and get the maximum effect from the lines.

Comments: Marian is absent from this broadcast and will not return until April 18, 1939. During her absence the program is billed as Fibber McGee and Company. The orchestra of Billy Mills will provide the music until the end of the thirty-minute episodes in 1953. Fibber and Chris engage in a phone conversation in which there is confusion over a day nursery and a plant nursery. Don Quinn uses this device of two parties meaning different things a number of times to great comic effect.

Comments: Without Marian, new characters needed to be added and developed. The parts assumed by Betty Winkler were more like walk-ons and the pairing of Silly and Fibber never caught on like the sparring matches between Fibber and friendly adversaries Gildersleeve and Doc Gamble, probably because the two blunderers were too much alike.

You may think you’re getting away with something for a while, Kipling, but it won’t be for long, fellow.” After pausing for the laugh he adds, “I should have made that Whittier.

Fibber delivers the best line of the show after Wilcox reveals his shirt size. “17½? Wow! That ain’t a shirt. That’s a step-in.

Comments: Tetley’s part is mainly to deliver a twist on the popular cigarette call when the bellboy hollers for a man named Morris Phillips. This is one of the first instances of the name Gildersleeve being used by a character assumed by Harold Peary. Wilcox’s commercial is delivered in a crying tone. Harlow’s presumed devotion to Johnson’s Wax at almost any cost is a theme that will run through many commercials.

Comments: This is one of the few episodes that gives listeners an idea of where in the country Wistful Vista is when Molly indicates they live midway between California and New York. The McGees do not even leave their property with their windfall because the $200 is needed to pay the plumber’s bill for retrieving the flipped coin from a drainpipe.

New photographs have been chosen to complement the text. Because the hall closet running gag remains one of the most memorable aspects of Fibber McGee and Molly, Appendix C has been added which lists all the openings in order and a tally of the openings through the years. Another new feature is Appendix D which lists in chronological order the initial use of running gags, dates of first and last appearances of regular cast members, and other notable occurrences on one of radio’s most famous programs.

If Fibber McGee supplied a subtitle for this book, it would likely be “A lengthy log listing the legendary shows of the loquacious leader and his laudable lady who landed loads of laughable lines in the laps of lots of lads and lasses who loved listening in locales from the lofty ledges of Leadville to luscious Lake Louise.

Jim Jordan’s assertion in interviews recorded in his later years that the episode with Gildersleeve acting as butler (December 26, 1939) was the funniest in the series is questioned when an actual listening to that show reveals it to be just fair Fibber McGee and Molly fare.

Comments: The show is still getting its legs with Jim speaking in an older man’s dialect and Marian acting a bit like a Irish harridan who harangues her husband more than helps him. Molly unleashes an awful pun about chili con carnival and Fibber unfolds another tall tale, this one about an elephant named Myrtle. Unlike the later shows in which the action flows seamlessly between the commercials and the musical interludes, the routines are isolated and seem almost like spoken bridges between the musical numbers. This is the last 1935 extant broadcast from New York.

Date: August 26, 1935 Title: Win House in Wistful Vista Cast: Jim Jordan (Fibber), Marian Jordan (Molly), Harlow Wilcox, Charlie Wilson (Hagglemeyer) Summary: Fibber and Molly win their dream house when the ticket they hold in a real estate raffle (number 131313) is selected.

Bird book”: the alliterative phrase spoken by Wallace Wimple with exaggerated lip movement. Fibber or Molly frequently asked him to repeat it to milk some more laughs.

I’m yust donating my time”: spoken by Ole Swenson in response to work requests or situations at home.

Jim has never received adequate recognition for his skills as a comic actor. Fred Allen’s status as a witty ad-libber is well-documented, yet Jim could fire off an spontaneous line with the best of them. It is this talent of the quick quip that is noted in the comments of numerous episodes in this book.

During Marian’s long absence from the 1937 to 1939 and on several occasions in later years when she did not appear, Fibber and company continued on for the prime mover kept things moving along smoothly until she returned. Plainly put, Molly was too sensible and kindly to be funny all alone whereas impetuous, short-tempered Fibber could be a riot just talking to himself.

When the Jordans stepped to the footlights in the tag and spoke to us from the heart about buying war bonds or donating to a charity, the words carried a sincerity that could come only from our kind of people, not from stars reading a mimeographed sheet handed to them just before the broadcast.

When Fibber would say, “I was born in a little white house on top of Kickapoo Hill back in Peoria of poor but honest parents,” he could have been speaking about James Jordan who was born near Peoria on November 16, 1896. (On the December 12, 1939 episode of Fibber McGee and Molly Teeny correctly guesses Fibber’s birthday of November 16th.) Marian Driscoll was born not far away from Jim’s birthplace on April 15, 1898. The couple dated in their teens and were married on August 31, 1918. After Jim returned from brief service with the army at the end of World War I (which, Fibber would always insist, was the big war), the pair began touring as a musical act with Marian as pianist and Jim assisting on the singing.

During Marian’s extended absence from the show from November 1937 to April 1939 when the program was known as Fibber McGee and Company, Hugh Studebaker, Betty Winkler, and ZaSu Pitts appeared frequently to help or hinder Fibber in his weekly dilemmas. Isabel Randolph and Harold Peary assumed various parts before settling into the well-known roles of Mrs. Uppington in 1937 and Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve in 1939. Likewise, Gale Gordon played doctors, clerks, and other bits until assuming the mantle of Mayor LaTrivia on October 14, 1941.

Comments: Jim plays Mort Toops in a voice not unlike the one Edgar Bergen employed later with Mortimer Snerd. With Jim and Marian playing almost all the parts, some of these early Fibber and McGee episodes give listeners a taste of what Smackout sounded like.

Comments: This is an early instance of Fibber taking on city hall, a theme that will be repeated a number of times. Another example of self-deprecating humor occurs when Fibber mentions that the couple started working for Johnson’s Wax in 1935, pauses a beat, then adds, “Got our first belly laugh in 1938.

The show was one of radio’s most consistent until 1950, when Harold Peary announced that he was quitting his starring role. Rumor had it that Peary had held out for more money. His series was still carrying a rating in the midteens—certainly no disgrace at any time, and highly respectable in radio’s final years, when the once-lofty Hope, Bergen, Benny, and Fibber powerhouses were doing little better themselves. Peary admitted he was bored: he had slowly tired of the role and was frustrated that his onceremarkable versatility had been eclipsed under a blanket of Gildersleeve typecasting. People forgot that he had been a singer, he said, and that he had been one of the best of the old Chicago dialect men in the days before he moved with Fibber McGee and Molly to Hollywood. This might have killed most shows, but NBC and Kraft had on tap one Willard Waterman, who had once been denied acting jobs on McGee because his voice sounded so much like Peary’s. Waterman and Peary had traveled similar routes on their climb through radio. Waterman had arrived in Chicago around 1936 and had played many of the same bit parts that Peary would do the following year. While Peary was establishing himself on McGee, Waterman was working The First Nighter Program, Ma Perkins, and The Story of Mary Marlin. Like Peary, Waterman was a prolific and versatile talent, doing up to 40 parts in a week.

Quinn wrote a script. He took the character Luke Gray out of the store and, in an inspired moment, renamed him Fibber McGee. He called his script Fibber McGee and Molly, but for some reason the agency people handling the Johnson account didn’t like it. They wanted to call it Free Air. It was, after all, about a middle-aged pair of married vagabonds who travel down America’s highways, stopping occasionally for gasoline and some engaging talk about Johnson’s Car Wax. But there was a problem with this title: Sinclair Lewis had used it on a short story and, as Yoder was told, wanted $50,000 for its release. So Fibber it was—perhaps the luckiest bad break in all radio. An audition record was made, and Johnson’s Wax bought the show. It would premiere on Monday night, April 16, 1935, with Smackout still running on the same (Blue) network, as a six-a-week quarter-hour feature at 10 A.M.

With the exception of The Bob Hope Show, Fibber McGee and Molly was the most patriotic show on the air. Whole runs of shows illustrated homefront themes. Fibber bought black market beef, which of course was spoiled. At the end, he and Molly signed off with personal messages and pleas for war bonds, volunteers, and scrap drives.

DOC    (Goes into living room) ’Bout time for Fibber McGee and Molly.

There is an in-joke near the beginning in which Fibber cites a police report with the names of officers Chester Lauck and Norris Goff, the stars of Lum and Abner.

The cleverest line is delivered by Fibber as he reveals that the result of a triple cross involving a homing pigeon, a woodpecker, and a parrot would be a bird who could fly to the right place, knock on the door, and speak the message.

Arthur Q. Bryan makes his first appearance as a man asking questions about a radio program. Quinn, who had earlier taken pot shots at the cliffhanger endings of soap operas, parodies the genre in this episode with the fictitious title David’s First Wife’s Second Husband.

A measure of the popularity of Fibber McGee and Molly at this time is the show’s number one ranking among commercial programs in a poll of almost 1,100 radio editors conducted by Radio Daily.

The writers occasionally give Gamble words of wisdom befitting a man of his education and experience so there is reason to listen to his wish that “every boy when he reaches the age of 18 could see his own obituary and then either correct it or live up to it.

also quite likely the most vivid description of Aunt Sarah’s miserliness (“That old dame is about as open-handed as 12 o’clock”).

Fibber delivers one of those amusing lines that does not make sense, yet everyone senses the meaning: “Uppy, you sound ozzier than Nelson.

Twas the Night Before Christmas,” adapted by Ken Darby from “A Visit from St. Nicholas” by Clement Clarke Moore, is performed for the first time. It will be featured on the show closest to Christmas nearly every year through the end of the thirty-minute episodes.

In this episode, the only one in which the McGees cross the threshold of the Uppington manse, it takes Fibber less than two minutes to wreck various precious objects. Gildersleeve confesses that he weighs 232 pounds. In a bizarre twist at the end, McGee’s stirring speech in front of business leaders is misinterpreted, resulting in him and not Gildy being elected president. At this time Jim actually served as president of the Encino Chamber of Commerce.

Bill Thompson’s valuable contribution to the show is casually noted in the tag when Molly asks where Nick, the Old Timer, and Boomer are and Fibber replies, “Oh, him. He went to Chicago to spend the holidays with his folks.

There’s Laughter in the Air!, the book Molly is reading while Fibber tussles with the mower, contains excerpts from two Fibber McGee and Molly shows and portions of scripts from twenty other comedy programs. This episode features two extended similes that linger because of their descriptiveness: Fibber says the mower “runs like an iron deer being pursued by a stuffed dog through a petrified forest” and asserts that he is “making as much progress as a punch-drunk caterpillar trying to follow the white line around a revolving barber pole.

Shirley Mitchell, a capable actress, also proved to be a good audience as her laughter can be heard several times during the patter between Fibber and Molly before Alice makes her appearance.

Fibber feels he has been left out of the plans for greeting their old friend when Mayor LaTrivia returns to Wistful Vista from his service in the Coast Guard.

This is the only sixty-minute episode in the program’s history. The purpose of this special broadcast is primarily to promote NBC shows returning to the air for the new season. Bob Hope’s comment, “There’s only a few of us left,” refers to The Jack Benny Program, Amos ’n’ Andy, and other shows which had moved to CBS.

Bud Stefan appears for the first time. An indication of the strength of the dollar in 1949 (or the weakness of it now) is that Molly says that 1,000 pounds is equivalent to $4,000.

The titles of both musical selections are in the same key as the show’s theme this week.This is another of the pun-filled episodes right up to Fibber’s closing line. Ideas come from many places, but if Charles Schulz had listened to Fibber’s mixture of disparate plotlines that never come together, the bit might have been filed away in his subconscious until awakened years later by a beagle sitting in front of a typewriter on a doghouse.

Sometimes the adage of the simplest things in life being the best (jokes included) is true as evidenced by Fibber’s pithy comment on the Old Timer’s short career of being shot out of a cannon: “You mean, they fired you and then you quit.” In the tag Jim and Marian acknowledge the contribution of Ken Darby, who eventually will win three Oscars of his own, in helping “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” win the 1947 Academy Award for Best Song.

during the Don Quinn years, but Leslie and Fowler came up with dandies of their own, including two from this episode: “He’s more rattled than a gourd in a rumba band” and “I’m as nervous as a mother clam taking her kids past a chowder factory.

Shrimpboats” (The King’s Men, vocal)

They reworked their fibber-man, Uncle Luke, named him Uncle Luke Gray, and moved him into a store that would be called Smackout, at the junction known as The Crossroads of the Air. The series opened under that title March 2, 1931. Broadcast from WMAQ to a national CBS audience, Smackout was the direct forerunner of Fibber McGee and Molly: many of the characterizations were developed in its four-year run. The show moved to NBC with the sale of WMAQ to that network in late 1931; it ran on the Blue Network, weekdays at noon in the east. Jordan continued to play Uncle Luke; and he and Marian also played themselves, in their natural voices. In

Just like the mice gag on the February 14, 1939 show that is funny no matter how many times one listens to the show, so Fibber’s response to Molly’s insistence they do not kill the mouse tickles the funnybone even when Jim fluffs part of the punch line: “What am I supposed to do? Feed him caramels till his teeth go bad and hope he gets run down on his way over to the dentist?

This is a night for punny epigrams, notably Fibber’s observation on politics (“If you start to run, you can’t stop till Gallup says you’ll win in a walk” and his take on money (“The Romans did their figuring with chisels, we do our chiseling with figures”).

Date: June 6, 1944 Title: Salute to D-Day Invasion Cast: Jim Jordan, Marian Jordan, Harlow Wilcox Summary: With no audience or commercials, the Jordans and Harlow introduce musical numbers which are interrupted by news about the invasion.

Comments: This episode is a strong candidate for the most patriotic half-hour of radio broadcast during the war, capped by Marian’s declaration that the weapon the Allies have that their enemies do not is “the knowledge that God is on our side,” a statement that would cause controversy if spoken on a top-rated network show today but which was widely regarded as accurate by most listeners then.

The writers chose a gem of an image reflecting the duration of Alice’s talkathon, that of Wilcox planting a redwood which will get to the sawmill before she relinquishes the phone. In their respectful closing the Jordans extend best wishes to Harry Truman who became president after Roosevelt’s death five days before this broadcast.

A report citing a Hamburg radio announcement regarding the death of Adolph Hitler precedes Harlow’s introduction. The tongue twister returns after a long absence, last used on the February 24, 1942 broadcast. In his blow-by-blow account of an imaginary encounter with Bronson, McGee gets the worst of it but listeners get to enjoy the best of it.

No commercials are heard on this broadcast. It is clear, from Harlow’s announcement about the end of the war in Europe before the program begins to the reminder by the Jordans in the tag that the job is not finished, that commerce and comedy take a back seat to the state of the world. Jim again shows his quick wit with an ad-lib

Harlow pitches war bonds in lieu of the middle commercial. What this program meant to radio listeners is best conveyed in the wording of the citation from Catholic War Veterans read near the end of the show: “To the beloved Fibber McGee and Molly of America’s millions in recognition of their successful efforts to lighten the burdens of American people in a time of great ordeal through understanding and clean comedy and in acknowledgement of their accomplishment in portraying the American home through gentle humor in true dignity as a great source of our national strength.

Quinn and Leslie repeatedly showed themselves to be experts at build-a-gag in which related elements were parlayed together for comic effect, and in this episode they play the numbers game as Gamble describes how during the silly season “200-pound men start climbing 49-cent stepladders to wire dimestore angels to the tops of three-dollar Christmas trees and wind up in a $500 plaster cast.

Fibber’s declaration to Molly which could serve as his epitaph: “There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things, Tootsie, and I haven’t used up the wrong ways yet.

Doc’s comments about aging (trying to eat steak with false teeth, needing bifocals to read and ear trumpets to hear, and being too tired to go places and unable to do things) seem as apropos today as in 1945 if one substitutes hearing aids for ear trumpets.

Harlow’s announcement that it is not very often that Fibber McGee and Molly was heard on Christmas was understating the case. It had not happened before and would occur only once more (in 1951) during the period of half-hour broadcasts.

Fibber’s take on architects is a quote worth noting: “They spend six years in Italy studying Greek architecture so they can come home and build Spanish bungalows with French windows for a lot of yankees who don’t know an English basement from a Turkish bath.

Gamble’s remark that he has nothing “against humanity except that there are too many people mixed up in it” rings true to his cynical nature and his sagacity.

Wallace Wimple appears for the first time as the man who inadvertently switches coats with McGee. Wilcox, through Quinn’s craftiness, unleashes a drawn-out plug like a sentence in a Henry James novel just to say he does not know Wimple.

Teeny’s plaintive cry of “I’m hungry,” heard for the first time in this episode, will be milked for more laughs in the coming weeks.

Quinn occasionally spoofed the titles of juvenile books and the one Fibber returns to the library in this episode is the raciest of the lot: The Rover Boys at Earl Carroll’s. In the tag Jim strikes a serious note as he observes what is taking place overseas: “We’re lucky to be living to a country where they have guards around the camp to keep people out.

Comments: Surprisingly Marlin Hurt’s first appearance as a woman speaking in dialect does not get as much of a reaction from the audience as it will in weeks to come. Alice’s weekly rent has apparently increased from $12 in November to $15 in January. Molly delivers one of the most vivid descriptions of boogie woogie: “The kind of piano playing that sounds like rain on the roof with the left hand and somebody playing the flute in the attic with the right hand.

Summary: When Fibber learns that his handwriting reveals he has the common touch of a physician, he begins diagnosing with abandon but without a degree.

Precocious Teeny again counters a fanciful story of Fibber’s (this one about salmon) with a scientific explanation that seems more than a little advanced for a little girl, but anything is possible for a child who, as she will admit on next week’s show, is six years old but has dropping in on the McGees for nine years.

A joke that probably launched a thousand quips at bars over the next few weeks is Teeny’s admission that her father called her Martini as a baby because she “was never dry enough to suit him.

The introduction of Richards with Bryan employing the Elmer Fudd voice he used in cartoons may have been a test to create a new character in the neighborhood to give the show some variety. When Roberts asks Fibber what he does for a living, it is the $64 question listeners have been asking themselves since 1935.

A Quinn and Leslie quote of note is Fibber’s citing the political lesson to be learned from The Spirit of ’ 76: “If you’re on the left, you make shrill noises; if you’re on the right, you get ready to beat it; and if you get caught in the middle, you start waving the flag.

The name of the judge is a takeoff on Judge Crater, the man whose unexplained disappearance was the subject of as many jokes in the thirties and forties as Jimmy Hoffa in recent times.

The voice of the cigar clerk used by Thompson is again that of the wimp who will become Wallace Wimple. Bill’s return after a two-week absence is a welcome one for his contribution to the comic rhythm of the show is inestimable.

In the midst of one of his rants against the utility Fibber mentions his “hard-earned dough,” which anyone familiar with his lack of meaningful employment might correct to “hardly-earned dough.” One source of income is mentioned in this episode: Alice’s weekly rent is $12.

After finding an 1877 book on etiquette, Fibber becomes mindful of manners much to the annoyance of everyone he encounters.

Molly defines vaudeville as “a form of entertainment where the same people used the same joke for fifteen or twenty years,” then the writers let Alice take a slap at themselves when she replies, “Just like on the radio.