Word: fibber
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Except for Saturday matinees in the neighborhood cinema circuit, the movie serial that reached its zenith of popularity with "The Perils of Pauline" has given way to series, unconnected in plot, but cast in the same mold: The Great Gildersleeve, Andy Hardy, Laurel and Hardy, Crime Doctor, Doctor Gillespie, Fibber McGeo and Molly. People find these entertaining, just as they like familiar Tchaikowsky and spurn Shostakovich, but no further contribution to a stagnating film-art can come from such mechanically-whipped froth. To use the vernacular, when you've seen one, you've seen...
...Fibber McGee's current release is full of cliches peculiar to Fibber McGee, the small-town, middle-class would-be emulator of Will Rogers. In "Heavenly Days," McGee goes to Washington and makes a damn fool of himself by trying to make a speech from the Senate gallery in praise of the Amurrican virtues as they are vulgarly conceived. Apparently the Army authorities who have to interpret Congress' law thought that some of the things Fibber said might be considered anti-Administration propaganda, but they have now realized that it's all quite harmless, and not even funny...
...month. Last week Chicago's Novena Notes joined in, announcing that in a poll of 10,000 of its readers (25% of them servicemen) they had voted Comic Hope the radio and film star who "most consistently violates" Christian principles. Runners-up: Milton Berle, Eddie Cantor. Least disapproved: Fibber McGee and Molly, Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen...
Heavenly Days (RKO-Radio) is that dangerous film from whose political propaganda the U.S. once proposed to protect its troops (TIME, Aug. 21). Possible reasons: 1) in a dream sequence silk-hatted Capitalist Raymond Walburn plants a spatted foot on the neck of Common Man Fibber McGee; 2) elsewhere McGee murmurs some higher economics about making supply meet demand; 3) still elsewhere, Soap-Boxer McGee denounces citizens who do not avail themselves of the privilege of voting. Aside from these bits of propaganda, Heavenly Days is a thoroughly harmless little comic strip about Fibber & Molly's trip to Washington...
Last week the Army announced that G.I. theaters could not exhibit Darryl F. Zanuck's $5,000,000 Technicolorful Wilson. Also prohibited was a Fibber McGee movie called Heavenly Days, in which the irreverent Fibber, the wag of Wistful Vista, is selected Mr. Average Man in a Gallup Poll, goes to Washington, and is tossed out of the Senate when he tries to make a speech (see cut). Then the Army reversed its field and said it had not made up its mind yet. But it was firm on the rest of its bans. Army post exchanges...