Showing posts with label Great Gildersleeve (The). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Great Gildersleeve (The). Show all posts
Friday, January 30, 2015
Saturday, November 9, 2013
Monday, June 17, 2013
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Who is the real Peavy (Richard LeGrand?)
I'm pretty sure I found Richard LeGrand (he played Peavy on The Great Gildersleeve) - although this is a very different sounding man! This is from Fibber McGee and Molly (49-10-04.)
(((HEAR)))
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Is Peavy patterened after the Rexall spokesman?
The other day I was listening to The Great Gildersleeve program and I heard Peavy, the drugstore proprietor. I then recalled the hundreds of Rexall commercials I have heard and I realized how much the Rexall spokeman and Peavy sound alike. Surely this isn't a coincidence!
Hear for yourself and make your own decision: (((HEAR)))
Hear for yourself and make your own decision: (((HEAR)))
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Was Gildersleeve qualified to be an air raid warden?
The above is from the U.S. government in 1942, relaying the needs for several volunteer civil positions; I recall that Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve said in one episode of the Great Gilderlseeve that he was an air raid warden.
But did he really qualify?
Strong? I can't think of any manual labor the man ever did, frankly.
Dominant? Yes, I think so.
Could he do the other duties? Clear streets, assist people, first aid, fire fighting, report falling bombs? Probably - for about about 15-20 minutes. Then he'd be sweating so badly and be so tired, he'd have to go home.
©Jimbo 2010/2011
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Itty-bitty Hodge-podge
There was The Thin Man. He was thin. There was The Fat Man - who was fat. Why was there never In-Between Man or Nicely-Built Man?
On September 17, 1952, Leroy gets his driver's license on the Great Gildersleeve.
The next year (August 19, 1953 to be exact), Leroy doesn't need to have a fishing license because he's only 12 years of age.
Was he 11 years old when he got his driver's license?
Someone once figured up there were over 200 stores at the intersection of 14th and Oak streets mentioned on Fibber McGee and Molly.
The Old Timer on Fibber McGee gave his real name twice on the show: on January 26, 1946 it was "Rupert Blassingame." And on December 19, 1954, he gave his name as "Adelton P. Bagshaw."
©Jimbo 2010/2011
On September 17, 1952, Leroy gets his driver's license on the Great Gildersleeve.
The next year (August 19, 1953 to be exact), Leroy doesn't need to have a fishing license because he's only 12 years of age.
Was he 11 years old when he got his driver's license?
Someone once figured up there were over 200 stores at the intersection of 14th and Oak streets mentioned on Fibber McGee and Molly.
The Old Timer on Fibber McGee gave his real name twice on the show: on January 26, 1946 it was "Rupert Blassingame." And on December 19, 1954, he gave his name as "Adelton P. Bagshaw."
©Jimbo 2010/2011
Friday, August 5, 2011
And now for something completely different!
On March 28, 1944, Jim Jordan got a bad case of pneumonia, was put into the hospital and he and Marian missed an episode of their own show.
So instead of Fibber and Molly in their comfortable positions as door-answerers and joke throwers, substitutes Harold Peary and Walter Tetley took their place.
That sounds like it should work out perfectly. After all, Peary had a spin-off show of his own from Fibber McGee and Molly at the time (Great Gildersleeve) and was familiar with writer Don Quinn, commercial spokesman Harlow Wilcox and two of Fibber's co-stars were also co-stars on the Great Gildersleeve (Shirley Mitchell and Arthur Q. Bryan.)
This is one very interesting episode and I thought I would provide you with a written commentary of the audio. So off we go...
An interesting start. It's not unusual to hear Gildersleeve in this surrounding but it is indeed strange to hear Tetley's voice in Wistful Vista...
In case you haven't realized it, this is the first - and I believe only - time "we" are on the front porch of the McGee home knocking on the door. Every other episode is about the McGees being inside their home with people coming to the door. So in the mind's eye, you can actually visualize walking up the steps and ringing the doorbell.
And Beulah (played by Marlin Hurt - yes, a white man) did a fantastic job in this episode as he got more lines than usual.
Hurt got his own show not too long after this episode but died suddenly of a heat attack in 1949.
And speaking of dying...
This Gildersleeve joke didn't go anywhere. It's a fine joke and it isn't hard to see that it's a Don Quinn line. Perhaps it's all in the delivery. If Fibber said it, it would have been funny....
I'm sure Birdie's full name was mentioned on the Great Gildersleeve show but I certainly don't remember it. "Birdie Lee Coggins" will be stored away now for trivia purposes.
How is it though that Birdie and Beulah happen to know each other when Summerfield and Wistful Vista are so far apart? We'll never know.
To my knowledge, this is the only time "she" changes her classic catchphrase. She says, "Love that boy!" about Leroy.
Peary flubs his line. He probably didn't have much time to go over the script seeing how Jim Jordan was ill.
The above sounds more like a part of a script on the Great Gildersleeve program as Leroy needles his Unk.
Another case of Peary bumbling through his lines! I don't fault Peary, mind you, as I'm sure he had little time to prepare. Notice though, how fluently Tetley reads his lines throughout the show.
A funny hall closet routine!
Leroy says, "For corn's sake" - which was one of his many catchphrases he used on the Great Gildersleeve program and which Ben Ohmart and Charles Stumpf later would use as the title for their book about Tetley:
Also a Brownie camera is mentioned. For those who don't know, this is what they look like:
And according to Wikipedia, synthetic rubber of one kind or another has been around his 1879.
Sigmund Wellington shows up at the door. Gildersleeve seems to know him but Wellington didn't become a character until 1943, long after Peary had left the show. (Ransom Sherman played Wellington as well as other characters, including the voice of Molly's Uncle Dennis.)
Wellington mentions a Madame Curie movie poster:
Gildersleeve finds Fibber's mandolin and plays and sings, "Pretty Red Wing" - which is the exact same song Fibber tried to play and sing with the mandolin the episode of Fibber McGee and Molly a week prior to this one!
A nicer version:
Intentional or unintential, Peary is able to slip in his sponsor Kraft into the conversation of Harlow Wilcox...
Even Harlow gets a case of the flubs...
Doc Gamble (Bryan) stops by. Again, Gildersleeve and the Doc seem like old friends when in fact Doc Gamble didn't start on the show until 1943, when Gale Gordon went into the Coast Guard.
As a matter of fact, before Peary became Gildersleeve and played only bit parts on Fibber McGee and Molly, he played a doctor on two seprate occasions, one of them named "Doctor Gildersleeve."
Bryan played "Floyd" the barber on the Great Gildersleeve.
After the song, we get to hear from Alice Darling (Shirley Mitchell), the war worker who is a boarder in the McGee household. She of course plays Leila Ransom on the Gildersleeve program, his almost-always love interest. Other than the pun with her last name, there are no jokes about her being his love interest on the Gildersleeve show, which is quite surprising.
The show's ending is quite satisfying.
A fun show, wouldn't you say?
If you liked this commentary and would like to see more like this, it would be nice if you would let me know by comment or an email. I could do this in the future during lean times.
©Jimbo 2010/2011
So instead of Fibber and Molly in their comfortable positions as door-answerers and joke throwers, substitutes Harold Peary and Walter Tetley took their place.
That sounds like it should work out perfectly. After all, Peary had a spin-off show of his own from Fibber McGee and Molly at the time (Great Gildersleeve) and was familiar with writer Don Quinn, commercial spokesman Harlow Wilcox and two of Fibber's co-stars were also co-stars on the Great Gildersleeve (Shirley Mitchell and Arthur Q. Bryan.)
This is one very interesting episode and I thought I would provide you with a written commentary of the audio. So off we go...
An interesting start. It's not unusual to hear Gildersleeve in this surrounding but it is indeed strange to hear Tetley's voice in Wistful Vista...
In case you haven't realized it, this is the first - and I believe only - time "we" are on the front porch of the McGee home knocking on the door. Every other episode is about the McGees being inside their home with people coming to the door. So in the mind's eye, you can actually visualize walking up the steps and ringing the doorbell.
And Beulah (played by Marlin Hurt - yes, a white man) did a fantastic job in this episode as he got more lines than usual.
Hurt got his own show not too long after this episode but died suddenly of a heat attack in 1949.
And speaking of dying...
This Gildersleeve joke didn't go anywhere. It's a fine joke and it isn't hard to see that it's a Don Quinn line. Perhaps it's all in the delivery. If Fibber said it, it would have been funny....
I'm sure Birdie's full name was mentioned on the Great Gildersleeve show but I certainly don't remember it. "Birdie Lee Coggins" will be stored away now for trivia purposes.
How is it though that Birdie and Beulah happen to know each other when Summerfield and Wistful Vista are so far apart? We'll never know.
To my knowledge, this is the only time "she" changes her classic catchphrase. She says, "Love that boy!" about Leroy.
Peary flubs his line. He probably didn't have much time to go over the script seeing how Jim Jordan was ill.
The above sounds more like a part of a script on the Great Gildersleeve program as Leroy needles his Unk.
Another case of Peary bumbling through his lines! I don't fault Peary, mind you, as I'm sure he had little time to prepare. Notice though, how fluently Tetley reads his lines throughout the show.
A funny hall closet routine!
Leroy says, "For corn's sake" - which was one of his many catchphrases he used on the Great Gildersleeve program and which Ben Ohmart and Charles Stumpf later would use as the title for their book about Tetley:
Also a Brownie camera is mentioned. For those who don't know, this is what they look like:
And according to Wikipedia, synthetic rubber of one kind or another has been around his 1879.
Sigmund Wellington shows up at the door. Gildersleeve seems to know him but Wellington didn't become a character until 1943, long after Peary had left the show. (Ransom Sherman played Wellington as well as other characters, including the voice of Molly's Uncle Dennis.)
Wellington mentions a Madame Curie movie poster:
Gildersleeve finds Fibber's mandolin and plays and sings, "Pretty Red Wing" - which is the exact same song Fibber tried to play and sing with the mandolin the episode of Fibber McGee and Molly a week prior to this one!
A nicer version:
Intentional or unintential, Peary is able to slip in his sponsor Kraft into the conversation of Harlow Wilcox...
Even Harlow gets a case of the flubs...
Doc Gamble (Bryan) stops by. Again, Gildersleeve and the Doc seem like old friends when in fact Doc Gamble didn't start on the show until 1943, when Gale Gordon went into the Coast Guard.
As a matter of fact, before Peary became Gildersleeve and played only bit parts on Fibber McGee and Molly, he played a doctor on two seprate occasions, one of them named "Doctor Gildersleeve."
Bryan played "Floyd" the barber on the Great Gildersleeve.
After the song, we get to hear from Alice Darling (Shirley Mitchell), the war worker who is a boarder in the McGee household. She of course plays Leila Ransom on the Gildersleeve program, his almost-always love interest. Other than the pun with her last name, there are no jokes about her being his love interest on the Gildersleeve show, which is quite surprising.
The show's ending is quite satisfying.
A fun show, wouldn't you say?
If you liked this commentary and would like to see more like this, it would be nice if you would let me know by comment or an email. I could do this in the future during lean times.
©Jimbo 2010/2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Review - Honest Harold (The Harold Peary Show)
Imagine The Great Gildersleeve show. Now imagine taking away all the characters on the show besides Gildy and replacing them with ones of inferior talent. If you can successfully do both, you'll have a 'vision" of the 1950's radio program called, "Honest Harold."
The show is situated very much like The Great Gildersleeve. This is certainly what Harold Peary envisioned in 1949 when he left NBC for CBS. It's not like he was the only one doing this as many of his contemporaries were doing the same thing (Jack Benny, Amos and Andy, etc.) He was sure he and his cast would rake in more revenue, would gain a bigger audience... but none of that happened When he left NBC he assumed Kraft (the Gildersleeve sponsor) would jump on the bandwagon and take the successful Gildersleeve Show right along with him. But Kraft was super faithful to NBC and Peary wound up at CBS without his sterling cast and without his show.
To make matters worse, William Waterman (a man who looked and sounded an awful lot like Harold Peary) stepped right in and replaced him on The Great Gildersleeve without skipping a beat. Most people never knew the difference when he left the show!
Honest Harold was about Peary running a daytime radio show for women called, "Honest Harold: The Homemaker." He would sing and give tips to the gals about housework. He was a bachelor who lived with his mother. Actually, this was probably a 100% innocent situation in 1950 but kind of queer when we reflect back on Honest Harold's "life."
Although this show boasted Peary, Parley Baer and Joseph Kearns, I dare say all 3 played their weakest parts of any show in recollection here. Kearns is particularly weak in his role of Doc Yak-Yak, an annoying "Judge Hooker"-type character in a rip off of the Gildersleeve show. Joining the cast is Peary's real life wife, Gloria Holliday playing one of his girlfriends. Sorry, but she's no Shirley Mitchell or Bea Benaderet.
Honest Harold lasted just one lonesome, unimpressive season. His partnership with mega-talent Walter Tetley was broken and Peary's show business career would continue it's stumble from here.
It's not a horrible show; but it's a far cry from The Great Gildersleeve. 2 Stars at best.
©Jimbo 2010/2011
The show is situated very much like The Great Gildersleeve. This is certainly what Harold Peary envisioned in 1949 when he left NBC for CBS. It's not like he was the only one doing this as many of his contemporaries were doing the same thing (Jack Benny, Amos and Andy, etc.) He was sure he and his cast would rake in more revenue, would gain a bigger audience... but none of that happened When he left NBC he assumed Kraft (the Gildersleeve sponsor) would jump on the bandwagon and take the successful Gildersleeve Show right along with him. But Kraft was super faithful to NBC and Peary wound up at CBS without his sterling cast and without his show.
To make matters worse, William Waterman (a man who looked and sounded an awful lot like Harold Peary) stepped right in and replaced him on The Great Gildersleeve without skipping a beat. Most people never knew the difference when he left the show!
Honest Harold was about Peary running a daytime radio show for women called, "Honest Harold: The Homemaker." He would sing and give tips to the gals about housework. He was a bachelor who lived with his mother. Actually, this was probably a 100% innocent situation in 1950 but kind of queer when we reflect back on Honest Harold's "life."
Although this show boasted Peary, Parley Baer and Joseph Kearns, I dare say all 3 played their weakest parts of any show in recollection here. Kearns is particularly weak in his role of Doc Yak-Yak, an annoying "Judge Hooker"-type character in a rip off of the Gildersleeve show. Joining the cast is Peary's real life wife, Gloria Holliday playing one of his girlfriends. Sorry, but she's no Shirley Mitchell or Bea Benaderet.
Honest Harold lasted just one lonesome, unimpressive season. His partnership with mega-talent Walter Tetley was broken and Peary's show business career would continue it's stumble from here.
It's not a horrible show; but it's a far cry from The Great Gildersleeve. 2 Stars at best.
©Jimbo 2010/2011
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
Thursday, June 9, 2011
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