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