This film based on the Fibber McGee And Molly radio series has Fibber enlisting
Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy to get industrialist Neil Hamilton to build
an aircraft plant in their town of lovely Wistful Vista. Looking to crab the deal
is speculator Charles Halton and the McGees neighbor the ever larcenous
Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve.
The McGees were quite the American institution on radio. The films that real
life married couple Jim and Marian Jordan allowed America to see the McGees
as well as follow them weekly on radio. So in fact was Edgar Bergen and his
two wooden companions Charlie McCarthy and Knucklehead Smiff.
Another future legend this one on television Lucille Ball also appears Look
Who's Laughing. And Harold Peary who began as a neighbor of the McGees
on their show spun off on his own with The Great Gildersleeve. Both Fibber McGee And Molly and The Great Gildersleeve were tried on television with
different actors in the starring roles and never found an audience.
The climax is a hoot with McGee accidentally pushing the start button on
Edgar Bergen's airplane and taking off. Bergen performs a rescue a long the
lines of one that Charlton Heston did in Airport 75. Of course with a lot more
laughs than Heston got.
Nostalgia lovers like myself will enjoy this one.
