Sunday, January 24, 2010

New Show - "Fibber McGee & Molly" and "The Strange Dr. Weird"

This week on the Old Time Radio Express, we listen to The Fibber McGee and Molly Program from January 2, 1945, as well as The Strange Dr. Weird, and the program, "The Man Who Talked With Death".

There are so many great aspects of the Fibber Mc Gee and Molly show that it was impossible to pick one episode that hit all the highlights.  This episode does a great job of showing the brilliance of some of the joke-writing and how the middle Johnson's Wax commercial is neatly incorporated, but there are so many other F&M standards that this episode doesn't have....the characters of the Old Timer and Wallace Wimple (actor Bill Thompson was fighting in WWII during this broadcast), the famous closet gag, some of Molly's more famous catchphrases ("T'aint funny, McGee!"), Fibber's rapid alliteration jokes, and many more.  I guess that's good - we've got a lot to listen to and talk about in the future.

The Strange Doctor Weird is, essentially, The Mysterious Traveler condensed into a 15 minute program.  My preference is The Mysterious Traveler, simply because so much more can be developed in 30 minutes than 15.  But like a novelist adept at writing short stories with a punch, Robert A. Arthur and David Kogan succeeded in both long-form and short-form radio.

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