Their modest home at 79 Wistful Vista attracted visitors from a wide variety of social, economic, and ethnic backgrounds. Such conviviality required explanation because McGee was often uncivil, arguing with bankers and bus drivers and department store managers, a dynamo of precarious amiability. Luckily, Molly moderated his bumptious unconviviality so that their many callers simultaneously experienced the contradictory ideals of defensive homeowner and welcoming hostess.

The perilous balance of discourtesy and diplomacy allowed McGee to insult guests and still retain their friendship. Doc Gamble (Arthur Q. Bryan) often received the master's barbs. One time the doctor looked forward to a vacation he said would leave him "ship shape." Ever the deflator of other people's fantasies, McGee agreed that the doctor already looked like a great big "stern wheeler." In keeping with the American spirit of fair play and the aesthetic rule that helplessness is not funny, Doc returned these insults with agility. Once he scolded McGee for being too cheap to buy a proper suit, dubbing Fibber a "rhinestone Jim Brady" and "our little Lucius Booby in that pin-stripe awning he uses for a sport coat."

Similarly, other drop-ins to their parlor had positions that would ordinarily merit respect but instead received impertinence. Policemen were called "lugans" and "larrigans," told to take off their hats, and given false information (asked his name, Fibber replied, "Herman Gibbletripe-and this is my wife Clara"). Mayor LaTrivia (Gale Gordon), outside the McGees' home an effective orator, dissolved into babble at the McGees'. He boasted that the City Council had opposed him, but he had "stuck to [his] guns." Both Fibber and Molly confounded him by asking why an elected official needed weapons, suggesting that he might have been more successful if he had not threatened them, and finally warning him that guns should not be tolerated.

Fibber reacted to aristocrats with a peculiar mixture of envy-which prompted get-rich projects to find a substitute for sugar or turn paper back into cloth-and disdain. Despite all the wealth of grand dames like Abigail Uppington (Isabel Randolph) and Millicent Carstairs (Bea Benedaret), Fibber commented that the latter "acts like a coquettish dray horse." He admired clothing store dummies for their "nonchalant, supercilious, haughty" look: "It takes six generations of money in the family to achieve an expression like that." Molly personalized his sociological dictum: "Yes, it's strange how often a vacant face goes with a full pocketbook, which ought to give you a very expressive countenance."

Because he never seemed to work and borrowed tools without returning them, McGee's own income remained ambiguous. He yearned for money so much that he ripped apart their antique sofa to find $20,000 hidden by an ancestor-$20,000 Confederate, that is. The appearance of a maid on some shows, variously called Beulah (played by a man, Marlin Hurt) or Lena (Gene Carroll, also a man), hinted that he was prosperous; the appearance of a renter, Alice Darling (Shirley Mitchell), a gabby factory worker, on other episodes suggested that he needed spare cash. The general impression was of a household relatively secure in the economic parade.

Located in the middle of the middle class, McGee often was bested by those whom snobs would have considered beneath concern. When Ole Swenson (Dick LeGrand), the Swedish janitor at the Elks' Club, said his boy in the submarine service was on a secret mission, McGee paraphrased loftily, "Sub rosa, eh?" Ole calmly torpedoed the hifalutin' Latin with, "No, submarine." Likewise, the recently immigrated Nick DePopoulous (Bill Thompson) steamrolled over "Fizzer," telling his own tales with nonstop, heavily accented malapropisms.

Far from being disturbed by unpredictable standards for social deportment, people in McGee's universe enjoyed the anarchy. Wallace Wimple (Bill Thompson), the hen-pecked victim of "Sweetie Face," his "big, old wife," just wanted to be alone with his bird book. To avoid her abuse, Wallace secretly rented a room under the name "Lancelot Eisenhower Dempsey"-a name, he explained dreamily, that "just appealed to me somehow. It's such a brave name."

Two final visitors show how the give-and-take of their peculiar hosting rituals eliminated barriers. After Fibber read a bedtime story to Teeny (Marian), the precocious little neighbor girl, she asked, "What's a 'dell'?" Fibber: "Oh, it's a kind of shady nook in the woods where green things grow." Teeny: "You mean like dell pickles." Announcer Harlow Wilcox, ever touting the benefits of Johnson's Wax, delivered his pitches despite McGee's interruptions. Just as the program democratically blurred social distinctions, the language too evaded rules. McGee frequently delivered such tongue-tangling monologues as:

When I worked in the big mill there, I was quite the dude. 'Mill Dude McGee' I was known as. Mill Dude McGee, a magnificent mass of muscle and manly manners mesmerizing the maidens in the Midwest and mentioned most every month in many of the men's magazines as the mirror and model for male millinery merchants, meticulous material manufacturers, and miscellaneous members of the metropolitan mob, mighty and magnetic from November through May.

Individual words, like manners, evolved into new forms. After getting Mayor LaTrivia's goat, Fibber bragged to Molly, "He sure gets worked up, don't he? He was just liver with rage."

MOLLY: You mean livid, Dearie.

FIBBER: Go on, livid is a girl's name, like Livid De Haviland.

MOLLY: That's Olivia,

FIBBER: Oh, don't kid me, Snookie. Olivia's a country in South America.

During another episode, Fibber skipped from "subtle to subtitle to scuttle to shuttle to chateau." Such celebrations of social and linguistic independence during decades of Depression, war, and tumultuous recovery that required national conformity explain the enduring appeal of Fibber McGee and Molly.