"I finally settled on this one, because the fella that had these pitches before didn't have a driving licence, so he asked me to drive him up here.
"No," she says, "but one fella wanted an albino mole fighting off a stoat".
"There was one fella I remember who was really upset because he'd got the one shoe that he wanted, but didn't have the other one.
George tries to explain that the money isn't available because they've invested it in each other — one fella's savings helped to finance another's business or secure a neighbor's house — but the scene, though meant as a tableau of solidarity, seems more eloquent today as an account of moral hazard.
He allows Tom Joad, a man who can kill, to become inspired by a former preacher, to be the hero of his novel: "I been thinkin' a hell of a lot, thinkin' about our people livin' like pigs, an' the good lan' layin' fallow, or maybe one fella with a million acres, while a hunderd thousan' good farmers is starvin.' An I been wonderin' if all our folks got together an yelled".
"I'll tell ya about one fella, Jonesy, he was nine stone when he came to us, thin as a board.
Others have simply quit: one fella who was grinding his way up from small stakes games is now packing boxes for minimum wage.
"This one's for the fellas," Usher said, as a dancer in a bikini shimmied her way down a stripper's pole.
And like all his projects, this one glowed: "I dunno, fellas," Mr. Miller would say to holdout bachelors, "marital bliss, it's the way to go!" He was a steady, gentle man, slow to anger, who covered his wife Diane and her children with a mantle of security.
Loesser's score remains impressive because, unlike his earlier hits, Guys and Dolls and The Most Happy Fella, this one represented an almost willful disregard of the pop charts.
