That "Heavenly Days" was among the movies banned under the ridiculous Servicemen's Voting Law last summer may mislead some people into seeing it. Hawkshaws may want to try their abilities and look for something politically controversial in it, but most will find it flimsy, stereotyped corn.

Except for Saturday matinees in the neighborhood cinema circuit, the movie serial that reached its zenith of popularity with "The Perils of Pauline" has given way to series, unconnected in plot, but cast in the same mold: The Great Gildersleeve, Andy Hardy, Laurel and Hardy, Crime Doctor, Doctor Gillespie, Fibber McGeo and Molly. People find these entertaining, just as they like familiar Tchaikowsky and spurn Shostakovich, but no further contribution to a stagnating film-art can come from such mechanically-whipped froth. To use the vernacular, when you've seen one, you've seen 'em all.

Fibber McGee's current release is full of cliches peculiar to Fibber McGee, the small-town, middle-class would-be emulator of Will Rogers. In "Heavenly Days," McGee goes to Washington and makes a damn fool of himself by trying to make a speech from the Senate gallery in praise of the Amurrican virtues as they are vulgarly conceived. Apparently the Army authorities who have to interpret Congress' law thought that some of the things Fibber said might be considered anti-Administration propaganda, but they have now realized that it's all quite harmless, and not even funny.

The only harm the picture can do is create a misconception of Dr. George Gallup in the popular imagination: he's not at all the stuffed-shirt as represented in "Heavenly Days," and he doesn't go around looking for the "Average American"--he leaves that to Crockett Johnson's Mr. O'Mally, who is considerably more mature in his humor than Fibber McGee of Wistful Vista.