Wall Street Journal, 10/30/09

(Note: Technical difficulties required me to place this in its own post. Unless a magic elf fixed it.)
Time - 12:45
Hi. It’s Jeffrey here, the Mariano Rivera of crossword blogging, coming in for another save by blogging about the Wall Street Journal at the last minute for the second time. Today’s puzzle, titled “Once Upon A Recession”, is by Norman Wizer.


The economy has hit the fairy tale world, and cutbacks have hit six characters.
Theme Answers:
23A: [Snow White...] HAD TO LOWER THE OVERHEAD.
39A: [Little Miss Muffet...] SOLD ALL OF HER SPYDERS.
56A: [Tom Thumb...] WAS FORCED TO DOWNSIZE.
82A: [Little Jack Horner...] DECIDED TO CUT CORNERS.
99A: [Goldilocks was...] JUST BEARLY GETTING BY.
119A: [The Three Little Pigs found...] THE WOLF WAS AT THEIR DOOR.
I’m not getting the Snow White one. Somebody please comment so I can go D’uh!
The fill is pretty clean.
Notables:
19A: [Leonard Marx’s stage name]: CHICO. Clip time!
28A: [Plays chuck-a-luck]: DICES. Never heard of this. Chuck-a-luck, also known as birdcage, is a game of chance played with three dice.
33A: [King or Senator] : NHLER. Everyone’s favourite kind of answer. Los Angeles and Ottawa.
47A: [C-3PO, for one]: DROID. Star Wars!
50A: [Meerschaum part}: STEM. Meerschaum is a kind of pipe. My Dad smoked pipes. He died at 64. I don’t smoke anything.
88A: [Jacob of “Au Revoir, Les Enfants”]: IRENE. That’s IRÈNE Jacob, not Jacob Irene as I first thought.
24D: [Model Evangelista]: LINDA. Canadian content!
25D: [Diner dish]: HASH. Has anyone actually said “Gimme the hash”?
49D: [Donny or Marie]: OSMOND. Not to mention Alan, Wayne, Merrill, Jay and Jimmy. Clip time!
69D: [“Chocolat” director Hallström]: LASSE. My version of the puzzle actually reads “Hallstr366m”. Oh, those wacky foreign letters.
73D: “Yabba dabba DOO!” - Clip time!
84D: [Turned 100 into 1,000,000]: CUBED. How do I do this to my bank account?
101D: [How can people BE SO heartless? (“Hair” lyric)]: Clip time!

Au Revoir, Les Enfants!