Fibber McGee and Molly was a popular and beloved radio show during the era of classic, old-time radio. The series premiered in 1935 and remained popular until its demise in 1959, long after radio had ceased to be the dominant form of entertainment in American popular culture. One of the longest-running comedies in the history of classic radio in the United States, Fibber McGee and Molly has stood the test of time in many ways, transcending the actual or alleged limitations of its medium, form and concurrent culture.
From vaudeville to Smackout
James "Jim" Jordan (16 November 1896–1 April 1988) and Marian Driscoll (15 April 1898–7 April 1961), were natives of Peoria, Illinois who met in church and married in 1918. The genesis of Fibber McGee and Molly occurred when the small-time husband-and-wife vaudevillians began their third year as Chicago-area radio performers. Two of the shows they did for station WENR beginning in 1927, both written by Harry Lawrence, bore traces of what was to come and rank as one of the earliest forms of situation comedy.
In their Luke and Mirandy farm-report program, Jim played a farmer who was given to tall tales and face-saving lies for comic effect. In a weekly comedy, The Smith Family , Marian's character was an Irish wife of an American police officer. These characterizations, plus the Jordans' change from being singers/musicians to comic actors, pointed toward their future.
The Jordans teamed with Donald Quinn, an unemployed cartoonist the couple hired as their writer in 1931. For station WMAQ in Chicago, beginning in April 1931, the trio created Smackout , a 15-minute daily program which centered on a general store and its proprietor, Luke Grey (Jim Jordan), a storekeeper with a penchant for tall tales and a perpetual dearth of whatever his customers wanted: He always seemed "smack out of it." Marian Jordan portrayed both a lady named Marian and a little girl named Teeny, as well as playing musical accompaniment on piano. Smackout was picked up for national airing by the National Broadcasting Company in April 1933, and the show endured until August 1935.
A member of the S.C. Johnson company's owners, Henrietta Johnson Lewis, married to the advertising executive who handled the Johnson's Wax account, recommended that her husband, John, give the show a chance as a national program for the company.
From Smackout to Wistful Vista
If Smackout proved the Jordan-Quinn union's viability, their next creation proved immortal. Amplifying Luke Grey's tall talesmanship to braggadocio in a Midwestern layabout, Quinn developed Fibber McGee and Molly , with Jim playing the foible-prone Fibber and Marian playing his patient, common sense, honey-natured wife. The show premiered on NBC April 16, 1935, and, though it took five seasons to become an irrevocable hit, it touched a nerve with enough listeners seeking cheer amid despair. In 1935, Jim Jordan won the Burlington Liars' Club championship with a story about catching an elusive rat.
Existing in a kind of Neverland where money never came in, schemes never stayed out for very long, yet no one living or visiting went wanting, 79 Wistful Vista (the McGees' address) became the home Depression-exhausted Americans visited to remind themselves that they were not the only ones finding cheer in the middle of struggle and doing their best not to make it overt. With blowhard McGee wavering between mundane tasks and hare-brained schemes (like digging an oil well in the back yard), antagonizing as many people as possible, and patient Molly indulging his foibles before catching him lovingly as he crashed back to Earth yet again, not to mention a tireless parade of neighbours and friends in and out of the quiet home, Fibber McGee and Molly built its audience steadily, but once it found the full volume of that audience in 1940 they rarely let go of it.
Marian Jordan took a protracted absence from the show in late 1938 to early 1939 to deal with a lifelong battle with alcoholism, although this was attributed to "fatigue" in public statements at the time. The show was retitled Fibber McGee and Company during this interregnum, with scripts cleverly working around Molly's absence (Fibber making a speech at a convention, etc.). Comedienne ZaSu Pitts appeared on the Fibber McGee and Company show, as did singer Donald Novis.
Recurring characters
Fibber McGee and Molly was one of the earliest radio comedies to use regular characters, nearly all of whom had recurring phrases and running gags almost equal to those of the stars. These included:
- Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve (Harold Peary) - the pompous next-door neighbor with whom Fibber enjoyed twitting and arguing.
- The Old-Timer (Bill Thompson) - a hard-of-hearing senior citizen with a penchant for distorting jokes, prefacing each one by saying "That ain't the way I heared it!" For no apparent reason he refers to Fibber as "Johnny" and Molly as "Daughter". A recurring joke is that he refuses to tell his real name. In the 1940 episode "Mailing Christmas Packages" he is referred to by another character as "Roy", while in one episode (01/29/1946) he claims that it is 'Rupert Blasingame.'
- Teeny, also known as "Little Girl" and "Sis" (Marian Jordan) - a precocious youngster who was usually trying to cadge loose change from Fibber, and ending half her sentences with "I'm hungry!" and, especially, "I betcha!" Teeny was also known to lose track of her own conversations. When Fibber tried to show interest in what she was saying, she would seem to forget all about it. Her conversation would switch from telling about to asking about whatever it was. Then, when Fibber would repeat all she had been telling him, Teeny would reply "I know it!" in a condescending way. Her appearances were usually foreshadowed by Molly excusing herself upstairs or to the kitchen and Fibber wistfully delivering a compliment to her starting, "Ah....there goes a good kid", upon which the doorbell would ring and Teeny would appear. On rare occasions Molly and Teeny would interact.
- Mayor LaTrivia (Gale Gordon), whose name was inspired by New York's famous mayor Fiorello La Guardia, would go from frustration to stark-raving confusion by the McGees' literal interpretations of his colloquialisms.
- Foggy Williams (Gordon) - local weatherman and next-door neighbor to Fibber and Molly who tells fanciful stories, lets Fibber borrow his tools, takes credit or blame for the present weather conditions, and exits every scene with the line "Good day...probably."
- Billy Mills - wisecracking leader of Billy Mills and the Orchestra , who played short instrumentals in the first half of each episode.
- Dr. Gamble (Arthur Q. Bryan) - a local physician and surgeon with whom Fibber had a long-standing rivalry and friendship.
- Ole Swenson (Richard LeGrand, who also played Mr. Peavey on The Great Gildersleeve ) - a Swedish-born janitor at the Elks Club, always complaining that he was "joost donatin' my time!".
- Mrs. Abigail Uppington (Isabel Randolph) - a snooty society matron whose pretensions Fibber delighted in deflating. Fibber often addressed her as "Uppy".
- Millicent Carstairs (Bea Benaderet) - another of Wistful Vista's high society matrons, known to Fibber as "Carsty".
- Wallace Wimple (Thompson) - a hen-pecked husband constantly dominated and physically battered by "Sweetieface," his "big ol' wife", whose real name was Cornelia, and who never appeared on the show. This may have contributed to the use of the word "wimp" to describe a weak-willed person.
- Alice Darling (Shirley Mitchell) - a ditzy aircraft-plant worker who boarded with the McGees during the war.
- Horatio K. Boomer (Thompson) - a con artist with a W.C. Fields-like voice and delivery.
- Nick Depopoulous (Thompson) - a Greek-born restaurateur with a tendency toward verbal malapropisms.
- Myrtle, also known as "Myrt" - a never-heard telephone operator that Fibber is friends with. A typical Myrt sketch started with Fibber picking up the phone and demanding, "Operator, give me number 32Oooh, is that you, Myrt? How's every little thing, Myrt?" Commonly, this was followed with Fibber relaying what Myrt was telling him to Molly, usually news about Myrt's family, and always ending with a bad pun. Myrtle made one brief on-air appearance on June 22, 1943 when she visited the McGees to wish them a good summer—the McGees did not recognize her in person.
- Fred Nitney - Another never-heard character, Fibber's old vaudeville partner from Starved Rock, Illinois.
The most unusual character might have been the McGees' black maid, Beulah. Unlike the situation on The Jack Benny Program , where black actor Eddie Anderson played "Rochester," Beulah was voiced by a Caucasian male, Marlin Hurt. The character's usual opening line, "Somebody bawl fo' Beulah??", often provoked a stunned, screeching sort of laughter among the live studio audience; many of them, seeing the show performed for the first time in person, did not know that the actor voicing Beulah was neither black nor female, and expressed their surprise when Hurt delivered his line. Her other catch phrase was "Love that man!" after a fit of laughter over a Fibber gag.
The character of Uncle Dennis (Ransom Sherman), who was
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