Recalling the simpler innocence of ‘Fibber McGee & Molly’

 

Bill Knight column for 4-29, 30 or 5-1, 2021

 As April ends, poet T.S. Eliot’s line “April is the cruelest month” is recalled – along with its actual meaning – and an Illinois couple who succeeded in show business despite April’s bad tidings – and good.

First, Eliot’s opening line from “The Waste Land” indicates how people confined in a mythical country devastated by a pandemic suffer profound disappointment at the arrival of the season of renewal and growth – new life they’re unable to enjoy. Eliot wrote his masterpiece during his recovery from the “Spanish flu,” which killed 100 million people.

Next, legendary entertainers Jim and Marian Jordan – most famous as “Fibber McGee and Molly” – experienced both joy and loss in April. Marian was born April 15, 1898; their most famous show premiered in April of 1935; and they both died in April: Marian in 1961 and Jim 27 years later.

Months before Jim died, I interviewed him, and he was as warm, charming and silly as he played at the microphone for decades – in a far more innocent time that had moments of hope and humor despite economic hardships, persistent racism, and World War II.

Jim Jordan and Marian Driscoll grew up in Peoria, Ill., where they met as teens at church there. They married in 1918 and worked on stage for a few years – although to make ends meet, Jim also worked as a letter carrier and clerk, and Marian gave piano lessons.

In 1925 they broke into local radio and occasionally appeared on Chicago’s WIBO-AM, which later featured them as “the O’Henry Twins.” They moved to Chicago’s WENR-AM in 1927, starring in “Air Scouts” and spoofing farm reports with “The Luke and Mirandy Show.” In 1931, the pair went to the much bigger WMAQ-AM and hired a jobless cartoonist named Don Quinn as their writer. In 1933, the NBC radio network picked up the act and featured them in a 15-minute show called “Smackout,” in which Jim played store owner Luke Grey, who always seemed “smack out” of whatever items customers wanted.

“Fibber McGee and Molly” debuted on April 16, 1935, written by Quinn and starring the Jordans – plus a cast of characters who moved through the McGee home at 79 Wistful Vista:  Mayor LaTrivia (actor Gale Gordon), the Old-Timer (Cliff Arquette), Teeny (Marian, in a dual role), and Mrs. Abigail Uppington (Isabel Randolph), plus regular guests ranging from Bea Benaderet and Herb Vigran to the Billy Mills Orchestra and the King’s Men vocal group.

“Fibber McGee and Molly” was “one of the greatest continuing radio shows that ever existed,” radio star Fran Allison from “Kukla, Fran and Ollie” later remembered.

The show appealed to audiences instinctively seeking escapist comedy during the Great Depression, as the boastful but kind-hearted Fibber got himself into hare-brained situations indulged by the ever-patient Molly, who often repeated her trademark lines “T’ain’t funny, McGee” and “Oh, heavenly days.” Also, Fibber usually opened his legendary, messy closet, causing an enormous clatter created by radio sound effects.

The show steadily grew in popularity until it was an established hit by the end of the ’30s.

Created and mastered by two ex-vaudevillians from the Midwest, “Fibber McGee and Molly” became a national hit and, more importantly, pioneered what became radio and television’s situation-comedy formula. Further, “Fibber McGee and Molly” spawned spin-off series and movies. Radio featured “The Great Gildersleeve” series starring Harold Peary, and “Beulah,” a popular show starring a succession of African-American actresses. The Jordans played Fibber McGee and Molly in the films “This Way Please” (1937), “Look Who’s Laughing” (1941), “Here We Go Again” (1942) and “Heavenly Days” (1944).

By the end of their radio career, the Jordans had performed on stage 4,000 times and had done 7,000 radio shows. But the duo never moved to television; NBC-TV’s “Fibber McGee and Molly” instead cast Bob Sweeney and Cathy Lewis in the starring roles, and only Harold Peary from the radio show made the transition to TV – as Mayor LaTrivia instead of his radio part as Throckmorton Gildersleeve.

Twenty-two TV episodes were broadcast in the 1959-60 season, after which it was cancelled.

After Marian died, Jim retired except for a few appearances, such as guesting on a 1976 episode of NBC-TV’s “Chico and the Man” and voicing Captain Orville in Disney’s “The Rescuers” film the next year.

In 1983 the Jordans received a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame (near the building where they’d performed “Fibber McGee and Molly”). Jim died in 1988, and a year after Jim passed, the couple was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame.

Elements of those seemingly simpler times can be illusory, but they’re sometimes missed – especially in spring.