Fibber McGee and Molly

Fibber McGee and Molly

Jim and Marian Jordan as Fibber McGee and Molly in 1937
Country	United States
Languages	English
Home station	WMAQ AM NBC
Starring	Jim Jordan Marian Jordan
Announcer	Harlow Wilcox
Air dates	April 16, 1935 to 1959
Sponsor(s)	Johnson's Wax Pet Milk Reynolds Aluminum

Fibber McGee and Molly was an American radio comedy series which maintained its popularity over decades. It premiered on NBC in 1935 and continued until its demise in 1959, long after radio had ceased to be the dominant form of entertainment in American popular culture.

Husband and wife in real life

The stars of the program were real-life husband James "Jim" Jordan (16 November 1896–1 April 1988)^[1][2] and his wife Marian Driscoll (15 April 1898–7 April 1961),^[1][3] who were natives of Peoria, Illinois.

Jordan was the seventh of eight children born to James Edward Jordan and Mary (née Tighe) Jordan, while Driscoll was the seventh and last child born to Daniel P. and Anna (née Carroll) Driscoll. The son of a farmer, Jim wanted to be a singer; Marian, the daughter of a coal miner, wanted to be a music teacher. Both attended the same Catholic Church, where they met at choir practice. Marian's parents had attempted to discourage her professional singing and acting aspirations. When she started seeing young Jim Jordan, the Driscolls were far from approving of Jim and his ideas. Jim's voice teacher gave him a recommendation for work as a professional in Chicago, and he followed it. He was able to have steady work but soon tired of the life on the road. In less than a year, Jim came back to Peoria and went to work for the Post Office. His profession was now acceptable to Marian's parents, and they stopped objecting to the couple's marriage plans. The pair were married in Peoria, Illinois on August 31, 1918.^[4]

Five days after the wedding, Jim received his draft notice. He was sent to France and became part of a military touring group which entertained the armed forces after World War I.^[4] When Jim came home from France, he and Marian decided to try their luck with a vaudeville act.^[5][6] They had two children, Kathryn Therese Jordan (1920–2007) and James Carroll Jordan (1923–1998), both born in Peoria. Marian returned home for the birth of Kathryn but went back to performing with Jim, leaving her daughter with Jim's parents. After Jim Jr. was born in 1923, Marian stayed with the children for a time, while Jim performed as a solo act. Marian and the children joined him on the road for a short time, but the couple had to admit defeat when they found themselves in Lincoln, Illinois in 1923 with two small children and no funds. The couple's parents had to wire them money for their return to Peoria. Jim went to work at a local department store but still felt the attraction of being in show business. He and Marian went back into vaudeville.^[4]

While staying with Jim's brother in Chicago in 1924, the family was listening to the radio; Jim said that he and Marian could do better than the musical act currently on the air. Jim's brother bet him $10 that they could not. To win the bet, Jim and Marian went to WIBO,^[7] where they were immediately put on the air. At the end of the performance, the station offered the couple a contract for a weekly show which paid $10 per week. The sponsor of the show was Oh Henry! candy, and they appeared for six months on The Oh Henry! Twins program, switching to radio station WENR by 1927.^[4][6][8]

When it appeared to the couple that they were financially successful, they built a home in Chicago which was a replica of their rented home, complete to building it on the lot next door. For their 1939 move to the West Coast, the Jordans selected a inconspicuous home in Encino. Some of Jim Jordan's investments included the bottling company for Hires Root Beer in Kansas City.^[9]

From vaudeville to Smackout

Fibber McGee and Molly originated 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.^[4] 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; it was here where Marian developed and perfected the radio character "Teeny".^[6][10] It was also at WENR where the Jordans met Donald Quinn, a cartoonist who was then working in radio, and the couple hired him as their writer in 1931. They regarded Quinn's contribution as important and included him as a full partner; the salary for Smackout and Fibber McGee and Molly was split between the Jordans and Quinn.^[4][9]

While working on the WENR farm report, Jim Jordan heard a true story about a shopkeeper from Missouri whose store was brimming with stock, yet he claimed to be "smack out" of whatever a customer would ask him for. The story reached the halls of nearby Columbia College, and the students began visiting the store, which they called "Smackout", to hear the owner's incredible stories.^[4]

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."^[9] Marian Jordan portrayed both a lady named Marian and a little girl named Teeny, as well as playing musical accompaniment on piano. During the show's run, Marian Jordan voiced a total of 69 different characters in it.^[4] Smackout was picked up by NBC in April 1933 and broadcast nationally until August 1935.^[11]

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. Part of the terms of the arrangement between the Jordans and Johnson's Wax gave the company ownership to the names of Fibber McGee and Molly.^[9]

From Smackout to Wistful Vista

Fibber McGee and Molly from Chicago, 1937.

If Smackout proved the Jordan-Quinn union's viability, their next creation proved their most enduring. Amplifying Luke Grey's tall talesmanship to Midwestern braggadocio, Quinn developed Fibber McGee and Molly with Jim as 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 three seasons to become an irrevocable hit, it became the country's top-rated radio series.^[6] In 1935, Jim Jordan won the Burlington Liars' Club championship with a story about catching an elusive rat.^[12]

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 from show #20, August 1935 onward) 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. The McGees won their house in a raffle from Mr. Hagglemeyer's Wistful Vista Development Company, with lottery ticket #131,313, happened upon by chance while on a pleasure drive in their car. 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 and providing loving support, not to mention a tireless parade of neighbors 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.^[4]

Marian Jordan took a protracted absence from the show in November 1937 to April 1939 to deal with a lifelong battle with alcoholism, although this was attributed to "fatigue" in public statements at the time.^[9] 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. In January 1939, the show moved from NBC Chicago to the new NBC West Coast Radio City in Hollywood.^[13]

Recurring characters

The other cast members circa 1939.

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. These included:

• Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve (Harold Peary) - the pompous next-door neighbor with whom Fibber enjoyed twitting and arguing. Introduced in 1939.
• 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 and reiterated in the episode a week later) he claims his name is "Rupert Blasingame." Also, 3/14/39 episode, Fibber calls him Mr. Sims, but he's having trouble with his memory in this episode, so this may be just an error in remembering, as he also calls Mr. Wilcox "Harpo" for perhaps the first time instead of Harlow, due to poor memory tricks.
• Teeny, also known as "Little Girl" and "Sis" (Marian Jordan) - a precocious youngster who usually tried to cadge loose change from Fibber. Ending half her sentences with "I'm hungry!" and "I betcha!", Teeny was also known to lose track of her own conversations. When Fibber showed interest in what she was saying, she would forget all about it. Her conversation would switch from telling to asking. 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 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.^[9]
• Mayor LaTrivia (Gale Gordon), whose name was inspired by New York's famous mayor Fiorello La Guardia. In later episodes, Fibber occasionally addresses the mayor as "Homer", although it is unclear whether this is his actual first name, or just another of the show's random unexplained naming gags, as The Old Timer's calling Fibber "Johnny", supra. The McGees' regular routine with LaTrivia entailed Fibber and Molly misunderstanding a figure of speech, in much the same vein as Abbott & Costello's Who's On First? routine. LaTrivia would slowly progress from attempting patient explanation to tongue-tied rage, in Gale Gordon's classic slow-burn.
• Foggy Williams (Gordon) - local weatherman and next-door neighbor who tells fanciful stories, lets Fibber borrow his tools, takes credit or blame for the present weather conditions exits 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".
• Mrs. 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", Cornelia, who never appeared on the show. Surprisingly, this key character was not introduced until the first show of their seventh year on the air, 4/15/41. This character 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.^[9]
• Nick Depopoulous (Thompson) - a Greek-born restauranteur with a tendency toward verbal malapropisms.^[9]
• 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 catchphrase was "Love that man!" after a fit of laughter over a Fibber gag. Hurt had created the Beulah character independently and had portrayed her occasionally on other shows prior to his joining the Fibber McGee and Molly cast.^[6]

The character of Uncle Dennis (Ransom Sherman), who was the subject of a running gag (see below) and was generally never heard, did appear in a few episodes in 1943, including "Renting Spare Room" (October 5, 1943) and "Fibber Makes His Own Chili Sauce" (November 9, 1943).

Running gags

Jim and Marian Jordan, as Fibber McGee and Molly, at a Victory Bond rally at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto in 1945. Note sound effects men and equipment at right.

Much of the show's humor relied on recurring gags, unseen regulars and punchlines that sometimes popped up here and there for years. The show would usually open the 29-and-a-half minute broadcast with the audience in full laughter with Harlow Wilcox announcing, "The Johnson Wax Program with Fibber McGee and Molly!" The episode of December 19, 1944, "Fibber Snoops For Presents In Closet" (at 3:59 is a perfect example of the "Hall Closet," a running gag described in detail later in this entry), Jim Jordan can be caught at the end of his audience warm-up evoking the opening laughter by quipping, "10 seconds? Oh, we got a lot of.... Ooooo!"

For most of the show's history, the usual order of the show is the introduction followed by a Johnson Wax plug by Harlow then his introduction to Section 1 of the script (usually 11 minutes). Billy Mills usually follows with an instrumental (or accompanied by Martha Tilton in 1941). That musical interlude then segues to Section 2 of the script, followed by a performance by the vocal group, The Kings Men (occasionally featuring a solo by leader Ken Darby). The final act then ensues, with the last line usually showing the lesson learned that day, a final commercial, and then Billy Mills' theme song to fade. Later, Harlow would meet up and visit with the McGees and work in a Johnson Wax commercial, sometimes assisted by Fibber and Molly.

When McGee tells a bad joke, Molly usually answered with the line "T'aint funny, McGee!" which became a familiar catch phrase during the 1940s.^[14] Molly's Uncle Dennis is one of the more common unseen regulars (though he has gotten in a rare line here and there); often referred to, and sometimes heard making noise. He lives with the McGees, and is apparently an enormous alcoholic, becoming a punch line for many Fibber jokes and even the main subject of some shows in which he "disappeared."

McGee is never mentioned as having a job. However, Mayor LaTrivia often offers McGee jobs at City Hall, the jobs usually sounding exciting when the duties are vaguely described, but always ending up being very mundane when the actual job is named. For instance, a job "looking in on the higher-ups at City Hall" turns out to be a window-cleaning job. Another interesting assignment was to be where McGee would need to maintain a disguise to remain deep undercover for days at a time, but as the Wistful Vista Santa Claus.

McGee, apparently, is very proud of past deeds, sometimes recalling an interesting nickname he picked up over the years. Each one of these nicknames is, as usual with Fibber, a bad pun. When someone told a man named Addison that McGee was a glib talker, McGee became known as "Ad Glib McGee." Or, when Fibber made expressions with his eyes, he was nicknamed "Eyes-a-muggin' McGee" (a play on the popular Andy Kirk swing tune "I'se A-muggin'"). From there Fibber jumps headfirst into a long, breathless and boastful description of his nickname, using an impressive amount of alliteration.

Mentioned for a time on the program was Otis Cadwallader, a schoolmate of Fibber and Molly in Peoria, and Molly's boyfriend before McGee entered the picture. Fibber has a long-standing grudge against Otis, making him out to seem like a self-centered, overblown hack, despite seemingly everyone else seeing Cadwallader as a lovely, dashing man. Never mentioned are Otis's feelings toward Fibber, giving the impression that Fibber's grudge is one-sided. As revealed late in 1942, Fibber's anger is actually a front to keep Cadwallader away, as Fibber once borrowed money from Otis and never paid it back.

The "corner of 14th and Oak" in downtown Wistful Vista was routinely given as a location for various homes, places of business and government buildings throughout the show's run.

The Closet

None of the show's running gags were as memorable or enduring as The Closet—McGee's frequently opening and cacophonous closet, bric-a-brac clattering down and out and, often enough, over McGee's or Molly's heads. "I gotta get that closet cleaned out one of these days" was the usual McGee observation once the racket subsided. Naturally, "one of these days" almost never arrived. A good thing, too: in one famous instance, when a burglar (played by Bob Bruce) tied up McGee, McGee informed him cannily that the family's silver was "right through that door, bud... just yank it open, bud!" Naturally, the burglar took the bait and naturally, he was buried in the inevitable avalanche, long enough for the police to apprehend him.

This gag appears to have begun with the March 5, 1940 show, "Cleaning the Closet." Molly opens the closet looking for the dictionary and is promptly buried in Fibber's "stuff" ("arranged in there just the way I want it.") Cleaning out the closet becomes the show's plot, inventorying much of the contents along the way: a photo album, a rusty horseshoe, a ten-foot pole. After repacking the closet, Fibber realizes the dictionary has been put away too—and he opens the closet again. This episode also features a cameo by Gracie Allen, running for president on the Surprise Party ticket. Toward the end the September 30, 1940 show, "Back from Vacation; Gildy Says Goodbye," next-door nemesis Gildersleeve---who has moved to Summerfield to finish raising his orphaned niece and nephew (and already begun his successful spin-off show The Great Gildersleeve), but has come back to Wistful Vista to wind up his affairs there, in a farewell to the show that made him famous---opens the closet to be buried in the usual avalanche.

On at least one occasion, the gag is flipped, and the closet is silent: in "Too Much Energy" (broadcast January 23, 1945), visiting Dr. Gamble makes to leave. Molly warns, "No, Doctor, not through that door, that's the hall closet!" As the audience chuckles slightly in anticipation, Fibber explains: "Oh I forgot to tell you, Molly, I straightened out the hall closet this morning!" This was certainly not the end of the gag, though, as the closet soon became cluttered once again, leading to many more disasters.

Like many such trademarks, the clattering closet began as a one-time stunt, but "the closet" was developed carefully, not being overused (it rarely appeared in more than two consecutive installments, though it never disappeared for the same length, either, at the height of its identification, and it rarely collapsed at exactly the same time from show to show), and it became the best-known running sound gag in American radio's classic period. Jack Benny's basement vault alarm ran a distant second. Both of these classic sound effects were performed by Ed Ludes and Virgil Rhymer, Hollywood-based NBC staff sound effects creators. Exactly what tumbled out of McGee's closet each time was never clear (except to these sound-effects men), but what signaled the end of the avalanche was always the same sound: a clear, tiny, household hand bell and McGee's inevitable postmortem.^[6] "Fibber McGee's closet" entered the American vernacular as a catch phrase synonymous with household clutter.

Sponsors

Jim and Marian Jordan as caricatured by Sam Berman for 1947 NBC promotional book.

Each episode also featured an appearance by announcer Harlow Wilcox, whose job it was to weave the second ad for the sponsor into the plot without having to break the show for a real commercial. Wilcox's introductory pitch lines were usually met with groans or humorously sarcastic lines by Fibber. During the many years that the show was sponsored by Johnson Wax, Fibber nicknamed Wilcox "Waxy", due to Wilcox's constant praises of their various products. In a style not unusual for the classic radio years, the show was typically introduced as, "The Johnson Wax Program, with Fibber McGee and Molly." Johnson Wax sponsored the show through 1950; Pet Milk through 1952; and, until the show's final half-hour episode in mid-1953, Reynolds Aluminum. Wilcox was sometimes called Harpo by Fibber.

The show also used two musical numbers per episode to break the comedy routines into sections. For most of the show's run, there would be one vocal number by The King's Men (a vocal quartet: Ken Darby, Rad Robinson, Jon Dodson, and Bud Linn), and an instrumental by The Billy Mills Orchestra. For a short time in the early 1940s, Martha Tilton would sing what was formerly the instrumental.

Before and during America's involvement in World War II, references to or about the war and the members of the Axis Powers were commonplace on the show. Just after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Jim Jordan, out of character, soberly ended the Fibber McGee show by inviting the studio audience to sing "America". Also commonplace were calls to action to buy defense bonds (both through announcements and subtle references written into the script), and condemnation of food and supply hoarding. Though understandably part of the backlash reaction toward the Pearl Harbor attack, some jokes about the Empire of Japan certainly would be considered politically incorrect on today's airwaves. For instance, in the episode "Fix-It McGee", aired three weeks after Pearl Harbor, Fibber tells Mayor LaTrivia his "great slogan" for the war bond campaign: "Every time you buy a bond, you slap a Jap across the pond." The term "Jap" was in common usage in virtually all American media during this period.

On the other hand, the Jordans gladly cooperated in turning the show over to a half-hour devoted entirely to patriotic music on the day of the D-Day invasion in 1944, with the couple speaking only at the opening and the closing of the broadcast. This show remains available to collectors amidst many a Fibber McGee and Molly packaging.

When the shows were broadcast overseas by the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS), all three commercials were eliminated from the program. Harlow Wilcox's middle ad was edited out, and the two advertisements at the beginning and end of the show were replaced by musical numbers, so that the show on AFRS would have two numbers by Billy Mills and the Orchestra, and two by The King's Men.

The Jordans were experts at transforming the ethnic humor of vaudeville into more rounded comic characters, no doubt due in part to the affection felt for the famous supporting cast members who voiced these roles, including Bill Thompson (as the Old Timer and Wimple), Harold Peary (as Gildersleeve), Gale Gordon (as LaTrivia), Arthur Q. Bryan (as Dr. Gamble; Bryan also voiced Elmer Fudd for the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes cartoons, which also borrowed lines from Fibber McGee and Molly from time to time), Isabel Randolph (as Mrs. Uppington), Marlin Hurt (a white male who played in dialect the McGee's maid, Beulah), and others. They were also expert at their own running gags and catch phrases, many of which entered the American vernacular: "That ain't the way I heeard it!"; "'T ain't funny, McGee!" and "Heavenly days!" were the three best known.

Spin-offs

Fibber McGee and Molly spun two supporting characters off into their own shows. By far the most successful and popular was Harold Peary's Gildersleeve, spun into The Great Gildersleeve in 1941. This show introduced single parenthood of a sort to creative broadcasting: the pompous, previously married Gildersleeve now moved to Summerfield, became single (although the missing wife was never explained), and raised his orphaned, spirited niece and nephew, while dividing his time between running his manufacturing business and (eventually) becoming the town water commissioner.^[4] In one episode, the McGees arrived in Summerfield for a visit with their old neighbor with hilarious results: McGee inadvertently learns Gildersleeve is engaged, and he practically needs to be chloroformed to perpetuate the secret a little longer.

Peary returned the favor in a memorable 1944 Fibber McGee & Molly episode in which neither of the title characters appeared: Jim Jordan was recovering from a bout of pneumonia (this would be written into the show the following week, when the Jordans returned), and the story line involved Gildersleeve and nephew Leroy hoping to visit the McGees at home during a train layover in Wistful Vista, but finding Fibber and Molly not at home. At the end of the episode, Gildersleeve discovers the couple had left in a hurry that morning when they received Gildy's letter saying he would be stopping over in Wistful Vista.

Marlin Hurt's Beulah was also spun off, leading to both a radio and television show that would eventually star Hattie McDaniel and Ethel Waters.

Jim and Marian Jordan themselves occasionally appeared on other programs, away from their Fibber and Molly characters.^[9] One memorable episode of Suspense ("Backseat Driver," 02-03-1949) cast the Jordans as victims of a car-jacking; Jim Jordan's tense, interior monologues were especially dramatic.

Films

The Jordans portrayed their characters in four movies. In the early years of the radio show, they were supporting characters in the 1937 Paramount film This Way, Please, starring Charles "Buddy" Rogers and Betty Grable. Once the show hit its stride, they had leading roles in the RKO Radio Pictures films Look Who's Laughing (1941), Here We Go Again (1942) and Heavenly Days (1944).

The first two RKO films are generally considered the best, as they co-star fellow radio stars Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. Harold Peary also appears in both as Gildersleeve, with Arthur Q. Bryan, Bill Thompson, Harlow Wilcox, Gale Gordon, and Isabel Randolph appearing in both their show roles and as other characters. Bill Thompson in Look Who's Laughing played two parts: The pushy sales-man, and the man who shouted "It's Hillary Horton". Gale Gordon played Otis Cadwalader, Molly's ex-boyfriend in Here We Go Again. Arthur Q. Bryan played the Mayor's aide in Look Who's Laughing.

Look Who's Laughing has been released on VHS as part of the Lucille Ball Collection, and Here We Go Again has been released on VHS in rental format only. Look Who's Laughing, Here We Go Again and Heavenly Days have been shown on Turner Classic Movies.

Other films

Other films featured the McGees' neighbors. The first film was called Comin' Round the Mountain (1940) and featured the McGees' neighbors The Old-Timer (played by Bill Thompson) and Gildersleeve, as the mayor of the town. Gildersleeve's character was in many other films before The Great Gildersleeve show and movies. Abigale Uppington is in the film County Fair along with Harold Peary, and his future radio show co-star Shirley Mitchell (who also played Leila Ransom in The Great Gildersleeve).

Television

An attempt at getting the McGees onto television came in September 1959, produced by William Asher for NBC (and co-sponsored by Singer Corporation and Standard Brands), with younger actors Bob Sweeney and Cathy Lewis in the roles. The show also featured Harold Peary as Mayor LaTrivia, rather than as Gildersleeve. The show was unable to recreate the flavor and humor of the original and did not survive its first season; in fact, it did not even last through January 1960. But the Jordans themselves had resisted television far earlier. "They were trying to push us into TV, and we were reluctant," Jim Jordan told an interviewer many years later. "Our friends advised us, 'Don't do it until you need to. You have this value in radio—milk it dry.'"

Changes

Due in large part to Marian Jordan's periodic health problems, Fibber McGee and Molly became a nightly 15-minute show in 1953, recorded without a studio audience in single sessions, the better to enable Marian Jordan to rest. The timing was sadly appropriate, as classic radio had entered its dying days. Still, the McGees remained a favorite presence on radio, even after the quarter-hour edition ended in 1956, appearing in short segments on the NBC radio show Monitor—under the rubric Just Molly and Me—from 1957 to 1959.

Radio historian Gerald S. Nachman has noted the Jordans were ready to renew with NBC for at least three more years when Marian's battle against cancer ended in her death in 1961. In the 1970s, Jim Jordan briefly returned to acting. An episode of NBC's Chico and the Man featured a surprise appearance by Jordan as a friendly neighborhood mechanic. Jordan also lent his voice to Disney's animated film The Rescuers (1977). He died in 1988—a year before Fibber McGee and Molly was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame.

Jim Jordan married Gretchen Stewart after Marian's death. Gretchen and the Jordan children donated the manuscripts of Smackout and Fibber McGee and Molly to Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communications after his death in 1988.^[4][15]

The show also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame—right next to the building that once housed the NBC radio studios where the Jordans performed the show for so long.^[6] The S.C. Johnson Company preserved more than 700 recordings of the show it sponsored for 15 years.^{[citation needed]}

Popular culture

• In The Homecoming: A Christmas Story, a 1971 TV movie that served as a pilot for the series The Waltons, Grandpa (played by Edgar Bergen) is seen listening to a 1947 Christmas episode of Fibber McGee and Molly, in which Teeny explains that she and her friends have been practicing their Christmas carol. (The scene is an anachronism, as the movie is set in 1933 - before Fibber McGee and Molly had even premiered.)
• On the NBC situation comedy NewsRadio, in the episode entitled Xmas Story, Jimmy James (played by Stephen Root) is said to own the rights to Fibber McGee and Molly, which he gives to Matthew Brock (played by Andy Dick) as a Christmas present.
• Given the popularity of the radio show at the time many catch phrases appear frequently in Warner Bros. cartoon shorts from the 1930s and 1940s, such as Molly's "T'ain't funny, McGee!" (Daffy Duck and Egghead, 1938 and Holiday Highlights, 1940), Little Girl's "I betcha." (The Sneezing Weasel, 1938), Mr. Old Timer's "That ain't the way I heared it, Johnny!" (Tortoise Wins by a Hare, 1943), and "Is that you, Myrt?" (Daffy the Commando, 1943 and The Wabbit Who Came to Supper, 1942). The Gildersleeve character was parodied in the 1945 Bugs Bunny cartoon Hare Conditioned, in which the rabbit distracts a menacing taxidermist by telling him that he sounds "just like that guy on the radio, the Great Gildersneeze!" The taxidermist responds with "I do?!" followed by Gildy's famous chuckle. The Gildersleeve voice in this cartoon was done by radio actor and voice artist Dick Nelson.
• Tex Avery's 1945 cartoon The Shooting of Dan McGoo has a scene where the villain tells the title character, "T'ain't funny, McGoo!" - then turns to the camera and says in disgust, "What corny dialogue!"
• In a scene from the 1973 film Paper Moon, set in the 1930s, the character of Addie is shown listening to Fibber McGee and Molly on the radio and urging Fibber not to open the closet door. (This is an anachronism, as the closet gag wasn't used on the show prior to 1940.)
• The show was frequently referenced during the "riffing" on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
• On an episode of NCIS, Abby Sciutto reprimands Timothy McGee with the line "T'ain't funny, McGee" as a nod to the show.
• On The Owl Box, a live web show of barn owls in San Marcos, California, which gained popularity in 2010, the two adult owls are named "Molly" and "McGee" after the show.
• In a hospital scene in the 1991 film The Rocketeer, a nurse and security guard are shown listening to the show on a radio.
• In Dublin City Centre In Ireland, there is a Bar named "Fibber McGees" located on Parnell Street which is known for its Heavy Metal and Rock music.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Ancestry.com. California Death Index, 1940-1997 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2000.
2. ^ "Jim Jordan, Radio's Fibber McGee, Is Dead at 91", The New York Times, April 2, 1988, p. 10.
3. ^ "Marion Jordan, Radio Star, Dies", The New York Times, April 8, 1961, p. 19.
4. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k} Dunning, John, ed (1998). On the air: the encyclopedia of old time radio. Oxford University Press USA. pp. 840. ISBN 0195076788. http://books.google.com/books?id=EwtRbXNca0oC&pg=PA246&lpg=PA246&dq=ted+weems+fibber+mcgee#v=onepage&q=ted%20weems%20fibber%20mcgee&f=false. Retrieved 28 June 2010. 
5. ^ Oakland Tribune, November 10, 1935.
6. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} "Hollywood Star Walk: Fibber McGee and Molly". LA Times. http://projects.latimes.com/hollywood/star-walk/fibber-molly-mc-gee/. Retrieved 5 March 2011. 
7. ^ "WIBO Station History". Zecom Communications. http://67.162.73.47/public/zecom/museum/Chiradhist/560.htm#WIBO. Retrieved 6 March 2011. 
8. ^ "WENR Station History". Zecom Communications. http://67.162.73.47/public/zecom/museum/Chiradhist/wenr.htm#WENR. Retrieved 6 March 2011. 
9. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i} "Radio: Fibber & co.". Time. 22 April 1940. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,763865,00.html. Retrieved 5 March 2011. 
10. ^ Childers, Scott. "WLS History-National Barn Dance-the Jordans". Childers, Scott. http://www.wlshistory.com/NBD/. Retrieved 26 April 2010. 
11. ^ Samuels, Rich. "Description of "Smackout" and downloadable audio files". Samuels, Rich. http://www.richsamuels.com/nbcmm/jordans/smackout.html. Retrieved 25 April 2010. 
12. ^ Burlington Historical Society
13. ^ Samuels, Rich. "Fibber McGee & Molly with downloadable audio files". Samuels, Rich. http://www.richsamuels.com/nbcmm/jordans/fmmchicago.html. Retrieved 25 April 2010. 
14. ^ Gary Poole, Radio comedy diary, p. 202, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=e_mIk6UtWJMC&pg=PA202 
15. ^ Anderson, Jon (13 February 2004). "TV, Radio Treasures Seek Home". Chicago Tribune. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2004-02-13/news/0402130310_1_broadcast-communications-radio-hall-garage-sale. Retrieved 7 March 2011. 

Listen to

• Radio Journeys: Smackout (1931)
• McGee and Molly at Free-OTR.com
• Botar: Fibber McGee and Molly (66 episodes)
• Free OTR Fibber McGee and Molly (117 episodes)
• OTR Network Library: Fibber McGee and Molly (442 episodes)
• Internet Archive: Fibber McGee and Molly (hundreds of episodes)
• OTR Fans: Fibber McGee and Molly (seven episodes)
• Fibber McGee & Molly
• Outlaws Old Time Radio Corner

External links

• Fibber McGee and Molly
• Gale Gordon Archive
• "Kremer's Drugstore" by Steve Kremer