May 8th, 2010

Fibber McGee and Molly: 4/16/1935 – Tell It to the Judge

Fibber McGee and Molly was a popular and beloved radio show along with being one of the longest-running comedies in the history of classic 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.

James “Jim” Jordan and Marian Driscoll 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 a 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 NBC in April 1933, and the show endured until August 1935.

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.

Amazingly, we’ll begin with the first episode of the Fibber and Molly which is over 70 years old!

McGee goes through a red light and has to “tell it to the judge.” Fibber and Molly sing He Was A Snake In The Grass. The first tune is Smooth Sailing. Fibber recalls his days with the camels of the Foreign Legion.

Fibber McGee and Molly – Tell It to the Judge

Jim Jordan, Marian Jordan, Rico Marcelli and His Orchestra, Ronnie and Van, Kathleen Wells, Harlow Wilcox, Manny Segal (sound effects).

NBC network. Sponsored by Johnson’s Wax (Johnson’s Touch-Up Enamel premium).

You can also download the show HERE!