Fibber McGee and Molly
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Image:Fibbermolly.jpg Fibber McGee and Molly played a major role in determining the full form of what became classic, old-time radio, and the series was a pinnacle of American popular culture from its 1935 premiere until its end in 1959. 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.
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From vaudeville to Smackout
The genesis of Fibber McGee and Molly occurred when small-time husband-and-wife vaudevillians James "Jim" and Marian Driscoll Jordan, native Illinoisans who met in church, 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 policeman. 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 around 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 braggadoccio in a Midwestern layabout, Quinn developed Fibber McGee and Molly, with Jim playing the foible-prone Fibber and Marian playing his patient, 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 amidst despair.
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 weren't 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), not to mention 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.
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 (the pompous next-door neighbor whom Fibber enjoyed twitting and arguing with).
- The Old-Timer (a hard-of-hearing senior citizen with a penchant for distorting jokes, prefacing each one by saying "But that ain't the way I heared it!" For no apparent reason he refers to Fibber as "Johnny" and Molly as "Daughter").
- Teeny, aka "Little Girl" (a precocious youngster, voiced by Marian Jordan and held over from Smackout, who was usually trying to cadge loose change from Fibber, and ending half her sentences with "I'm hungry!" and, especially, "I betcha!").
- Mayor LaTrivia, a name inspired by New York's famous mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who would go from frustration to stark-raving confusion by the McGees' literal interpretations of his colloquialisms.
- Billy Mills (wisecracking leader of Billy Mills & The Orchestra, who played short instrumentals in the first half of each episode).
- Dr. Gamble (a local physician and surgeon with whom Fibber had a long-standing rivalry).
- Swedish-born Ole (always complaining that he was "joost donatin' my time!").
- Abigail Uppington (the snooty society matron).
- Mr. Wallace Wimple (a hen-pecked husband constantly dominated by "Sweetieface," his "big ol' wife").
- Myrtle, aka "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 32...Oooh, is that you, Myrt? How's every little thing?" 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).
The most unusual character might have been the McGees' African-American maid, Beulah. Unlike the situation on The Jack Benny Program, where African-American 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 Beulah was not voiced by either an African-American or a female, and expressed their surprise when Hurt delivered his line.
Running gags and common show elements
Much of the show's humor relied on recurring gags, unseen regulars and punchlines that sometimes popped up here and there for years.
Molly's Uncle Dennis is one of the more common unseen regulars, often referred to, and sometimes be 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, a device later made equally famous by Ozzie Nelson. 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 "well-paying" job "looking in on the higher ups" turns out to be a window-cleaning job.
McGee, apparently, is very proud of past deeds, sometimes recalls an interesting nickname he picked up over the years, one example being "Eyes-a-muggin' McGee". "Eyes-a-muggin' McGee they'd call me!" From there he 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, Illinois, 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 is Otis' feelings towards 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.
Each episode also featured an appearance by announcer/pitchman 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 fact, and in a style not unusual for the classic radio years, the show was typically introduced as, "The Johnson Wax Program, starring 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.
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, and an instrumental by The Billy Mills Orchestra.
Before and after America's involvement in World War II, references to and jokes about the war and the members of the Axis Powers were commonplace on the show. 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 a comical kneejerk reaction at the time, some jokes about Japan certainly would not fly 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 WWII.
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), Isabel Randolph (as Mrs. Uppington), Marlin Hurt (as 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.
The Closet
But none of the show's running gags was 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.
Like many such trademarks, the clattering closet began as a one-time stunt---with Molly the burial victim. 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.
Exactly what tumbled out of McGee's closet each time was never exactly clear (except to the sound-effects man). But what ended the avalanche was always the same: a clear, tiny, household hand bell, and McGee's inevitable postmortem. Naturally, "one of these days" never arrived. A good thing, too, in one famous instance: when burglars tied up McGee, he informed them cannily that the family valuables were in The Closet. Naturally, the burglars took the bait. And, naturally, they were buried in the inevitable avalanche, long enough for the police to come and cuff them and stuff them.
One single time, however, Fibber opened up the closet, only to be met with complete silence. As the audience chuckled slightly, and most likely held their breath in anticipation, Molly explained that she had cleaned out the closet the day before. This was certainly not the end of the gag though, as the closet soon became cluttered once again, leading to many more comedic disasters. And, in due course, "Fibber McGee's Closet" entered the American vernacular as a catchphrase synonymous with household clutter.
The 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 Gildersleeve now moved to Summerfield and raised his orphaned, spirited niece and nephew, while dividing his time between running his manufacturing business and (eventually) becoming the town water commissioner. In one episode, the McGees arrived in Summerfield for a visit with their old neighbour with hilarious results: McGee inadvertently learns Gildersleeve is engaged, and he practically needs to be chloroformed to perpetuate the secret a little longer. The Gildersleeve character was parodied in a Bugs Bunny cartoon called "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!"
Marlin Hurt's Beulah was also spun off, leading to both a radio and televison show that would eventually star Hattie McDaniel and Ethel Waters.
Big screen McGees
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 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.
An attempt at getting the McGees onto television came in 1959, on NBC, 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 did not survive past the first season.
Changes
Due in large part to Marian Jordan's periodic health problems, Fibber McGee and Molly became a 15-minute show in 1953, recorded before live audiences in single sessions, the better to enable Marian Jordan to rest. The timing was sadly perfect, as classic radio had all but entered its dying days, and such shows would become sweet memories rather than continuing hits. Still, the McGees remained a favorite presence on radio, even though reduced to five-minute segments on the NBC radio show Monitor from 1957 to 1959.
As the Jordans (it is said) prepared to sign a new longterm deal with NBC, Marian Jordan's valiant battle against cancer ended in her death in 1961. Jim Jordan died in 1988---a year before Fibber McGee and Molly was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame. 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. And, thanks to the S.C. Johnson company's preservation of more than 700 recordings of the show they sponsored for 15 years, Fibber McGee and Molly remains as widely circulated as it is beloved even now.