Fibber McGee and Molly
Jim and Marian Jordan as Fibber McGee and Molly in 1937
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| Country | United States |
|---|---|
| Language(s) | English |
| Home station |
WMAQ AM NBC |
| Starring |
Jim Jordan Marian Jordan |
| Announcer | Harlow Wilcox |
| Created by | Jim Jordan Marian Jordan Donald Quinn |
| Air dates | April 16, 1935 to October 2, 1959 |
| No. of episodes | 1611 |
| Sponsored by | Johnson's Wax Pet Milk Reynolds Aluminum |
Fibber McGee and Molly was an American radio comedy series. A staple of the NBC Red Network for the show's entire run and one of the most popular and enduring radio series of its time, the prime time situation comedy ran as a standalone series from 1935 to 1956, then continued as a short-form series as part of the weekend Monitor from 1957 to 1959. The title characters were created and portrayed by Jim and Marian Jordan, a real-life husband and wife team that had been working in radio since the 1920s.
Fibber McGee and Molly, which followed up the Jordans' previous radio sitcom Smackout, followed the adventures of a working-class couple, the habitual storyteller Fibber McGee and his sometimes terse but always loving wife Molly, living among their numerous neighbors and acquaintances in the community of Wistful Vista. As with most radio comedies of the era, Fibber McGee and Molly featured an announcer, house band and vocal quartet for interludes. At the peak of the show's success in the 1940s, it was adapted into a string of feature films; a 1959 attempt to adapt the series to television with a different cast and new writers was both a critical and commercial failure, which, coupled with Marian Jordan's death shortly thereafter, brought the series to an end.
The stars of the program were real-life husband and wife team James "Jim" Jordan (16 November 1896 – 1 April 1988) and Marian Driscoll (15 April 1898 – 7 April 1961), 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 twelfth out of thirteen children 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 occupation was now acceptable to Marian's parents, and they stopped objecting to the couple's marriage plans. The pair were married in Peoria on August 31, 1918.
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