Enjoy two free comedy episodes of Fibber McGee & Molly w/ Jim and Marian Jordan
A) 2/17/48 Book Nook
B) 6/1/48 Fibber’s Tune
Fibber McGee & Molly had a long and successful run on radio (1935-1959). The program showcased terrific comic and musical talent. Headlined by its co-creators and stars, Jim and Marian Jordan, they were a real-life husband and wife team that had been working in radio since the 1920s. Living in the fictional Midwestern town of Wistful Vista, Fibber was an American teller of tall tales and lovable braggart, usually to the exasperation of his long-suffering wife, Molly. Life in Wistful Vista followed a well-developed formula, but was always fresh. Fibber's weekly schemes would be interrupted, inspired by, and often played upon the people of Wistful Vista. Regular characters included Mayor LaTrivia, Doc Gamble, Mrs. Uppington, Wallace Wimple, Alice Darling, Beulah, Myrt, the Old Timer and Fibber’s next-door neighbor, Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve (the Gildersleeve character would be spun-off into its own successful radio series, The Great Gildersleeve). Fibber McGee & Molly began as a comic reflection of Depression Era America, but as time went on and the shadows of war came over the nation, the show again caught the mood of the country. WWII was fought on the home front at Wistful Vista as surely as anywhere else in America, but here they had the benefit of Fibber's somewhat addled perspective. In the peak of the show’s success in the 1940s, it was adapted for the silver screen in a series of feature films. An attempt to bring the series to TV in 1959 with a different cast and new writers was both a critical and commercial failure proving that success in one medium is no guarantee of success in another.