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‘Twas the Night Before Christmas 1947
Down on the corner of Antoinette and Peter Streets in Peoria, Illinois, a young man named Jim Jordan was singing in the choir at St. John’s Catholic Church. He had his eye on a Irish lass by the name of Marian Driscoll, the twelfth of thirteen children of coal miner Daniel and his wife Anna. Her parents weren’t keen on him because he seemed to have ambitions for show business. Still, they fell in love and in August of 1918 they were married.
After a stint in the Army and a battle with flu during the great pandemic, Jim gave up his dreams and became a mailman while Marian taught voice and piano. Children quickly followed. But Jim remained restless. They tried their hand at vaudeville and failed miserably. Then, one day while visiting his brother in Chicago, Jim heard a radio show he thought was awful and believed he and Marian could do better. After an audition they were signed for a weekly show.
In 1931 the couple met a wannabe cartoonist by the name of Don Quinn. Quinn was a better gag man than an artist and changed course to become a radio script writer when he found out magazines were throwing out his work and giving his captions to other illustrators. Eventually the Jordans and Quinn teamed up on a show called Smack Out. The couple played employees of a grocery store that never seemed to have what the customers wanted. They were always “smack out of everything.”
Then in 1935 the three of them were pegged for a new national show on the NBC network that had a new format, new characters, a new sponsor and a new name: Fibber McGee and Molly. In the beginning the ratings were so-so and Marian left the program for an 18-month period to battle alcoholism. But when she came back the show took off with a vengeance.
For the next seven years it ruled the Hooper Ratings (a precursor to the Nielsens) and soon the trio was pulling in $6,000 a week. (In today’s dollars that’s north of $1M and the network radio season lasted for 26 weeks.)
Every Christmas, Marian would sing a musical adaptation of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas written by Ken Darby, a member of the show’s quartet, The King’s Men. Darby, who was also the Music Production Supervisor for Walt Disney and a winner of three Academy Awards, wrote the piece for Marian to perform as “Teeny,” a little girl who lived down the street from the McGees who drove Fibber crazy.
Here for your Christmas Eve 2018, is Marian and The King’s Men closing the show in 1947, a now forgotten American tradition for you and your family to rediscover. Put on your ‘kerchief or cap and settle down for a long winter’s nap…
… and don’t open that closet, McGee.
Mom P. loved this show as a kid: Can’t tell you how often I heard:”T’ain’t funny, McGee!” growing up. (Hadn’t heard the last verse of the song before.) Thanks, and: Merry Christmas, EJ!
But Fibber McGee and Molly were still on the radio after that, weren’t they? I seem to remember listening to their show around the mid 1950s, say 1955-56, before we had television. I think Jack Benny’s radio program made more of an impression on me, though, or maybe I just remember it better because he was around for a long time on TV.
They lasted as a weekly program well into the 1950s although long-time sponsor Johnson’s Wax abandoned them for television. Pet Milk and Reynold’s Aluminum each had two years if I recall correctly.
Marian’s health declined rapidly in the 50s. For the remainder of their career they did skits on NBC’s weekend show, Monitor. They were done without an audience and the performances were flat.
She passed away from cancer in 1961. Jim slipped into semiretirement, appearing in Disney’s The Rescuers and a guest stint on Chico and the Man before his death in 1988 at age 91.
Most radio stars who didn’t go on to TV, or barely registered as TV performers, were forgotten quickly, too quickly. Fibber McGee and Molly’s a prime example; Fred Allen isn’t 1/50th as remembered as his onetime peer, Jack Benny; Eric Sevareid is remembered, but H.V. Kaltenborn and Gabriel Heatter aren’t even punch lines.
NBC commissioned a TV version but because of Marion’s health it starred different leads (Bob Sweeny and Cathy Lewis) It lasted a half season and is rightfully forgotten.
In the flattened perspective of history, it’s amazing how quickly the hitherto-unknown idea of a radio show formed, considering how distant its concepts were to people who weren’t yet accustomed to (simple to us) things like tuning in a radio at a certain time each day for (generally) 15, 30 or 60 minutes for a repeating comedy or drama. Theater and vaudeville didn’t do that. That world was accustomed to oratory as well as powerful preaching, and there was some of both in radio, but although it could be a lecture hall or a church, the concept of a “radio show”rapidly went well beyond that. In 1912, even apart from the technology involved, it was hard to imagine such a thing.
By 1932 radio had spent a decade being the nation’s companion, the high-tech-to-the-home boom of its era, and the program genres they already developed by then are obviously still around today, if in different proportions: cops, crime, justice, musical entertainment, situation comedies with live audiences, soaps of vanity, soaps of virtue. With each genre you can no doubt point to something and say, “Why, this is no different than the nightly criers of wit and woe in the Duchy of Humperdinck”. And you’d be right. But most people didn’t experience anything remotely like radio entertainment, so it’s striking that you can describe the latest streaming over-the-top 4K television series in roughly the way you can describe a 1929 radio episode: The characters will be back each week. The episode will wrap up with a satisfying conclusion about 5/6ths through. You could set a watch to the show time.
“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest… but he wasn’t kidding about the preservative value of Johnson’s Wax! Just look at the way his skull shines against the light! And so easy to clean, too! With a regular application of Johnson’s Wax dust just won’t stick to the surface, making your routine cleaning a breeze. Available in both liquid and paste!”
I love Fred Allen! Although my only exposure to him is his short tenure* on What’s My Line (on Amazon Prime). His timing and facial expressions were hilarious and endearing.
*Short because sadly, he died of a heart attack during an evening walk in New York at the age of 62.
One of my favorite Fred Allen bits is his epic “feud” with Jack Benny. The writers for both performers would meet prior to shows where they both were appearing and write the gags.
Gag writer collaboration is one way. The Hope and Crosby way is the other. “Road Picture” scripts would get the once over by both staffs and new lines would come without warning. Hope once turned to the writers of one the pictures and offered this piece of advice: If you recognize anything that’s yours yell “bingo!”
Evening Gary and EJ,
In one of those short story quirks of life, my wife and I bought tapes of Fibber and Molly shows for each other one Christmas. In listening to those shows or the Crosby shows or others, I felt closer to the folks on the radio than I have ever felt toward the folks on TV, my wife and I are 71. Do you think that the connections between the audience and the performers were stronger on the radio, or is this just my imagination? Also thinking about radio, the timing of the jokes seemed a bit different, or maybe the audience began to anticipate where the jokes were. Lastly in a commmercial sense, does product identification work better on the radio, or did it?
Radio was an advertiser’s medium. The ad agencies, not the networks were responsible for content. Stars became more closely identified with the products. Ed Wynn was The Fire Chief (Always Trust Your Car to the Man Who Wears the Star), Crosby was Kraft, Hope was Pepsodent, Benny was Jell-o (and later, Lucky Strikes).
The quiz show scandals on television broke that mold. Afterward the nets took control of their programming and spot advertising became the norm. The last sponsor purchase of airtime went by the boards when Crown Media launched the Hallmark Channel and with it, The Hallmark Hall of Fame.
Radio demands your undivided attention.