[6] It featured the misadventures of a working-class couple: 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.

[10] For station WMAQ in Chicago, beginning in April 1931, the trio created Smackout, a 15-minute daily program that 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".

while Fibber's voice was somewhat higher and more cartoonish; both of the Jordans eventually switched to more realistic, Americanized dialects closer to their own natural tones over the course of the late 1930s as the series evolved into the more familiar domestic sitcom format.

[16] 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 from show No.

The McGees won their house in a raffle from Mr. Hagglemeyer's Wistful Vista Development Company, with lottery ticket #131,313, happened upon by chance while on a pleasure drive in their car.

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 and providing loving support, not to mention a tireless parade of neighbors 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.

[10] Marian Jordan took a protracted absence from the show from November 1937 to April 1939 to deal with a lifelong battle with alcoholism, although this was attributed to "fatigue" in public statements at the time.

Nothing was done about the following Tuesday's show until Friday morning, when Jim and Marian Jordan got together with writer Don Quinn and agency producer Cecil Underwood to talk through the following weeks' script.

Tuesday morning the entire cast (including Billy Mills' orchestra) would run through the script about 4 times, ending with a complete run-through at 3 pm.

The musical interlude would segue into the second part of the script, followed by a performance (by the vocal group, the Kings Men – occasionally featuring a solo by leader Ken Darby).

The 30-minute show usually opened with the audience in full laughter as announcer Harlow Wilcox called out "The Johnson Wax Program with Fibber McGee and Molly!"

[25] Molly's Uncle Dennis, who lives with the couple, is apparently a dedicated alcoholic and a punch line for many Fibber jokes; at times he was the main subject of some shows in which he "disappeared".

And making expressions with his eyes led to the nickname "Eyes-a-muggin' McGee" (a play on the popular Stuff Smith swing tune "I'se A-muggin'").

Each episode also featured an appearance by announcer 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.

Just after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Jim Jordan, out of character, soberly ended the Fibber McGee show by inviting the studio audience to sing "America".

Also commonplace were calls to action to buy war bonds (both through announcements and subtle references written into the script), and condemnation of food and supply hoarding.

On the other hand, the Jordans gladly cooperated in turning the show over to a half-hour devoted entirely to patriotic music on the day of the D-Day invasion in 1944, with the couple speaking only at the opening and the closing of the broadcast.

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 La Trivia), Arthur Q. Bryan (as Dr. Gamble; Bryan also voiced Elmer Fudd for the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes cartoons, which also borrowed lines from Fibber McGee and Molly from time to time), Isabel Randolph (as Mrs. Uppington), Marlin Hurt (a white male who played in dialect the McGee's maid, Beulah), and others.

Peary returned the favor in a memorable 1944 Fibber McGee & Molly episode in which neither of the title characters appeared: Jim Jordan was recovering from a bout of pneumonia (this would be written into the show the following week, when the Jordans returned), and the story line involved Gildersleeve and nephew Leroy hoping to visit the McGees at home during a train layover in Wistful Vista, but finding Fibber and Molly not at home.

At the end of the episode, Gildersleeve discovers the couple had left in a hurry that morning when they received Gildy's letter saying he would be stopping over in Wistful Vista.

The first film was called Comin' Round the Mountain (1940) and featured the McGees' neighbors The Old-Timer (played by Bill Thompson) and Gildersleeve, as the mayor of the town.

NBC, taking stock of its most valuable broadcast properties and anticipating the lucrative new field of television, regarded Fibber McGee and Molly as being essential to its future plans.

Although announcer Harlow Wilcox and character comedian Gale Gordon did not participate in the daily shows, Bill Thompson and Arthur Q. Bryan continued making appearances alongside the Jordans, along with familiar radio performers Virginia Gregg, Herb Vigran, Robert Easton, and Mary Jane Croft, among others.

This was designed especially to demonstrate the immediacy and importance of radio, with a mixture of news, sports, music, comedy, human interest, and special events running continuously throughout the weekend hours.

In 1957 NBC, still valuing its Fibber McGee and Molly property, invited Jim and Marian Jordan to record new comedy routines for Monitor.

These interludes, aired as Just Molly and Me, featured the Jordans (alone, with no supporting cast) in five-minute sketches written by Monitor staffer (and Bob and Ray writer) Tom Koch.

Radio historian Gerald S. Nachman has written that the Jordans anticipated renewing their contract with NBC for another three years when Marian's battle against ovarian cancer ended with her death in 1961.

[30] The TV version's main asset was character comic Bob Sweeney, who caught the spirit and cadence of Jim Jordan's "Fibber" delivery, alternating between cheerful, boastful, and fretful.

Jordan also lent his voice to Disney's animated film, The Rescuers (1977) and reprised his role as Fibber McGee (complete with the closet gag) in an advertisement for AARP.

Gretchen and the Jordan children donated the manuscripts of Smackout and Fibber McGee and Molly to Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communications after his death in 1988.