My Friend Irma is a media franchise that was spawned by a top-rated, long-running radio situation comedy created by writer-director-producer Cy Howard.

Marie Wilson portrayed the title character Irma Peterson on radio, in two films and the television series.

[3] Dependable, level-headed Jane Stacy (Cathy Lewis—plus Joan Banks during Lewis' illness in early 1949[3] and Mary Shipp later) began each weekly radio program by narrating a misadventure of her innocent, bewildered roommate Irma, a scatterbrained stenographer from Minnesota.

After the two met in the first episode, they lived together in an apartment rented from their Irish landlady Mrs. O'Reilly (Jane Morgan, Gloria Gordon).

Irma's boyfriend Al (John Brown) was a deadbeat, barely on the right side of the law, who had not held a job in years.

Professor Kropotkin (Hans Conried), the Russian violinist at the Princess Burlesque theater, lived upstairs.

Asked how long she had been with Clyde, Irma said, "When I first went to work with him he had curly black hair, then it got grey, and now it's snow white.

The program also was sponsored by ENNDS which got rid of breath and body odors and each tiny capsule was said to contain 100 mg (1.5 gr) of chlorophyll.