University of Illinois at Springfield

Norris L Brookens Library

Archives/Special Collections

Jim Jordan Memoir

J764. Jordan, Jim (1896-1988) Interview and memoir 1 tape, 60 mins., 18 pp.

Jordan, native of Peoria, discusses his career in radio. He recalls the town of Peoria around the turn of the century, the development of his character "Fibber McGee" on the radio show "Fibber McGee and Molly," network radio, and radio personalities.

Interview by Wally Gair, 1984 OPEN

Archives/Special Collections LIB 144 University of Illinois at Springfield One University Plaza, MS BRK 140 Springfield IL 62703-5407

© 1984, University of Illinois Board of Trustees Table of Contents

Show Business in Peoria at the Turn of the Century Father ...... School ...... Meeting Marion ...... Getting Drafted and Show Business in the Service . Teaming Up With Marion in ...... WIBO Radio Station ...... The Breakfast Club ...... WMAQ Radio Station ...... "" and "Fiber McGee and Molly" ...... How the Shows Developed ...... Johnson Wax Commercials ...... Characters on Shows ...... Ratings ...... Cancellation of "Fiber McGee and Molly" ...... Television and "" ...... Marion' s Death ...... Why George Burns Went Into Television ...... Selling the "Fiber McGee and Molly" Rights to NBC . The Difference Between Fiber McGee and Jim Jordan . The Star of Walk of the Stars in Hollywood .... Warking on Dramas for Sears with Elliott Lewis . . Fan Mail Today ...... Feature Pictures ......

Jim Jordan Memoir - Archives/ Special Collections - Norris L Brookens Library - University of Illinois at Springfield - UIS Preface

This manuscript is the product of a tape recorded interview conducted by Wally Gair in April, 1984. Linda Jett transcribed the tape and Joyce Fisher edited the transcript.

Jim Jordan was raised in Peoria, Illinois around the turn of the century. He is famous for the radio shows "~mackout" and "Fiber McGee and Molly," in which he played Fiber McGee. In this interview, he tells of his beginnings in show business, and of how his life has progressed from that point. Included are discussions concerning how "Smackout" and "Fiber McGee and Molly" and their characters were developed, and of his work with the television program "Monitor".

Readers of the oral history memoir should bear in mind that it is a transcript of the spoken word, and that the interviewer, narrator and editor sought to preserve the informal, conversational style that is inherent in such historical sources. Sangamon State University is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the memoir, nor for views expressed therein; these are for the reader to judge.

The manuscript may be read, quoted and cited freely. It may not be reproduced in whole or in part by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permiasion in writing from the Oral History Office, Sangamon State University, Springfield, Illinois, 62708.

Jim Jordan Memoir - Archives/ Special Collections - Norris L Brookens Library - University of Illinois at Springfield - UIS Jim Jordan, April 1984, , .

Wally Gafr, Interviewer.

Q: What was it like growing up in Peoria around the turn of the century?

A: Well, of course, Peoria in those days--from the time I was nine years old, along in there before I left the farm, I was interested in show business. And my sister and I, Bess--she was a year and a half younger than I was--and we used to do boy and girl numbers at the country school at the box socials and all those kinds of things. So I was always interested in show business. Of course, I didn't get into it for a good many years because it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of doing to get into it believe me. And so Peoria was a pretty exciting town in those days. Tt was a wide open city and it was important in our business, you know, traveling troupes and all. Peoria was a much more important town then than it was thirty years later in show business. So it was exciting to me. I went to school so I could be in the school play. That was just my whole life, always. And in growing up around Peoria in those days was, as I say, it was a very exciting town. And of course I was quite young too.

Q: When did you move into the city?

A: In 1909. I was twelve years old. I lived on the farm until I was twelve years old. And my father had the farm, had had it before that for a good many years. He was--I don't want to dwell on this--but he was quite an interesting guy because he taught school in a country school. And he had a brother who lived in Martha, Texas and this was during the time that the buffalo in Texas was being hunted so profusely. And he just locked up the school house one night and left Peoria. This was before he was married. Went to Texas and he stayed down there about five years hunting buffalo. He was a skinner actually. And then he came back to Peoria, and he and his brother had quite a good size piece of land that they operated all those years, from then until he was--I can't figure out the years--but from the 1880s I guess and 1890s until 1909, We was there longer than that. He had that farm twenty or thirty years, something like that. But after we moved to the city then, as I say Peoria was an exciting town and there was a lot going on for young people.

Q: Where did you go to school?

A: I went to parochial school in town after we moved to the city, St. Mark's School. And then I went to Spaulding. That was just the school that had the school plays. I carried a spear, more or less, in the school plays. The big guy in our school plays was Fulton Sheene. He was a fine . You know who Fulton Sheene is? He was interested in acting and he was great,

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Q: He didn't do badly on television himself.

A: Oh, no. s hat's right. Radio before. But he and T kept up our present friendship all down through the years. He died a few years ago.

Q: In what context then, at what point did you meet Marion?

A: She was going to the Academy which was across the street from Spaulding. And we met in a choir down there in the southern part of town. St. John's Church choir. That's where we met. And then I went into show business for a year and a half and when I came home there was a war going on. And the draft board, one of the men who ran the draft board lived next door to us. And so in August 1918 we were going together and we'd talked about marriage and so on. So I talked to this man one night and he said, "Well, I'll tell you. This war is winding down.ll And I was subject to the draft. I couldn't be called. Or I had to wait to be called. And he said, "You'll never be called." He said, "This is going to be through." He said, "Go ahead and get married." So we got married on August 31. And we went down to St. Louis to my sister to spend our honeymoon with her. We were freeloaders, you know. (laughter) And I was there five days when T got the summons from Uncle Sam. And inside of six weeks I was in France and by Christmastime or shortly before Christmastime in 1918 we had formed, another guy and I, had performed a show. A fellow named Peter Van Gallagher who was a performer. Older than I was. And we toured France, played hospitals and so forth for six months where that show played every day. We had one of the prize winning shows of the AEF, I ' 11 have you know.

Q: Music and comedy?

A: Yes. There were two quartets in the show and I worked in both of them. One was an evening close type, singing, you know, classics and so on, straight standup thing. The other was a comedy quartet, real slapstick or real lowdown. I worked in that too. It was a great show, fine people. Her grandson is here with his wife. They've been in Honolulu and they're on their way back. They live in . So we have a houseful of them. They have two children. She's down at the store with one of them now.

Q: When you came back from the service in World War I, what did you do then?

A: I went to work in Peoria and I worked a couple of years before I got back in show business. And when I got back in show business I worked, played picture houses. Worked alone for years. Then Marion and I did an act together.

Q: How did you break in? Did you just say at that time, "I want to be in show business"?

A: Well, it isn't that simple. You know you want to be in show business, the first place you don't tell everybody because in those days there's nothing honorable about being in show business. You know, you didn't brag about it. (laughs) Like we used to always kid about it. ~hey'd

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say when we had this little concert company and they had a fellow named Donovan who was a musician. He played several instruments. He was the fourth member of this thing. And we'd go into town and he'd always say about when we'd go to the hotel they'd say, "Are you married or just show folks?" Especially my people. You how, they thought, "You've got to quit fooling around with that. Get yourself a job." That attitude. They weren't that way but yet they were. They were concerned. It was new. But they were always helpful.

Q: When did you and Marion team up then? And what did you do then?

A: We were a piano act in vaudeville. You how, she played. She was a pianist and she sang and I sang. And we did duets and so on. We were the number two act as they called us. We didn't talk; we just sang. And then we actually got on radio as a singing act. We didn't talk on the radio for a couple of years.

Q: In ?

A: Well, yes, in Chicago. That's after we went to Chicago. And we'd been in vaudeville before that. And then break into picture shows, it wasn't really vaudeville because you'd be the only act there in between the pictures, you know. And we did an act, then--my brother lived in Chicago at that time. He was next older than me. And he knew a fellow who was announcing on a radio station called WIBO. That was up on Broadway and Devon. That's pretty far north. And Nelson Bond and Mortage Company I think owned this little station. And nobody ever got paid or anything in those days. You know, you didn't work--you just worked. And we caught on there. Be took us down there. And he dared us to go down and perform. And so we did. And they gave us a job. And we worked there every afternoon I think it was or something like that. Three or four afternoons a week for an hour or so on the air. And then on Friday nights we did a show for the O1Henry Candy Company. We were the O'Henry twins. Somebody else was the O'Henry twins before we were but we did the O'Henry twins. And we got paid for that. We got ten dollars. And besides the ten dollars we got coffee and ham sandwiches. And the show was on Friday night and we were Catholic so we couldn't eat the ham!

Q: How about the candy bars?

A: I don't remember seeing any O'Henry candy bars. I guess we saw them. But that was the beginning, and then we later caught on at WENR. And we were there four years when NBC bought it.

Q: What was your connection with the "Breakfast Club," with Don McNeal?

A: Well, in those days everybody worked on everything, you know. So we worked on the "Breakfast Club." I don't remember whether we were on it permanently or not. But we worked on it quite a lot. We just go in and do a song. And that was after we went to NBC. We didn't do the "Breakfast Club" while we were at WENR. But we did pretty well up there at WENR because we played theaters and we'd announce the theater that we were appearing in on the end and then we'd go out and play the theater. And we were making pretty good money in those days. When NBC bought WENR,

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they got all the people that they wanted, you know. But we wouldn't go because we knew that NBC would not announce, let us announce the theater date, you see. And it was the combination of the two that we made our living so we didn't go. We went to WMAQ. And that was a CBS station,

across the river, you know, in the Daily -9 News Chicago Daily News ~uilding. And we went over there and we were there six months when NBC bought WNAQ. (laughs) Then we had to go over there and we stayed there for four years just doing nothing. They paid us two hundred--or two-fifty, I can't think--two hundred dollars a week. And I always liked to tell about those years because Marion was a pianist. Her salary was $160 or something like that. Union piano player would make that. That was about what her salary was. And we got two hundred dollars a week and she got, I forget whether it was $140 or $150 actually she was earning as a piano player. And then we hired a writer. His name was . We paid him $40 a week. So I was still working for nothing. And then the Johnson Company bought that.

Q: When did the "Smackout" start?

A: That started when we went to WMAQ, that's when we met Don Quinn and we paid him from then on.

Q: And that's when you started getting away from the music and into comedy?

A: No, no. We kept the music up until 1935 or 1937. I get a little switched. And even after we started "Fiber McGee and Molly" we went to and we still did "Smackout" in New York for four weeks. We went there to start "Fiber McGee and Molly." Thought we'd get a little more exploitation if we went to New York to start it. And while we were there we did "Smackout" every day for four weeks. Then when we came back to Chicago we gradually dropped "Smackout" and spent all of our time on "Fiber McGee and Molly" which we didn't sing on that at all, ever.

Q: How did the concept start for the show? Whose idea?

A: Well, it's funny how those things happened. In those days a young, performing young actor as I was in radio, if you wanted--you got paid for how many voices you did, you know, not anything else. And the first thing you did was an old man. That was the easiest voice to do was an old man. So that's what I did. And this old man's name was--we did a thing called Luke and Marandy on WENR and we did it on a farm program. And we did that little skit every show. And it was based on the old man, Luke Grey. And we did that and then we added other characters. And Marion did a little girl which was just great. She did her daughter actually was what she was doing. And we did those until--when we went with the Johnson Company, when they bought us, they actually bought "Smackout." That's what they had been listening to. And that's what they bought. And they bought us in October to go on the air the following April. hat's when their time agreements were with NBC. They had other shows. Tony Ones they had on, big orchestra and so on.

And we had meetings every week, a couple, when things would be discussed with Jack Lewis who was the agency with Nedamost and Dorby that had the

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Johnson Company. And we had meetings and discussed different things, how do we do and what do we do. Would we use the name Marion and Jim and so on and so forth? We didn't how what things and we came out and decided at all these meetings how we would go do this show. They took us on to sell an auto wax called Carnew, Johnson did. Which is neither here nor there except that they--in one of these meetings Jack Lewis said it would be nice if we were not going to use the name Marion and Jim, if we were going to use another name, and it would be nice if we'd use a name that would be synonymous of a liar. Which he was, this old man was a horrible liar. More comedy is based on that actually. He said that and the next meeting Don who was also a commercial artist, he had been a commercial artist in Chicago before he met us and got into radio, had a little slip of paper about that long and about that wide and he had it all doodled up like an artist would, you know. And it said Fiber McGee. That's where it came from. And that's the way it came. So we built it from there. And the name Molly was the name Marion and I had for a long time. That was an Irish name that was a good sounding name, and we said whenever the right thing comes along we'd use that.

And there was a family of people in Peoria that were in show business, Italian people, and their name was DeNefreo and Loroco. It's necessary to go all back through this to say how these things come about. They had one man in this family who was a harpist, there were two of them that were harpist. And Roxy Loroco was a standard vaudeville act as a harpist. He was a fine performer and a big name. And his younger brother was a harpist and he wanted to get into vaudeville and so he couldn't--Roxy wouldn't let him use the name. And the whole family said, "Well, he shouldn't take your name. He should use some other name." And his wife was a performer and they worked together. And so he changed his name from Ned Loroco was his name, he changed it to Ned Argo. And he had a little trick of using the name, his wife's name was Virginia. Instead of saying Virginia and Ned Argo, the name got attention because he'd called the act Argo and Virginia, see. So that's where we got the idea instead of saying Molly and Fiber McGee, we just said Fiber McGee and Molly because that got attention. And it's true. It did. It's a little different in radio than it was in vaudeville but it amounted to the same thing. And that's how that came about.

Q: How about the idea for the show itself, how it developed? Was it an agency, was it yours?

A: It was everybody's. It came out of those meetings. And like all through the years we had Marion and I and Don Quinn and another writer perhaps and the producer and about five people would put that show together every week. We had meetings. All that stuff came out of people just sitting down and talking like we're talking. And that's where all the ideas for the show came out of those meetings, well, not all of them but a lot of them.

We had done another show. It's funny to go back to the days of WENR, those four years. We did everything under the sun during those years. My God, we did everything. We worked. In the first place the show was on late at night and it had a big audience in California because it was on at two o'clock in the morning. And Texas. It was a 50,000 watt

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station in those days which was kind of rare. And as I say out of that would come a lot of this stuff and what I was thinking about was we did a show there. It was kind of based on the "One Man's ~amily,"you know. We called 11: the "Smith Family." It wasn't based on that but the concept was the same which was on here in San Francisco at that time. And this Smith family got to be pretty hot in Chicago, you know, just on the local stations. And this was the story of--the theme of the thing was the Irish people. Their name was Smith. He was a contractor. He was a brick layer and he became a contxactor and he became lace curtain Irish, you how. That's what this family was. And they had a sofa, a horsehair sofa and there was a certain spring in that sofa that when you sat on it, it squealed, loud noise. Somebody sat on it one day in the show and it got a laugh, you know. And so we said, "Let's try this again." So it became a running dingest we always called it. So after we started Fiber McGee and Molly we were always looking for a running dingest that we wanted to have in the show. And I can't think now what the running dingeat ended up to be.

Q: The closet?

A: Yes, it was the closet. I was thinking it was something relative to the closet. hat's was it was, the closet. But we tried a lot of things that we thought were funny. And nothing ever happened. And one day accidently we had it just in the script that Don, that this guy was such a slob and he went to the closet and opened it up and showed how dirty, how slovenly he was and out of order and everything and the stuff come crashing out of it. We said, "Gee, maybe that' s a running dingest .I' We tried it again and that was the beginning of the closet. The closet finally overpowered everything else in the show.

Q: Everybody waited.

A: Oh, yes. They waited. And it got to be a sight gag. People would come--it was important to have the people in the audience, the live audience there to perform. We couldn't perform without them. Got so people came to see that done. We had an eight-foot stepladder that he'd pile the stuff on, the sound man on the stage, and on the cue--he had it piled very meticulously so it would make that sound when he tipped it. He'd just tip it like a domino effect, you how. And the people used to just come there to see that. It was funny to have--the biggest thing that happened on one of the biggest shows of radio was a sight gag. ( laughs)

End of Side One, Tape One

Q: Who dreamed up those fantastic characters? How do you cast them, a Gildersleeve or even come up with a name like that?

A: Well, you see, chat's quite a story. You just don't sit down and manufacture it. Gildersleeve was Hal Perry. And Hal Perry came on the show with that voice. And the name Gildersleeve, I think Hal Perry had the name too. Either he or Don. I don't remember which. But that's

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the kind of a guy he was. He had done that on another show. And Bill Thompson was a kid that grew up in the business. He was raised in a trunk. His people were performers, And he didn't have anything in particular when he came on the show. And Don would write a lot of things. That's where he did the old timer and Nick Depopulus and Wallace Whimple. Those were the characters, the three different ones he did at different times. And so they came on the show with these ideas and with the voices that they had done. All we had was the voices to do the show with. And some came that way and some were, Don just wrote them in.

Q: Whose idea was it because it must have been a novel at that time to work the commercials for Johnson, right into the program so that it was just slid in there?

A: There was an act that we had grown up with, Marion and I, when we worked--* worked for a song publisher, you how, way back in the beginning. And there was an act called . . . I forget what their name was. These two young fellows and then one of them, he teamed up with a piano player who had been working with Ford and Glenn. This fellow was with Ford and Glenn and he got together with Jean Carol who was--Carolyn Grady was the name of the other act. And they put the names together Jean and Glenn and they went to Cleveland and they just got hotter than a firecracker. And that's one of the things they did. They were working for Spang Baking Company and they wove the commercial right into the rest of it. That's where that came from.

Q: And of course that was with Harlow Wilcox?

A: Oh sure. But it was the idea of leaving the commercial into the show itself and making it one and important. And you had a different feeling about the product, the people, what you were selling. Successful radio people had a different feeling than people now about--television packers, they don't even know dothe hell they're working for now.

Q: You can't individualize or personalize like you did in those days?

A: That's right. Well, you can but the performers are too smart. They won't do that any more. You're stuck with that thing. You make the combination, becomes bigger than you are. And that's what--the wise guys figured that out T guess. (laughs)

Q: How did you--over the years you had characters, some of them came and some of them went. Why would they leave the show or why did you decide to...

A: Most of them, some of them would leave by necessity. But if it didn't wear well, we didn't keep it. You how. Usually. Now we had Silly Watson, black. McGee had a butler you know. He had this--Silly Watson was the guy's name. And oh, God, he was funny. Probably never seen him, probably never heard him. Hugh Studebaker was his name.

Q: Who was he?

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A: Well, that's who did Silly Watson. Hugh Studebaker. I heard from her--he's gone a long time. I heard from her somehow not Long ago. Somebody's . . . Chicky is her name. Somebody here is in contact with her, has been or something. And that's where that came from. And then when you go to California you lose some. Not everybody wants to go and you don't want everybody. Those people move in and out.

Q: But you also experimented with characters, like Me1 Gordon wasn't always the mayor.

A: He was the mayor from the time he did it.

Q: Did he? I thought he had another character. Didn't he play the weatherman or something?

A: But that's not after--I don't think he did that after he started doing the mayor.

Q: He dropped doing the one character to do the other one.

A: Sure. Radio performers, they come to you, and you know all about them, you know. And they do this and that. Well, then we say, "Well that thing you did on so and so, let's try that.'' And that's the way those things developed. And in a case like that why Don would write the character.

Q: Bow did the character of Fiber change from the time you went on the air until later in the show?

A: I don't know. Maybe a little more bucolic when we went on the air. Because the voices that we used, the name Fiber meaning the old man for instance, that voice, Fiber McGee's voice came from--you had to do something. And it came from the differentiation in the two voices. And you just had to find new ones. I also did--the one that I enjoyed doing was Mort Tupes. I don't know if you have a conscious fame or not. But he laughed at his own jokes. He killed himself. (laughter)

Q: But when you started out, Fiber was more of a liar type thing when you wound up. Did you kind of drop that?

A: Yes. We didn't drop it but we didn't use it in quite the same way. You see, in "Smackout," McGee told these tall tales to this little girl, you see. So when we got to doing Fiber McGee and Molly . . . we didn't stop to sing a song either. You keep the thing moving and that long tale would get too dragged out. It wasn't timed right. That's how we come to. do that. And then later years we got so we, you know, after he became popular and so on we did do some of those old tales. We did some of the ones over again that we had done on "Smackout ." And they were funny as hell. But he was always telling them to this little girl.. But we got so, the reason we didn't do them because it was too slow we thought. But later on when he got to be more popular we did some of them again just for kicks.

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Q: When the show progressed, when you got a real foothold, how important in those days were the ratings as compared to television today? Was there any ratings?

A: Sure. I'll say it did. Even now, my mind is fuller of that than anything.

Q: Is that right?

A: Very important.

Q: How often would you find out where you stood in ratings, was it a weekly thing at chat point?

A: Was it weekly or monthly? I don't remember that. That's funny. I guess they were weekly.

Q: You were up there?

A: Oh, yes. A funny thing, we performed one night at a banquet for . And I don't know whether it was his tenth anniversary or some occasion or something and all the other performers were invited to go down there. It was at the Biltmore Hotel here. And we went down there and performed for Jack Benny. And that day the ratings came aut and we had passed him, that very day that we did that. It's kind of strange.

Q: You did a lot of crossovers in those days. You'd visit each other's programs . . .

A: Oh, yes. But we didn't do near as much of it after we got on NBC as we had done of WENR. That's where everybody worked on everybody else's show. And it was fun too. But then I say we went to the top of the ratings and we stayed there. That was 1941 or something like that. We stayed there until about--we were way on top after that. About seven or nine years.

Q: Your show was responsible probably, I don't know maybe it wasn't at first, but one of the first spinofis, characters from your show was going on and getting their own show.

A: Yes.

Q: Who were they?

A: Hal Perry. . There was another one indirectly.

Q: Beulah?

A: Yes, Beulah. hat's right.

Q: Who played that voice?

A: The kid who was a singer, worked in a trio on WGN where this came from. Tom, Dick and Harry. Is that name familiar? This was a singing trio and 1'11 tell you his name in a minute. He died, you know.

Jim Jordan Memoir - Archives/ Special Collections - Norris L Brookens Library - University of Illinois at Springfield - UIS Jim Jordan

Q: It was a man?

A: Oh, yes. Yes, it was a man. He was a very clever guy. It's a sin that I can't think of this name. I haven't thought of it for quite a while.

Q: How long were you on for Johnson Wax?

A: Seventeen years I think it was.

Q: And how long did the show run, Fiber, on the network?

A: Well, we started in 1935 and we were on the air in 1960.

Q: So you did the show for Johnson for seventeen years.

A: I think it was seventeen, yes.

Q: And people still today think you did it for Johnson's forever.

A: That's right. You see what makes it that way is that we wove the commercial into the show. It had become synoymous. And we weren't new at that either. When we started "Fiber McGee and Molly" people used to go in the drugstore and buy Amos and Andy toothpaste. And that was brought home to us. We were conscious of how important that was.

Q: Did you know Charles Carow?

A: Oh, we grew up together, we're from the same town. Oh, sure. And we see his widow all the time. We're very good friends. -She didn't have anybody in Peoria except Charlie. But she was a performer.

Q: Why did Johnson's drop the show after all those years and after all that success?

A: Well, I don't know. The thing that started interfering with everything right then was television. And we did a half-assed television show and it wasn't suppose to be seen by anybody except the Johnson Company was going to look at it. And everybody under the sun saw it. Everybody under the sun saw it and knew all about it. So they dropped us and we dropped them. It was all kind of a thing. We went with--one of the only things we did after that were Reynolds Metals and Pet Milk. And then we started doing, then after that--the last few years that "Fiber McGee and Molly" were on the air Marion and I did the show that NBC is doing right now.

Q: "Monitor?"

A: hat's right, "Monitor." And we did little vignettes, you know. We were on there, I don't know how many years. Three, four or five years. Something like that.

Q: When you talk about the television show there was another show with other they tried . . .

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A: It was the same thing.

Q: Yes. On television. Why didn't that work?

A: I don't know.

Q: Was it because you weren't in it, because you were Fiber McGee?

A: Well, I'd like to think that that's it. (laughs)

Q: I think it was Hal Sweeney, wasn't it, who played you?

A: Yes, Bob Sweeney.

Q: Bob Sweeney and Cathy Lewis. A: Cathy Lewis.

Q: Very fine actors, but it didn't work.

A: That's right. Well, I don't know what your nationality is but I met Jack Hellman. Did you ever know Jack Hellman? He was on "Variety," and we were very close, very good friends. He, Jack and his wife, and Marion and I used to get together a lot. Jack was a Jew. We met on the street one day and I told him that I thought that it wasn't convincing to have a Jewish girl doing Molly McGee. That didn't seem right to me. I don't how what he said but what I know is that the next day is was in Variety. Oh, God. It was terrible. And she's a good friend of ours. And Elliott Lewis was a good--we had a thing for him a couple of weeks ago. Pioneer Broadcasting. I couldn't go. I think that's the week we were in Peoria at the St. Patrick's Day.

Q: He's doing a series now.

A: He became a director and producer. Yes, he's doing something now. I don't know what.

Q: "Remingtoa Steel" on NBC.

A: Oh, yes. He's a very nice guy and she's a very nice woman. I guess my argument that it wasn't right, wasn't valid. There's no reason why it couldn't be that way. It just didn't seem . . . Q: When "Fiber McGee and Molly" went off in 1960, what did you do then?

A: I've done nothing since.

Q: Why? A man of your . . . A: First thing that happened was Marion died. She died in 1961. That's the reason we went off. We went off, "Fiber McGee and ~olly"went off with all these things, whatever we were doing, because she couldn't work anymore. And we had a contract with NBC, we were doing "Monitor," and they had sent us the renewal. It came to us, we had the renewal for

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three years. And then before we got to reply to it this cancer was discovered on Marion. So I just told the Johnson Company there was no use fooling around. We shouldn't do it until we see what was going to happen. She only lived a year after that. So that ended that. I think their hopes were and ours were too that we would, you know, just the thing would evolve into television. And we didn't want to do television. We just put it off. I was talking to George Burns one day during this time--which we've been friends for a hundred years. And he said, "Well, you're getting, earning such and such." I hope somebody can get that because 1 can never get to it. If I had to go from here to that phone, it'd take me ten minutes. When I stand up I have to stand up. I have an inner ear problem. Imbalance. I'm liable to fall down. Where was I? What was I talking about?

Q: Talking about right after Marion died and you were thinking about television.

A: Yes, we were thinking about we couldn't, you know, I'm sure that the last years that we were doing "Monitor" that the Johnson Company was thinking, we were too, and NBC, we all thought we would eventually go into television. And what I was going to tell you about, I was talking to George Burns and he said, "1 think you're wrong if you just jump right into it now." He said, "You know why we went into television?" He said, "Because we had too. We were doing nothing."

Q: Do you think the network, in retrospect, did they make a mistake by killing off network radio?

A: Well, I always thought that they did. But I believe now that radio is practically back where it was. But I didn't think it was necessary for them just to throw it away like they did. They just treated it like it was nothing.

Q: Were they a£raid to compete against - themselves?

A: Well, they were always so hepped on the television and so on and so forth. I think there's a lot to that. But that did happen. But I think radio has found--1 said if they'd just, radio would have found its own niche, which I think it has at this point. And of course it's entirely different than I ever thought it would be.

Q: But someplace, all the time every day, somebody's playing "Fiber McGee and Molly."

A: Oh, yes. Well, those shows--that's another story. Those shows got out and we sold all our rights to NBC in 1949. And the last years that we did "Fiber McGee and Molly," we were just working for NBC. Why did we do that? So we could have some money that we made. We could get a capital gains tax on the sale of the name based on its future which is what we did. And everybody did it. did it. And Jack Benny. Amos and Andy were the first ones to do it. And because whatever money you got for that you could keep. And you didn't have to pay the tax.

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Q: You said, after the show went off the air, you haven't done anything since.

A: Not regular. I've done a lot of work. You know, just spots.

Q: Have you done commercial work?

A: Oh, yes. You mean made commercials?

Q: Yes.

A: By God, 1 don't know whether I have--oh, yes, I've done some. I did something for Johnson Company.

Q: Did you?

A: Yes. But actually I haven't done a lot, made a lot of commercials. Q: Has it been because you didn't want to or . . . A: Well, it was because I didn't want to and we sold the name.

Q: How about something different? I mean have you ever thought about doing . . . A: Well, thought about it but we never did it because that's a hell of a job. Too much work [to] start over again. You know, you work up and you build a name like that and then you can't use it. It's kind of frustrating And they didn't want me. Nobody wants to buy Jim Jordan. They want Fiber McGee.

Q: What's the difference? Was there a difference?

A: What do you mean?

Q: I mean there wasn't . . . Jim Jordan was Fiber McGee.

A: Well, sure. But nobody knows that.

Q: I see. That's what you were saying earlier. The name becomes bigger than you are. The show.

A: Well, that isn't what I meant by that exactly. But the name, sure. Like the star on the street that they have here. I just got one of those a month ago. And we should have gotten it forty years ago. And you know why we didn't get it? Because at that time they wouldn't use a fictitious name. And we said, "Well, what the hell good does it do to put down there a star. That doesn't mean anything, Marion and Jim Jordan. Who the hell knows Marion and Jim Jordan. Use Fiber McGee and Molly.'' They wouldn't use it. But they got over that. Now they used it, a month ago.

Q: You talked about Elliott Lewis for a while. Didn't Elliott Lewis have something to do with those dramas that Sears put an?

Jim Jordan Memoir - Archives/ Special Collections - Norris L Brookens Library - University of Illinois at Springfield - UIS Jim Jordan

A: Yes, he did. He was directing those, yes.

Q: You did one for him.

A: Yes, I did a couple of them.

Q: Did you?

A: I think so.

Q: How did it feel after all that time to be back on radio?

A: Well, it wasn't all that time. It's been qulte a while ago that those things were done.

Q: Four or five years ago.

A: Oh, I think it was ten or fifteen years ago. I think. I don't know. I lose track of time. But it just seemed to me that it wasn't too long. I think that's one of the first things I did after Marion died was that, as I recall. Seems to me it was only five or six years after that. I don't how. I could be wrong about that.

Q: We miss you on the air. Those of us who remember certainly do miss the old days that you have to just get tapes and listen to some of the old "Fiber McGee and Molly .It

A: Yes, that's what these kids do. And Groucho had this experience and someone else before him. I can't think who it was. But Groucho did a thing not too long before he died, at Carnegie Hall, he did a concert type appearance. Remember that?

Q: Yes.

A: Well, you know what he told me about that? All kids. All kids. Well, how did they how about him? And that's what--I get as much fan mail as I did forty years ago. I don't get as much, but I get it every day.

Q: That's amazing.

A: Yes.

Q: That shows you the power of radio.

A: Well, it's not that. But that they are kids. These sixteen year old kids, this is something new, they get a hold of these things. It's something new. One I always get a kick out of this one. This kid, I don't know how old he was, twelve, fifteen, somewhere in there. He starts off the letter, "I wasn't around when you were in your prime, but I'm a fan of yours anyway." Well, he listens to those shows. It's amazing. And they think it's something unique. Which it is I guess.

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Q: It is unique. You know, yesterday I was at National Association of Broadcasters meeting in Las Vegas and Charles Osgood, the CBS correspondent, was talking and he was talking about radio. And he said, "You know one of my first great recollections when I was ten or twelve years old was Fiber McGee and Molly." And that's what he told the group. And he was talking about the theater of the mind, for instance in radio and television. You have to work a little harder.

A: Oh, sure. We made five pictures, too, feature pictures. And that takes a lot of time. That's quite a few pictures, you know. To me it's just not half as hard as television.

Q: You did other shows as well though on radio, things like "Suspence" and some of those . . .

End of Side Two, Tape One

Jim Jordan Memoir - Archives/ Special Collections - Norris L Brookens Library - University of Illinois at Springfield - UIS