Out of Fibber McGee's famous closet came a 24-year radio run whose success and innovation were matched by few broadcasters in the 1930s and 1940s. The series helped forge the genre later called "situation comedy"; it also invented the concept of the "spin-off," with not one but two popular supporting characters winning their own series in the 1940s. Through it all, Jim and Marian Jordan continued as Fibber and Molly, their program setting both ratings records and a patriotic example during the war years, its stars perhaps more deserving of the title "beloved" than any other performers of network radio's glory days.

The Jordan's early broadcasting careers were inauspicious at best. The couple were already battle-worn vaudevillians when, on a bet, they performed on a Chicago radio station in 1924. But their obvious talent soon won them their own music and patter series...