The story of Jim and Marian Jordan has probably been told and retold more than any other tale of the microphone: how two ordinary people from the heartland, through tenacity and hard work, climbed to the heights and showed the Hollywood insiders how radio should be done.

In the mountain of publicity, fact, and hype, a Jordan advocate named Tom Price undertook a herculean task: to pin down every conceivable fact about the Jordans, their times, and the heam. warming radio show they did for more than 20 years. Price, a California teacher, produced a document that can only be called formidable Self-issued in a severely limited edition 1100 copies), his Fibber McGee's Closet is a 1,193. page statistical abstract on the show, its people, its gags, the music, sound effects, writers, spon-sors, spinoffs, influences, competitors. "IF Jim Jordan belched, Tom Price was there to record it," one collector of radio material said recently. Price befriended Jordan in the last ten years of his life. He was given access to voluminous scrapbooks and script files; he was given many interviews, and also interviewed most of the peo ple still living who had worked the show. His book has an index of closet jokes: how many were done, who opened the closet door (Fibber did, 83 of 128 times), and what he was seeking there (everything from Mayor LaTrivia's hat on the show of Jan. 20, 1946, back to the first time the gag was used, March 5, 1940, when Molly went looking in the closet for a dictionary). Price's work stands as a monument to one of the most important shows of the radio era, yet today it is largely unavailable even to comedic radio's most vocal proponents. The oversized two-volume edition sold out, leaving a still-substantial abridgment in print from the author. Most of the dates on the obscure Jordan radio shows of the 1920s and early 1930s come from Price, taken firsthand from Jim Jordan's bound scripts. Dates on first character appearances, on developing gags, and on many obscure specifics likewise come from Price. An article on Fibber McGee and Molly in a book such as this could not be done as effectively or as accurately with out Price's massive work.

The Jordans had, to say the least, a long and hard hill to climb. By the time they arrived at the top of the radio heap, Jim and Marian Jordan —he the amiable braggart and she the salr of the earth, patient and sweet-were middle-aged veterans of the vaudeville wars. They had done literally thousands of radio shows in Chicago and on the fledgling networks. They never played the Palace, but as Robert M. Yoder noted years later in the Saturday Evening Post, the Jordans could match their vaudeville bruises" with anyone. "They played the tank towns."

Jim Jordan was born on a farm near Peoria, IL. Nov. 16, 1896. He met Marian Driscoll, a John's Church in Peoria. Marian was born in Pe-coal miner's daughter, at choir practice at St. oria April 15, 1898. She shared Jordan's dream of a life in the theater, though her parents discouraged it. Her parents were also unenthused when she took up with the farmer's boy who was full of the same silly ideas.

Jordan's family sold the farm and moved into town. He studied voice; Marian gave lessons on the piano. On a referral from his vocal teacher, Jordan went off to Chicago alone, getting work in a traveling revue titled A Night with the Poets. But he tired of the solitary, nomadic way of life: the one-night stands, the poor hotels, the bad hash-house food-these things were tolerable, but the homesickness made it hard. He quit after 39 weeks and returned to Peoria. He found work as a mailman, and on Aug. 31, 1918, he and Marian overcame the continued reluctance of her parents and were married.

The next seven years were full of show business attempts and failures. Jordan was drafted five days after his wedding, arriving in France in time for the Armistice. He joined a troupe and toured postwar France, giving shows. Returning to Peoria, he found his wife still teaching music, and found himself a succession of menial jobs. The lure of the theater remained, enticing them both, and at last Marian suggested that they try it as a team. _{John Dunning}