Gildy Counts Ten

Former Fibber McGee and Molly Stooge Promoted His Windy Talk.

Laugh into Big Time Radio Comedy

By JAY DEE

HIS HONOR Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve in a quiet moment

Gildy Counts Ten

HOLLYWOOD

THIS is a big year in the life of that extraordinary figure of the radio world, the Hon.Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve. It’s his tenth anniversary on the air. For it was back in 1939 that he was first introduced to the listeners as a stooge with Fibber McGee. beginning the rise that made him one of broadcasting’s outstanding characters and has established his creator. Harold (Hal) Peary, as a major network star. In this development the late John Barrymore played a little known but important part. But for him according to Peary, there probably would have been no Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve  at all.

Peary, who is of Portugese descent and was born July 25, 1908, in San Leandro, near San Francisco, did his first broadcasting as a singer at 17 in the city by the Golden Gate. Five years later he began to concentrate on radio acting and in 1935 transferred his talents to NBC in Chicago. One of the airshows on which he soon began to appear there was a soap opera, “Madame Courageous.” Another presented a then comparatively obscure husband and wife team as Fibber McGee and Molly. An Important figure behind the scenes of this program was a script writer. Don Quinn.

Quinn, listening one day to “Madame Courageous” discovered that Peary was making a standout character of the comedy villain he was playing on the show by the way he pitched his voice and read his lines

“How about that same voice on our show?” he asked the actor when they next met. Finding Peary agreeable to the idea, he then went to work to write a new character into the Fibber and Molly script.

Born on a laugh

ONE night in January, 1939, Fibber, Molly and company were appearing in vaudeville at the Palace theater, Chicago and Peary was doing this characterization. Making his exit, he suddenly realized that the stage was a broad he would have to do some ad libbing to get off gracefully. So on the spur of the moment he punctuated his final line with a weird laugh. The effect was electric, and it brought down the house.

“It was this laugh and that voice together,” Peary says “that later put the character across.” But for some months afterward he continued to make only incidental and occasional appearances, and he never, at that time, had a fixed and definite name.

A few months afterward, Fibber, Molly and company moved to Hollywood, but although the shift from Chicago brought him back to his home state, Peary was not happy about it. Six months later Peary was back to Chicago, where Barrymore also arrived soon afterward with his stage-play, “My Dear Children.”

“I dropped in one night to see the show.” Peary said, “and then went backstage to say hello to John. He wanted to know why I’d left Hollywood. I said that being the kind of radio actor who played a variety of roles. I couldn’t find enough to do in Hollywood.

Stick With the ‘Ham’

“JOHN told me I was making big mistake. Versatility, he said, would get me nowhere. “That ham you were doing with Fibber and Molly.” he added, ‘is one of the greatest things I’ve heard on the air to it.’”

 Peary did go back to California and he did stick to it. But before he returned here he reached an understanding with Fibber McGee and Molly show that the character Barrymore praised so highly should be written into the scripts every week and he should be given a definite name like Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve.

“The ‘Throckmorton’ was suggested by the name of a street I used to live on in Chicago- Throckmorton p1.,” said the actor, “While the ‘P’ stands for Peary.”

In the spring of  1941 tentative plans were made to build a new airshow around Gildersleeve. That fall “The Great Gildersleeve,” as the show was titled, was picked by its present sponsor as a promising major attraction, which it promptly proved to be.

“The Great Gildersleeve,” as situation comedy, began, according to Peary, with little more than the idea that Gildy was leaving Wistful Vista for Summerfield to take charge of two orphans, his nephew, Leroy, since played by Water Tetley, and a niece, Marjorle, done successively by LureneTuttle, Louise Erickson and Mary Lee Robb. Along with the orphans Gildersleeves also inherited Birdie, dusky family servant, whom Lillian Randolph brought to life on the air.

To get legal control of the orphans and their estate, Gildersleeve had to go into court. That brought Judge Hooker (Earl Ross) Into the east and he’s been there ever since. Peavey next important character to appear developed out of an accidental meeting of Peary and an old friend, Richard Le Grand, on the street.

Meanwhile the Widow Ransome had come to Summerfield in the person of Shirley Mitchell. Miss Mitchell had moved here from Chicago, Where she had been acting in radio and was living with her good friend Dinah Shore. One night Peary dropped in to see Dinah.

“That’s a beautiful southern voice,” he remarked at one stage of the conversation. “If you could only act.”

“Listen to the man” Said Dinah. “If I could only act.”

“Well, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to act on my show.”

At this point Miss Mitchell spoke up “I can do that southern voice     How about me?”

Soon afterward she was in Summerfield playing a little stuck up Dixie belle. When Miss Mitchell left the show to marry Dr. J. II. Freidan in New York last year, the window Vanished from the scripts, to be succeeded by her cousin, Adellne Fairchild (Una Merkel). But now the actress will soon be returning here with her husband to live, and Peary expects to restore her to the cast in her accustomed role.

Floyd, the barber, dates from the show’s first year. Then he was played by Mel Blanc. Later Arthur Q. Bryan succeeded to the part and the barbershop became more and more important.

One of the outstanding events in “The Great Gildersleeve’s” history was a contest recently built around an abandoned baby which cam unexpectedly and dramatically into Gildy’s life. Naming the baby enlisted the co-operation of literally millions of listeners. The broadcast last Christmas, on which Gildersleeve gave the child back to its father, is now high up on Peary’s list of favorite scripts