Don McNeill's "Breakfast Club"
1934
[From "Twenty
Years of Corn"]
| The Breakfast
Club family really started to grow in 1934. Comedy and singing acts were added
and within the same week in October, both Don McNeill and Jack Owens became the
proud fathers of Tommy McNeill and Mary Ann Owens. Jack had replaced Dick Teela as vocalist in April. The Merry Macs, Songfellows, Three C's, Morin Sisters and Ranch Boys were the featured singing acts. Breakfast Clubbers will also recall the fine appearances of Marian and Jim Jordan (now Fibber McGee and Molly), Bill (Mr. Wimple) Thompson, and Fields and Hall. The audience was growing, too. Fan mail produced enough material this year so that Don would dispense with a script. The saga of Jimmy Darou, a Canadian jockey hurt in a three-horse spill, and the fables and foibles of other listeners have been the standard Breakfast Club diet ever since. |
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Left: Jack Owens listens intently as Don and Walter discuss a program in 1934. |
| Right: Marian and Jim Jordan before they won fame as "Fibber McGee and Molly" |  |
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Left: Jimmy Darou, one of Breakfast Club's earliest fans, sent Don this photograph. "I've never missed a program since 1933, when I was hurt. I really don't know how I would have had the courage to get along without you and Memory Time." |
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