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Ah, The Great Gildersleeve, a spinoff from Fibber McGee and Molly.

While I was waiting for the arrival of the Coast Starlight in San Luis Obispo, my lady friend and I sat in her SUV and listened to recordings of McGee from the mid-Forties. I was surprised at just how sharp the writing was. The names of the characters were hilarious in themselves. Mayor LaTrivia and Water Commissioner Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve were funny even before the characters came before the microphone.

Jim Jordan, Bea Benederet, Hal Peary and a great cast of tens. They don't make 'em like that anymore.

Gildersleeve was the first such spinoff to become that big a hit in its own right. They also got three films out of the enterprise, which proved a problem for co-star Walter Tetley---he was diminutive and about ten years older than the Leroy character he played so well, so he wasn't even a topic when it came time to cast those films. Tetley was born with a hormonal problem that kept him sounding like an early teenager for most of his adult life, though he saw and raised his Leroy with an unforgettable turn as obnoxious grocery boy Julius on The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show.

Which is worth mentioning because, while The Great Gildersleeve was the first spinoff hit (in popular and aesthetic terms; the writing and the performances were as good as situation comedy got), The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show (spun off The Jack Benny Program, almost by accident---Harris and Faye got a crack at co-hosting a venerable but moribund Sunday night variety show, NBC's The Fitch Bandwagon, and became the unexpected breakout stars of that show with their skits about their own actual showbusiness life, and the show was finally expanded and retooled as their own) was probably the best spinoff hit of the old-time radio era.

Some other old-time radio spinoffs:

* The Aldrich Family, which began as a series of skits on Rudy Vallee's show and one or two other variety packages and became, God help us, a hit series in its own right by 1942. (I can only take that show in one annual dose, frankly. Adenoidal mama's boy teenagers whose parents sound old enough to be his grandparents just don't float my boat, even if Henry Aldrich could cause a trainwreck merely by calling directory assistance.)

* Beulah, spun off Fibber McGee & Molly and, this time, casting a black woman to play the title role. (A white man, Marlin Hurt, played it on the McGee show. Beulah probably could have been better, but on her own she wasn't half bad, especially when Hattie McDaniel played the role.)

* A Day in the Life of Dennis Day, spun off The Jack Benny Program. (He proved just as deft in his timing here as on the Benny show, but he really could have used better writing.)