By Bill Knight
As April ends, poet T.S. Eliot’s line “April is the cruelest month” is recalled – along with its actual meaning – and an Illinois couple who succeeded in show business despite April’s bad tidings – and good.
First, Eliot’s opening line from “The Waste Land” indicates how people confined in a mythical country devastated by a pandemic suffer profound disappointment at the arrival of the season of renewal and growth – new life they’re unable to enjoy. Eliot wrote his masterpiece during his recovery from the ‘Spanish flu,” which killed 100 million people.
Next, legendary entertainers Jim and Marian Jordan – most famous as “Fibber McGee and Molly” – experienced both joy and loss in April. Marian was born April 15, 1898; their most famous show premiered in April of 1935; and they both died in April: Marian in 1961 and Jim 27 years later.