What happens
Lou Costello wants a butler for a big dinner party he is hosting for movie star Lynn Barry, so he and Bud Abbott go looking for one. Costello's garbled attempts at instructions send them around the employment agency, where Mrs. Niles and Kenneth Niles also get pulled into the muddle. The agency manager and a snobbish English-accented applicant named Arthur Treacher add to the confusion, and the household's arrangements grow more chaotic. The series is Abbott and Costello, with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in the leading roles, and this episode first aired on December 9, 1943 on NBC and ABC. The story is presented as a comedy routine built on mistaken meanings and double-talk.
A house where Costello is preparing a dinner party, and an employment agency where he searches for a butler.
Characters: Costello, Abbott, Mrs. Niles, Kenneth Niles, Arthur Treacher, Lynn Barry, Connie Haines
Listen for: Costello's misunderstandings of Abbott's directions and the exchanges with the snobbish English applicant Treacher.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.