What happens
Dan McGinty, a down-on-his-luck tramp, is recruited by a political boss to vote several times in a city election and then to collect protection money for him. His rise in the crooked machine takes him to alderman and then to a campaign for reform mayor, where a hasty marriage to his secretary Catherine complicates his public image. Brian Donlevy stars in this Academy Award Theater adaptation of The Great McGinty, first broadcast on April 20, 1946, on CBS. The story follows McGinty as political favors and private deals pull him further into a life he never planned for.
A city during a snowy election night, then the political machine's back rooms, a mayor's office, and a state capital.
Characters: Dan McGinty, Louie, Thompson, Brannigan, Katherine, Maxwell, Catherine
Listen for: Dan McGinty's rise from a vagrant voting for a machine boss to a politician with a new suit and an offer of the mayoralty.
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.