What happens
Joan Davis, Phil Silvers and hostess Tallulah Bankhead prepare for a guest appearance by Margaret Truman on the Big Show, a Sunday variety program on NBC. Bankhead fusses over her gown and the other performers bicker backstage while the staff rehearses. Meredith Wilson's orchestra plays a novelty tune, and the show introduces a dramatized excerpt from the film State Secret, starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr., in which an American surgeon is summoned abroad to perform a delicate operation. Later, Truman joins the cast on air, chatting with Bankhead and trying her hand at singing, while the Sons of the Pioneers and other guests are introduced in turn.
A radio studio during a live Sunday variety broadcast, and the fictional foreign country of Vosgnia in the film excerpt.
Characters: Tallulah Bankhead, Joan Davis, Margaret Truman, Phil Silvers, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Meredith Wilson, Dr. John Marlow, Dr. Rivo
Listen for: Bankhead's introduction of Margaret Truman, and the dramatized State Secret excerpt in which Dr. Marlow discovers his patient is the Generalissimo.
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.