What happens
Bill Stern tells three sports stories on the Colgate Sports Newsreel, with Hollywood star Madeline Carroll as his guest. The first concerns Duke football player Sonny Bragg and his friend Jimmy McHugh, whose friendship began at the 1939 Rose Bowl and resumed in letters during the war. Bragg describes a near-collision with a German plane, and McHugh turns the account into a song. Carroll then speaks about her work for the United Seamen's Service and reads a letter from American merchant seamen held in a German prison camp, who ask for sports equipment. The broadcast also profiles former prizefighter Mike Carr, who gave up boxing to become a songwriter of Western songs despite having never been to the American West.
A radio broadcast of the Colgate Sports Newsreel, with stories about football players, a songwriter, and American merchant seamen in wartime.
Characters: Bill Stern, Madeline Carroll, Sonny Bragg, Jimmy McHugh, Mike Carr
Listen for: Carroll's reading of the letter from merchant seamen in a German prison camp asking for sports equipment, and Stern's account of Sonny Bragg's letter about the collision with a German plane.
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.