What happens
Duffy's Tavern, the comedy series, presents an episode in which Archie, the tavern manager, tries to impress the composer Deems Taylor by showing him an opera he has written. Taylor is a serious figure in music, and Archie hopes that success on the stage will help his struggling Hollywood career. The episode, broadcast in 1945 on the networks CBS, NBC Blue and NBC, stars Ed Gardner and Shirley Booth, with Charlie Cantor and Florence Halop. Archie's absurd opera, performed in the tavern with the help of Miss Duffy, goes wildly off course as the cast gets tangled in a plot of mistaken identities and melodrama.
Duffy's Tavern, a broken-down tavern in New York
Characters: Archie, Deems Taylor, Miss Duffy, Eddie, Finnegan, Duffy, Spike Jones, James Taylor
Listen for: Archie's absurd opera performed in the tavern, with its mock-serious libretto and mistaken identities
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.