What happens
Duffy's Tavern proprietor Archie welcomes actress Jane Wyman to the bar and pitches her a radio mystery he has written, with her as the detective. Eddie, the bartender, is skeptical, and the two men banter about radio and the movies while Archie presses his script on her. Wyman reluctantly agrees to rehearse the play, and the pair read through a parody mystery involving the gumdrop king Marmaduke Van Dextrose, his son, and a detective named Ellery Jane. Archie is the show's writer and Eddie the reader, and the broadcast itself runs for a little over half an hour. The Duffy's Tavern series aired on CBS, NBC Blue and NBC, and this episode is dated November 17, 1948.
Duffy's Tavern, a bar and restaurant in New York, and the fictional gumdrop factory of Marmaduke Van Dextrose in the radio play.
Characters: Archie, Eddie, Jane Wyman, Marmaduke Van Dextrose, Marmaduke II, Mr. Pruitt, Pierpont, Miss Pruitt
Listen for: Archie pitching his mystery script to Jane Wyman and the two of them rehearsing it at the bar.
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.