What happens
Fred Allen hosts a comedy broadcast in which his guest is Orson Welles, who is said to be recovering from a breakdown of personality after months in a dramatic role. Portland Hoffa and Minerva Pious join the banter, and the show takes up the chicken surplus that the Department of Agriculture has been trying to reduce. Kenny Delmar appears as Senator Claghorn and Parker Fennelly as Titus Moody, offering their own remedies for the glut. Allen's regular cast trades jokes about vocabulary and housewives' cooking, while a comic version of Les Miserables is staged, with Welles drawn back to a microphone. The broadcast first aired on March 3, 1946, on CBS and NBC.
A radio comedy show broadcast from a studio, with the Alley sketches, a fictional rest home on 52nd Street, and a staged version of Les Miserables.
Characters: Fred Allen, Portland Hoffa, Kenny Delmar, Minerva Pious, Orson Welles, Senator Claghorn, Titus Moody, Mrs. Nussbaum
Listen for: Listen for Senator Claghorn's chicken recipe, Titus Moody's account of the pig and the hen with china eggs, and the Les Miserables sketch in which Orson Welles is drawn back to the microphone.
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.