What happens
Fred Allen presents a comedy hour of loosely connected sketches, opening with a news spot about the New York circus arriving at Madison Square Garden, then turning to a bumbling poet, taxi riots, and a Hollywood studio where Allen plays a movie producer. Allen's harried studio boss juggles temperamental actresses, a self-declared tough-guy actor, a dieting ingenue and a Soviet visitor eager to learn American methods. The sketches are built on rapid-fire wordplay and mistaken phrases. The series aired on CBS and NBC, and this episode dates from April 4, 1934, with Fred Allen, Portland Hoffa, Kenny Delmar and Minerva Pious in the cast.
New York City and a Hollywood film studio in the 1930s, with a medieval court sketch and a radio studio
Characters: Fred Allen, Portland Hoffa, Kenny Delmar, Minerva Pious, Roy Atwell, Nikolai Nikolovich Masseltov
Listen for: Roy Atwell's stumbling spring poem and Fred Allen's studio sketches
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.