What happens
Fred Allen hosts the Town Hall program, opening with a parade of comic sketches, news items and songs. Harry, the stagehand, assists him through a series of bits, including a spoofed newsreel about spinach and romance and an unlikely restaurant scene in rhyme. Later Corporal Bang's amateur hour is interrupted when the studio gong is stolen, and an officer is called to investigate. This is an early 1936 Fred Allen broadcast, aired on CBS and NBC, with Allen, Portland Hoffa, Kenny Delmar and Minerva Pious among the performers.
The Town Hall theater studio, with a town hall program, a restaurant sketch, a station studio, and an amateur hour in the broadcasting studio.
Characters: Fred Allen, Harry, Portland Hoffa, Kenny Delmar, Minerva Pious, Corporal Bang, Sinclair Jones, Professor Dye
Listen for: The gag about the stolen gong and the officer's investigation in the amateur hour segment.
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.