What happens
Fred Allen hosts a Town Hall Tonight program on a broadcast from 1936, with his regular supporting cast, including Portland Hoffa and Minerva Pious. The show opens with a mock newsreel about a Williams College psychiatrist who treats a student named Trundle, then moves to a bulletin about bachelors and leap year in Burlington, Ontario, and a sketch about a Mr. Brink who refuses to pay his doctor. Later segments include a comic exchange about mail carriers and a singing lesson by Miss Schrill, and an intelligence-test bit with Allen and Harry. The program ends with a short mystery playlet about two missing elephants, Mumbo and Gumbo, that Detective Mulgown investigates on the Allen Art Players' stage.
A town hall variety broadcast with comic sketches, set in the fictional Old Town Hall, with the sketches taking place in a college psychiatrist's office, a Burlington street, a Tacoma-style doctor's visit, a post office, and a theater's green room.
Characters: Fred Allen, Harry, Portland Hoffa, Minerva Pious, Kenny Delmar, Trundle, Mrs. Berry, Mr. Brink
Listen for: The leap-year bachelor sketch with the Burlington constable's bulletin, and the Detective Mulgown elephant mystery that opens the closing playlet.
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.