What happens
Fred Allen's Town Hall Tonight variety show presents a comedy sketch called Murder Backstage. At a theater, a midget performer, Tiny Tessa, has been shot in her dressing room, and the manager calls in a detective, Long Pan. The detective questions the vaudeville acts one by one, including a magician, a strongman, a ventriloquist and his dummy. Before the case is resolved, the sketch turns toward the performers' own comic routines, and the scene is broken by Fred Allen and the ensemble. The episode aired on March 4, 1936, on CBS and NBC, and features Fred Allen, Portland Hoffa, Kenny Delmar and Minerva Pious.
A town hall variety show, with comedy sketches set in a theater backstage and in various comic scenes.
Characters: Fred Allen, Portland Hoffa, Kenny Delmar, Minerva Pious, Long Pan, Tiny Tessa, Joe Cuff, Lippo
Listen for: Long Pan's interrogation of the backstage performers and the ventriloquist's dummy routine.
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.