What happens
Fred Allen's Town Hall Tonight broadcast of June 3, 1936 opens with the usual mix of comedy and music, including a stroll through the crowd outside the old town hall, a barter theater sketch in which patrons pay for tickets with vegetables and livestock, and a rehearsal scene at a New Jersey jail where a policeman struggles to act out a criminal identification film. The program also features a quartet number and a commercial break before its main playlet, Murder in the Chop House, begins. In that drama, a cowboy named Trapper Allen is put on trial in Whipple Tree, Arizona, for the murder of a waiter at the Wet Dog Cafe, and he tells the court how his hard childhood and failed romances led him to New York City. The recording breaks off as his story continues.
Town Hall Tonight broadcast in a crowded street outside the old town hall, then the Whipple Tree, Arizona courtroom of the Real Story Court
Characters: Fred Allen, Portland Hoffa, Kenny Delmar, Minerva Pious, Trapper Allen, Amy Frank, Mona, Peppa
Listen for: The courtroom testimony of Amy Frank and Trapper Allen's account of his childhood and his romance with Mona, which begins in the Real Story Court 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.