What happens
Fred Allen hosts the Town Hall radio show, opening with a parade of his regular cast and a run of comic bits that include a mock news roundup and a sequence of silly award presentations. Harry Von Zell and Portland Hoffa join in as members of the troupe, and a lawyers' sketch involving Kenny Delmar as a blustering attorney follows. Later, Allen gives a mind-reading demonstration and a spoof of a new invention is introduced. The show then moves into its featured playlet, Murder on the High Seas, in which Captain Funk's ship becomes the setting for a shooting and a string of confused interrogations involving the ship's crew. The transcript breaks off before the mystery is resolved. Presented in 1937 on CBS and NBC, the program stars Fred Allen, Portland Hoffa, Kenny Delmar and Minerva Pious.
The old Town Hall, a radio variety program in 1937, moving into a ship's cabin on the high seas for the featured playlet.
Characters: Fred Allen, Harry Von Zell, Portland Hoffa, Kenny Delmar, Minerva Pious, Captain Funk, Long Pan
Listen for: The mock lawyers' sketch with Kenny Delmar and the playlet Murder on the High Seas, where Long Pan questions the crew after a shooting.
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.