What happens
Judge Allen holds a makeshift court in a series of comic cases, with the Judge's clerk Portland Hoffa and his regulars bringing in a stream of odd defendants. Among them are a feuding couple seeking separation, a vain patient who wants damages from a plastic surgeon, and a streetcar motorman accused of drunkenness after a man is injured on the tracks. The Judge's ideas about law grow increasingly absurd, and the proceedings drift from one unlikely case to the next. This is the Fred Allen comedy series, first broadcast on March 28, 1934, on CBS and NBC, with Fred Allen, Portland Hoffa, Kenny Delmar and Minerva Pious in the cast. The recording breaks off before the episode ends.
Judge Allen's portable courtroom, with its ramshackle bench and cases tried on the spot.
Characters: Judge Allen, Portland Hoffa, Kenny Delmar, Minerva Pious, Miss Kurtle, Henry Coy, Pinkbaum, Edward Bells
Listen for: Judge Allen's escalating, nonsensical rulings, particularly the plastic surgery case and the drunken motorman trial.
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.