What happens
Colonel Stoopnagle and Budd host a variety show from the old Town Hall, mixing comedy sketches, music and interviews. Their broadcast includes a mock election report in which the Colonel's presidential campaign is tallied across the country, and a visit from a fruit-store worker who explains how he came to stack oranges into a pyramid. The program closes with a burlesque of the popular crime drama Gangbusters, in which the police chief of Puckering Valley recounts the criminal career of the notorious Buck Tooth Thorax. Throughout, the hosts trade wordplay and absurd definitions, and commercial messages for their sponsors are read between the acts. The series is Fred Allen, first broadcast on September 30, 1936, on CBS and NBC.
The old Town Hall, a broadcast studio, and the campaign headquarters of Colonel Stoopnagle
Characters: Colonel Stoopnagle, Budd, Harry, Peter Van Steeden, Phillips Lord, Buck Tooth Thorax, Cuffbert the Gouger, Timothy Hay
Listen for: The mock election returns, in which the Colonel receives a single vote, and the Gangbusters burlesque of Buck Tooth Thorax's career
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.