What happens
Fred Allen hosts a variety broadcast from the Town Hall, opening with a stream of satirical news items about the neighborhood. Several are dispatched through reporter bits: a Woodside landlord bans pets, a family hides a dog in its apartment, a Troy student penny drive, and a Philadelphia baby born with a tooth. Fred then introduces Stanley Woolley Jr., a seventeen-year-old who rents out animals and insects, and the two trade quips about his business. The Town Hall Quartet and the hosts' banter fill the gaps between the sketches. This is the Fred Allen series, first broadcast on April 13, 1938.
The Town Hall, a radio variety show hosted by Fred Allen, with newsreel-style sketches set in New York and other cities
Characters: Fred Allen, Harry, Portland Hoffa, Minerva Pious, Stanley S. Woolley Jr., Kenny Delmar
Listen for: The Woodside pet-ban news item and the Stanley Woolley Jr. interview
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.