What happens
Fred Allen hosts Town Hall Tonight, a 1936 variety broadcast on CBS and NBC, with his Allen's Alley players, Portland Hoffa and Kenny Delmar among them. The program mixes comic sketches, music, and sponsor messages. In one sketch, a Hollywood studio chief fires his writers and struggles to find a new story idea for his picture Curly. A central scene turns on a missing toupee that a starring actor needs for a big emotional moment. The transcript breaks off before the mystery is resolved.
A 1936 radio variety broadcast from Town Hall, with comic sketches set in a Hollywood film studio and other everyday locations.
Characters: Fred Allen, Portland Hoffa, Kenny Delmar, Minerva Pious, Peter Van Steeden, Rancid Honeybottom, Sergei
Listen for: The missing toupee in the studio sketch and the frantic search for it among the cast and crew.
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.