What happens
Fred Allen hosts a comedy variety broadcast from the Town Hall, with his Allen Art Players, Peter Van Steeden's orchestra, and the Town Hall Quartet. Sketches and banter follow one another. Portland Hoffa and Kenny Delmar trade jokes while Fred Allen runs the show. A scene about a rejuvenation cabinet, a Cornell sheep experiment and a drunk-driving test are among the bits. The evening ends with the players performing a melodrama, Uncle Tom's Hot Spot, in which Liza and Uncle Tom run a Harlem nightclub that a gangster pressures to take up trucking dance. The series is Fred Allen, and the broadcast aired on 1935-12-11 on CBS and NBC.
A Town Hall variety program broadcast on radio, with a live audience at an old town hall, and a Harlem nightclub in the melodrama.
Characters: Fred Allen, Portland Hoffa, Kenny Delmar, Minerva Pious, Harry Von Zell, Peter Van Steeden, Mrs. Gloom, Dr. Quay
Listen for: The running jokes about the cold weather and Mr. Bowers, and the Uncle Tom's Hot Spot melodrama at the close.
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.