What happens
Gildersleeve wins a canary in a raffle at the Kraft-sponsored episode's home-front setting, but Napoleon, as he names the bird, refuses to sing. Gildersleeve and his nephew Leroy, with Marjorie and Bertie, try to coax the bird into song, first at home and then at the public library, where Gildersleeve and Leroy become trapped after hours. The next morning the newspaper reports the library disturbance, and the family's attempts to fix the canary grow increasingly frantic. The Great Gildersleeve, written by Leonard Ashinson, is a 1941 NBC radio comedy starring Harold Peary, with Willard Waterman, Lillian Randolph and Lurene Tuttle in the cast.
A home in a small American town, a public library, and the town streets, during the winter of 1941.
Characters: Gildersleeve, Leroy, Marjorie, Bertie, Napoleon
Listen for: Gildersleeve's exasperated attempts to get the canary to sing, and the mix-up in the library after hours.
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.