What happens
Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve, the water commissioner of Summerfield, is fixing a dripping faucet in his cellar when he finds an old 1903 Summerfield newspaper and falls asleep in an old chair. He dreams he is back in Summerfield at the turn of the century. Gildersleeve competes with Judge Horace Hooker for the attention of Cora Willoughby, the new schoolteacher arriving from Chicago. The Great Gildersleeve is a radio comedy series, first broadcast on NBC on March 9, 1949, with Harold Peary in the lead role, joined by Willard Waterman, Lillian Randolph and Lurene Tuttle.
Summerfield, 1903, and the cellar of the Gildersleeve home in the present day
Characters: Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve, Judge Horace Hooker, Cora Willoughby, Richard Q. Peavey, Floyd, Birdie, Marjorie, Leroy
Listen for: Gildersleeve's rivalry with Judge Hooker over Cora Willoughby, and the picnic supper-basket auction
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.