What happens
Jack Benny rehearses a romantic scene for his new picture, with Rochester reading the lead actress's lines, until Mary Livingstone and Phil Harris overhear him and tease him about it. Benny then turns to the Jell-O program's staging of Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a production in which Benny plays Tom himself. Benny casts the parts, including a mayor of Van Nuys, and the broadcast moves into a schoolroom where the teacher, Mr. Dobbins, quizzes the pupils and Tom is missing. This is the second part of the Tom Sawyer story, broadcast on the Jack Benny show in 1938 on NBC and CBS Radio.
A Hollywood radio studio and rehearsal room, then a small-town schoolhouse in St. Petersburg, Missouri.
Characters: Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone, Phil Harris, Rochester, Don Wilson, Kenny Baker, Mayor of Van Nuys, Mr. Dobbins
Listen for: Benny's double role as Tom Sawyer and the schoolteacher Mr. Dobbins, and the comic quiz in which the pupils answer geography and history questions.
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.