What happens
Jack Benny opens the new season of his radio show on his return from a thirteen-week summer break. He chats with announcer Don Wilson, Mary Livingstone and Phil Harris about his trip to Europe, including his crossing and his stops in Switzerland and Paris. Mary shares a poem and a gift of perfume, and singer Kenny Baker performs a sentimental song. The episode presents the Jell-O program, the fourth year it sponsors the show, and the broadcast also features a dispute over the band that Benny has hired for the season. The episode is the first of the new Jell-O series and is part of Jack Benny's run on NBC and CBS Radio, broadcast in October 1937.
A radio studio during the opening broadcast of the Jack Benny program's fourth season for Jell-O, in 1937.
Characters: Jack Benny, Don Wilson, Mary Livingstone, Phil Harris, Kenny Baker, Eddie Anderson, Abe Lyman
Listen for: Benny's comic banter about his European trip, Mary's mock French poem, and the dispute with bandleader Abe Lyman over who will play on the show.
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.