What happens
Jack Benny and Mary Livingstone shop for Christmas gifts at a Palm Springs department store, where the staff include a nervous employee named Mr. Blank. Mr. Blank recounts a customer who for years has bought and repeatedly exchanged gifts for someone named Don, and he is assigned to the date department. Jack hunts for presents for his sponsor, his secretary Jeanette, his sister Florence and others, and runs into a series of comic encounters with the floorwalker and store clerks. Jack eventually settles on a box of dates for Don, with nuts or without nuts becoming the source of mounting trouble for Mr. Blank. The episode aired on NBC and CBS Radio on December 13, 1953, and stars Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone, Eddie Anderson and Phil Harris.
A department store in Palm Springs, California, during Christmas shopping season.
Characters: Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone, Mr. Blank, Don Wilson, Bob Crosby, Dennis Day, Rochester, Jeanette
Listen for: Mr. Blank's story about the repeatedly exchanged gifts and the question of whether Jack's date box contains nuts.
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.