What happens
Jack Benny goes Christmas shopping at his favorite department store, looking for gifts for his friends and staff. He is hunting for a present for Don Wilson, who has taken up painting as a hobby, and he keeps buying paints from the same unnerved salesman, Mel, who has dreaded this customer for years. Benny visits the negligee counter, the gift department and the cigarette machine along the way, meeting Dennis Day, Rochester and others. The Jack Benny program aired on NBC and CBS Radio in 1954, with Mary Livingstone, Eddie Anderson and Phil Harris among the cast. The shopping trip is full of mix-ups over what Don actually uses, and the store's staff feel the strain as Benny keeps returning to the same counter.
A department store during the Christmas shopping season in Los Angeles
Characters: Jack Benny, Don Wilson, Mel, Beatrice, Rochester, Mary Livingstone, Dennis Day, Phil Harris
Listen for: Benny's repeated trips back to the art counter and the confusion over whether Don paints in oils or watercolors
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.