What happens
Jack Benny and Mary Livingstone go Christmas shopping at a department store five days before the holiday. Jack wants to buy a gift for Don Wilson, his announcer of fifteen years, and settles on a wallet, but his choice of card and gift keeps changing. Along the way they cross paths with Phil Harris, Dennis Day and Rochester, and Jack's shopping trip becomes a string of small mishaps with store clerks and fellow customers. This episode of the Jack Benny program aired on December 19, 1948, on NBC and CBS Radio, with Benny, Livingstone, Eddie Anderson and Phil Harris in the lead roles.
A department store in the days before Christmas
Characters: Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone, Don Wilson, Phil Harris, Dennis Day, Rochester, Clerk
Listen for: Jack's changing choices of gift and card for Don Wilson, and the clerk's growing exasperation
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.