What happens
Jack Benny and his cast put on a comedy parody of the 1930s gangster film City for Conquest during this 1941 episode of the Jack Benny radio series. Benny plays a rough kid who becomes a prize fighter so he can raise money for his brother Eddie, a frail composer. Mary Livingstone, Phil Harris, Dennis Day and Don Wilson play the other roles in the sketch. The program first runs a series of jokes about Benny's recent honor of a footprint ceremony at Grauman's Chinese Theatre and Harris's supposed school achievements. Benny's valet Rochester then calls in with news of trouble involving a mechanical man at the house. The cast rehearses the film's story as the sketch takes shape, and the parody gives each performer a role. The episode was broadcast on NBC and CBS Radio on January 19, 1941.
A radio studio during a live Jack Benny program in 1941, with a parody melodrama set in New York's East Side and a boxing ring.
Characters: Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone, Phil Harris, Dennis Day, Don Wilson, Eddie Anderson
Listen for: Benny's attempt to play a tough kid from the sidewalks of New York, and the running jokes about the footprint ceremony and Rochester's mechanical man.
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.