What happens
Jack Benny rehearses for his radio program in his Hollywood studio while his staff come and go around him. His valet Rochester shaves him in the dressing room, and the band and the sportsmen quartet are rehearsing nearby. Dennis Day arrives late, having been caught in a quarrel between his parents, and the cast turns to a spoof of the 1954 film Garden of Evil, with Benny playing the lead role. The sketch begins with two men lost off the coast of Mexico who wander into a restaurant, where a waitress seeks help for her trapped husband. This is part of the Jack Benny series, first broadcast on October 3, 1954, with Mary Livingstone, Eddie Anderson and Phil Harris in the cast.
Jack Benny's dressing room and rehearsal studio, then a mock Mexican restaurant in the sketch
Characters: Jack Benny, Rochester, Don Wilson, Dennis Day, Mary Livingstone, Phil Harris, Gertrude, Paul
Listen for: Benny's account of his vaudeville start and his stingy character, the sketch's Mexican restaurant scene
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.