What happens
Jack Benny hosts a New Year's Day broadcast from his radio program, with Mary Livingstone, Phil Harris, Kenny Baker and Eddie Anderson. The episode opens with a Jell-O letter and then turns to Benny and Harris bickering about their rival New Year's Eve outings and their table placements. Benny and Harris also trade jokes about wagering on the Rose Bowl game, and Benny frets over tickets that Rochester has apparently misplaced. Livingstone reads a poem she has written for the occasion, and the program closes with a musical number and a short New Year's fantasy play. The episode is a 1939 broadcast of the Jack Benny series, first aired on January 1, 1939.
A New Year's Day radio broadcast in 1939, with the program's cast trading banter in the studio and at Benny's home and nightclub outings.
Characters: Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone, Phil Harris, Don Wilson, Kenny Baker, Rochester
Listen for: The running bickering between Benny and Phil Harris over their New Year's Eve tables and the wager on the Rose Bowl game.
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.