What happens
Jack Benny opens the season's broadcast from New York, trading jokes with Don Wilson, Mary Livingstone, Phil Harris and Dennis Day about the press reviews of the first program. Benny reads a mix of praise and insults from the newspapers, and the cast kids one another about their own reputations and tastes. Rochester sends a note asking Benny to pay him fifty dollars, which leads Benny to phone him at his hotel. The conversation turns to a bet on the Louis-Nova fight, a debt Rochester owes to a gambler, and plans for the trip back to Hollywood, which the show announces will begin the following Sunday. The program is a light comedy of backstage squabbling and running gags.
New York City, on Columbus Day, during the opening of the new radio season before the company travels to Hollywood.
Characters: Jack Benny, Don Wilson, Mary Livingstone, Phil Harris, Dennis Day, Rochester, Alice Faye
Listen for: Benny's phone call to Rochester about the fifty-dollar debt and the Louis-Nova fight bet.
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.