What happens
Orson Welles pinch-hits for Jack Benny on this episode of the Jack Benny program, broadcast on March 28, 1943, on NBC and CBS Radio. Mary Livingstone, Phil Harris, Dennis Day, Rochester and Don Wilson join him. The cast gathers at the studio, where Welles runs the show in his own style. Benny is reported to be recuperating in Arizona, and the group tries to reach him by telephone. Welles then leads the cast through a mystery melodrama, Death at Midnight, in which he plays an inspector investigating a murder with Harris and Day as his sergeants.
A Hollywood drugstore near the NBC building, the radio studio, and a police headquarters office in the mystery sketch.
Characters: Orson Welles, Mary Livingstone, Phil Harris, Dennis Day, Rochester, Don Wilson, Jack Benny, Miss Harrington
Listen for: Welles directing the cast from the studio, the attempt to phone Jack Benny in Arizona, and the Death at Midnight sketch.
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.