What happens
Jack Benny spends a busy Christmas shopping day in this 1944 episode of his radio comedy series, which aired on December 17, 1944. Rochester finishes addressing cards and hopes his employer will give him a good present, while Benny picks up Mary Livingstone and the two go shopping. A stop at a drugstore for a bottle of sympathy soothing syrup, a visit to a department store, and a series of mishaps with strangers and a store floorwalker fill the outing. Eddie Anderson and Phil Harris also appear in the series, which features comic exchanges about gifts, driving and sponsor messages. The transcript breaks off before the afternoon's shopping is over.
Jack Benny's home in Beverly Hills, a drugstore, and a department store during the Christmas shopping season in 1944
Characters: Jack Benny, Rochester, Mary Livingstone, Frankie Sinatra, Pauline, Larry Stevens, Floorwalker
Listen for: Benny's attempts to buy a present for Rochester, the drugstore scene with the sympathy soothing syrup, and the department store floorwalker sequence
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.