What happens
Jack Benny stages his annual New Year's play, The New Tenant, in which the old year 1943 hands over the house to the new tenant 1944. Mary Livingstone, Phil Harris, Dennis Day and Eddie Anderson join him in the sketch. Uncle Sam and Columbia figure in the fantasy, and the broadcast mixes this comic allegory with banter and a running sports-style account of a ball game. The program aired on January 2, 1944, on the Jack Benny show, with the Grape Nuts and Grape Nuts Flakes sponsorship. This guide covers only the first part of the episode.
A New Year's Eve broadcast studio turned into a rooming-house fantasy, with a radio sports broadcast heard inside the sketch.
Characters: Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone, Phil Harris, Dennis Day, Eddie Anderson, Don Wilson, Uncle Sam, Columbia
Listen for: The annual New Year's sketch, where Benny plays 1943 handing over the house, and the comic banter between Benny, Livingstone and Harris.
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.