What happens
Jack Benny rings in the New Year with his cast, including Mary Livingstone, Eddie Anderson as Rochester and Phil Harris. Benny announces a resolution to be friends with Fred Allen, which prompts Don Wilson to recall the jabs Allen once aimed at him. Benny then introduces the annual New Year's play, an allegorical fantasy in which the Old Year 1944 is packing up to leave a boarding house run by Uncle Sam and Columbia, while Benny plays the world. The program was broadcast on NBC and CBS Radio on December 31, 1944.
A New Year's Eve radio broadcast, with a comedy sketch and a New Year's play set in a boarding house called the United States, around midnight on December 31.
Characters: Jack Benny, Don Wilson, Mary Livingstone, Eddie Anderson, Phil Harris, Larry Stevens, Bill, Uncle Sam
Listen for: Benny's New Year's resolution about Fred Allen and Rochester's ruined punch, followed by the allegorical play as 1944 hands over to 1945.
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.