What happens
Jack Benny and his cast perform an original sketch on his radio program, adapted from the films The Champion and The Set-Up. Benny plays a young cab-taxi passenger turned aspiring boxer who hitchhikes to Los Angeles, where he is taken on by a fight manager and trains with a former fighter. Before his first title bout, he learns that he has been asked to throw the fight. The episode, from the Jack Benny series, first aired on May 22, 1949, on NBC and CBS Radio, with Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone, Eddie Anderson and Phil Harris in the leading roles.
A radio studio, and within the sketch, a boxing world in Los Angeles and Omaha.
Characters: Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone, Eddie Anderson, Phil Harris, Dennis Day, Don Wilson
Listen for: Benny's boxer character learning that he is expected to throw the title fight.
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.