What happens
Jack Benny and his cast are in Palm Springs, California, where Jack is mocking the city's crowded hotels, his own borrowed lodgings and his birthday party invitations. Jack and Mary Livingstone trade jokes about tans and rooms, and Dennis Day sings and asks about his own invitation. Phil Harris and the band clash with Jack over his remarks about them. Then the program turns to a dramatic sketch in which Don Wilson narrates how Palm Springs was founded, with Jack and Mary playing the Texan explorers Tex and Curly, who wander the desert in 1853, meet a mirage and a cactus, and find a gambling saloon run by a woman named Tumbleweed Tess. The episode is a comedy sketch, with its jokes and parodies carried by the regular cast.
Palm Springs, California, in the early 1950s and, in the sketch, the Mexican-American desert of 1853
Characters: Jack Benny, Don Wilson, Mary Livingstone, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, Rochester, Tex, Curly
Listen for: The narrated founding sketch, in which Tex and Curly wander the desert, meet the mysterious man on the trail, and reach Tumbleweed Tess's saloon, with Jack's running jokes about hotels and invitations throughout
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.