What happens
Jack Benny hosts a Lucky Strike broadcast that opens with a rehearsal dispute over the program's theme music, with Phil Harris and Mary Livingstone weighing in. Dennis Day then delivers a lecture on California history, leading into a mock-western sketch set during the gold rush of 1849. Two prospectors, Tex and Slim, are played by Benny and Eddie Anderson, and their search for gold in Mexican California takes a sharp comic turn. Sponsor and closing messages end the broadcast. The Jack Benny series aired in 1950 on NBC and CBS Radio, with Benny, Mary Livingstone, Eddie Anderson and Phil Harris as the lead cast.
A radio studio in Hollywood, followed by a mock-western version of California in 1849.
Characters: Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone, Eddie Anderson, Phil Harris, Dennis Day, Don Wilson, Tex, Slim
Listen for: Dennis Day's California history lecture and the gold rush sketch with Benny and Anderson as Tex and Slim.
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.