What happens
Luigi Basko, a newly arrived Italian in Chicago, is struck by how strangers on his North Hollis Street ignore one another. When the street turns fifty years old, he proposes a block party so the neighbors can get to know each other. He enlists his friends, the Schultz and the grocer Pasquale, to form a committee and plan the celebration. Pasquale and Schultz quarrel over the arrangements. Luigi decides to borrow money at the bank to pay for food, music and decorations. The episode is one of Luigi's letters to his mother in Italy, which narrates the planning in his own voice. The series, Life with Luigi, is a CBS comedy starring J. Carol Nash as Luigi and Alan Reed as Pasquale, and this episode aired on September 25, 1949.
North Hollis Street in Chicago, a neighborhood on the fiftieth anniversary of the street
Characters: Luigi Basko, Pasquale, Schultz, Miss Spaulding, Mr. Hudson, Rosa, Mamma Basko
Listen for: Luigi's letters to his mother describing his neighbours' hurried, indifferent city life and his plans for the block party
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.