What happens
Luigi Basko, a young Italian immigrant in Chicago, is pressured by his landlord Pasquale to marry Pasquale's heavyset daughter Rosa, or else pay four months of back rent. Pasquale proposes a bargain: Luigi must gain weight while Rosa loses it, and whoever meets the target weight in two weeks settles the matter. Life with Luigi is a comedy series created by Sid Howard and starring J. Carol Nash, with Alan Reed as Pasquale. The episode is set around the spring of 1949, when the program aired on April 10, 1949. Luigi writes letters to his mother in Italy, and the story follows the couple's increasingly desperate attempts to win the wager through eating, dieting and deception.
Chicago, in the spring of 1949, at Pasquale's store and building
Characters: Luigi Basko, Pasquale, Rosa, Schultz, Mr. Balding, Mama Basko
Listen for: Pasquale's weight bargain with Luigi and Luigi's increasingly desperate eating
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.