What happens
Longfellow Deeds, a small-town postcard poet in Mandrake Falls, learns that a distant uncle has left him a fortune of about twenty million dollars. Summoned to New York by Cedar, Cedar, Budington and Cedar, the lawyers handling the estate, he finds himself pressed to sign over control of his affairs and to fund the struggling opera company his uncle supported. Meanwhile, a newspaper reporter named Mary Dawson begins to follow him. This episode of The Mercury Theatre on the Air, with Orson Welles and Gertrude Lawrence, adapts Frank Capra's film Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. The original air date was February 11, 1940.
Mandrake Falls, a small town, and New York City in the late 1930s
Characters: Longfellow Deeds, John Cedar, Mary Dawson, Gertrude Lawrence, Orson Welles, Mr. McIntyre, Mabel Dawson, Brenda
Listen for: The lawyers' pressure on Deeds to sign the power of attorney, and his first encounter with Mary Dawson.
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.