What happens
Polly Parish, recently fired from J.B. Merlin and Son department store, finds an abandoned baby on an orphanage step and is mistaken for its mother. Her former employer David Merlin, son of J.B. Merlin, becomes involved after she is rehired, and he pressures her to keep the child. The broadcast is the Screen Guild Theater adaptation of the RKO film Bachelor Mother, aired February 1, 1942, with Henry Fonda as David Merlin, Lorraine Day as Polly Parish and Charles Coburn as J.B. Merlin. As Polly and David grow closer, the question of the baby's parentage and of David's standing in his father's household becomes a source of conflict, and the story turns on these tensions.
A department store and an orphanage in a city, and the apartments and house where the characters live, around Christmas and New Year.
Characters: Polly Parish, David Merlin, J.B. Merlin, Fred, Mrs. White
Listen for: Polly's surprise at finding the baby on the orphanage steps, and David's changing attitude toward her and the child.
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.