What happens
Johnny Come Lately is a Screen Guild Theater adaptation, first broadcast on February 9, 1948, of a story based on Lewis Bromfield's novel McCloud's Folly. Tom Richards, a drifter, is arrested as a vagrant in Flatsville and is freed when Mrs. McCloud, the owner of the Shield and Banner newspaper, vouches for him and hires him as a reporter. Richards soon learns that the town boss, Mr. Dougherty, is pressuring Mrs. McCloud to print his misleading editorials. The early scenes establish the newspaper's troubles, the threat of a mortgage, and Richards's growing reluctance to stay in town.
Flatsville, a small town in 1900s America, in the spring of the year, centering on the Shield and Banner newspaper office, the courthouse, and Mrs. McCloud's house.
Characters: Tom Richards, Mrs. McCloud, Mr. Blacker, Frank Critzlow, Mr. Dougherty, Judge Flynn, Gas House Mary, Bill Swain
Listen for: Listen for Judge Flynn's ruling on Richards's vagrancy charge and Mrs. McCloud's first exchange with Mr. Dougherty over the editorials.
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.