What happens
Red Skelton plays Red Jones, a drifter whose jobs keep ending in disaster, and Janet Blair plays Anne, the girl he hopes to marry. Anne refuses his engagement ring and urges him to settle into steady work, so Red becomes a Fuller Brush door-to-door salesman. His first day goes badly. He accidentally crashes into the car of Commissioner Trist, who fires him, and he then tries selling brushes to Mrs. Trist. Later, Trist is found dead in his home, and Red is pulled into the investigation. This Screen Guild Theater broadcast of January 20, 1949 is a radio version of the Edward Small Columbia film, with Red Skelton and Janet Blair in the lead roles.
A city in the late 1940s, including a city park, a bus depot, Anne's apartment, the streets where Red sells brushes, and the Trist home.
Characters: Red Jones, Anne, Mr. Wallach, Commissioner Trist, Mrs. Trist, Mr. Seward, Lieutenant Cruz, Ferguson
Listen for: Red's repeated attempts to sell brushes, the sharp exchanges between Red and Anne, and the way Red's string of accidents draws suspicion toward him.
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.