What happens
Fanny Brice, Bob Hope, Martha Ray and Hanley Stafford star in this Screen Guild Theater variety review, broadcast on March 19, 1939, with Oscar Bradley leading the music. The show opens with Martha Ray chatting with the host about spring and Groundhog Day, then moves into a sketch with Fanny Brice as the precocious child Baby Snooks, whose father, played by Hanley Stafford, is recovering from a rash and tries to rest while she keeps interrupting. Bob Hope follows with a rambling monologue about life in Hollywood, and the program also includes a song and a melodrama parody set in Paris in 1894.
A radio studio presenting a Hollywood variety program, with sketches set in a family home and in Paris in 1894.
Characters: Fanny Brice, Bob Hope, Martha Ray, Hanley Stafford, Oscar Bradley, Baby Snooks, Charmaine, Henry Toulouse
Listen for: Fanny Brice's voice as Baby Snooks and the comic sketch in which the father's medicine mix-up leads to chaos.
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.