This Week on the Sirius/XM OTR Channel

[Maxwell]

In honor of Fred Allen's birthday, Greg Bell is playing a couple of Allen's shows, including his last radio show, featuring Jack and Henry Morgan. Jack gets off what sounds like a great ad lib about how tight he seemed on the show.

On a personal note, sort of, since it was Fred's last show, he also pays tribute to his last mention of Jack Eigen. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Eigen, he hosted an interview show from the Copacabana on a New York station (don't remember which) which he later claimed was the first talk show of the type that emerged on TV as The Tonight Show. I imagine that's subject to debate.

Eigen later came to Chicago and hosted a similar show there, originally from the Chez Paree, and then from an NBC studio in the Merchandise Mart with one show a week coming from the College Inn at the Sherman House Hotel.

For at least the last year or so of his show, Allen always found some way of getting Eigen's name into his show.

[scottp]

I think he played that "last" show in 2009... I remember noting that the final Senator Claghorn joke was a prediction that the Communist Chinese wouldn't get along with the Soviets... due to the incompatibility of borscht and chopsticks.
(He said it differently, of course... using a word that's taboo now.)

[scottp]

In 2009 on When Radio Was...

[Maxwell]

I think he played that "last" show in 2009... I remember noting that the final Senator Claghorn joke was a prediction that the Communist Chinese wouldn't get along with the Soviets... due to the incompatibility of borscht and chopsticks.
(He said it differently, of course... using a word that's taboo now.)

I thought Parker Fennelly's bit as Titus Moody was hilarious in that episode. "I dress like a rube...," etc.