OTR Holiday Month Day 4: Phil Harris & Alice Faye

My first exposure to the Phil Harris/Alice Faye Show was through a version of their annual Christmas program. Virtually every Christmas they would use the same script and it was a pretty great one. As you can hear in the first version from December 21, 1947, the plot involves Phil and Alice hiring an actor to portray Santa Claus: Jack Benny himself!

It's a very funny episode, not only because Jack Benny is excellent, but for Elliot Lewis' turn as Frankie Remley, who is disgusted with Phil for hiring an "impostor" to play Santa Claus. Eventually, after Jack Benny went from NBC to CBS, he stopped appearing in the Christmas shows and Jack's friend Andy Devine took his place. But you can't replace Jack; the idea of the stingy, miserly Jack portraying Santa Claus is innately funny.

You can hear the 1947 version of this story at archive.org here.