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The Warner Jensen orchestra opens with, Careless. Charlie is still under the weather, and this week we can hear it in both his and Edgar’s voices. It looks like a surgery to remove tonsils is unavoidable. Dr Edgar again serves mostly to disturb Charlie. World famous young pianist, Jose Iturbi plays, the Ritual Fire Dance.
Dorothy Lamour sings, Beginners Luck. Its time for a romantic drama with Josephine Hutchinson playing Kitty Baine. Don Ameche plays her leading man, Alan. She shares her fears as men march off to war, and not knowing if this will be the last time she sees Alan. Station break.
The Warner Jensen orchestra play a medley of Ira Gershwin tunes to include: Alexander’s Ragtime Band, and more.
WC Fields is feeling fine, and ready to torment Don Ameche, especially in regard to pitching the wrong sponsor, namely Paramount studio, not Chase and Sandborne. He tells about an elephant on a train, and a trip to the hospital. Clang clang clang! Charlie enters to continue his feuding with WC. A little politeness doesn’t go far in hiding their undercurrent of hostility.
His ramblings wander through the topics of leprosy, portmanteau’s, acting extras, skeletons and his grandmother. Josephine Hutchinson, star from Alice in Wonderland, meets WC Fields. Since he was the egg that fell off the wall, the two compare notes on the film. He is so over the top, and in his own world, she can hardly keep a straight face in reciting the Jabberwocky poem. Don Ameche sings a tune from Hawaii, Sweet Leilani.
Charlie gets to meet Jose Iturbi, and they share some common ground in entertainment… if there is any. At Charlie’s request Jose plays Chopsticks… but with a flourish. He then goes into other classical stylings of the melody.
Note: The ‘young’ Jose Iturbi was born in 1895, making him one year younger than Jack Benny, and 1 year older than George Burns. In 1937 he would have been 42. He reached the expertise in piano to have made his first world tour in 1912, at a very early age indeed. He first conducted an orchestra in 1933. Just a year earlier he had been in a plane crash, and feared he would never play or conduct again.
