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Show description provided by the Jot ‘Em Down Journal, the official publication of the National Lum and Abner Society:
This is one of the few 30 minute shows that is based upon a storyline from the 15-minute days, in this case a March 1944 show. L&A become convinced that Cedric is a mind reader when he is able to tell them the contents of a grocery list lying on the floor (it is one of his own lists he dropped the day before). The radio show Take It and Beat It is to broadcast from Little Rock next week, and L&A plan to get Cedric on the show, have him mindread the answers, and win the $21,000 prize.
Oddly enough, before too many minutes have passed. Squire Skimp has signed on as Cedric’s personal manager Ben Withers suggests the services of Mt. Ida lawyer Russell Aultmeyer, a relative of George Bimbault (“his cousin in law by marriage”). Russell’s greatest triumph was defending a man who had been accused of stealing a 1922 Buick. When he won the case, the man didn’t have the money to pay Russell, so he gave him the car.
A crucial plot development concerns the fact that Cedric is only six years old. Inasmuch as he was born on February 29, that means he only has a birthday every four years. This intriguing concept goes all the way back to some of the Pine Ridge News issues that were offered through Horlick’s Malted Milk in the 1930’s.
Squire plans to book Cedric on a vaudeville tour, but has to line up some other acts as well.
His questionable acquaintances are drawn from a couple of similar routines from earlier years, including the 1943 search for Neosho the Mind Reader and the 1948 reenactment of the story of L&A’s circus. (“Lady Minerva the Mermaid… Only mermaid in the world to be shot from a cannon, and Lands in only two feet of water and comes up” with an American flag on her dorsal fin.”) Soon enough, he learns that Cedric’s mind reading is nonexistent (as is Cedric’s mind), and he generously sells the manager’s contract back to Lum.
After Wendell Miles sells a Frigidaire to one Mrs. Dilbeck over the party line, L&A and Cedric depart for Little Rock.
Just before going on the air, they too discover the secret of Cedric’s amazing powers. The broadcast begins: The quiz- master, Eddie Cobb, is played by longtime L&A associate Charles Lyon, and his ingratiating sidekick is veteran radio actor Joseph Kearns. The contestant immediately preceding Cedric is a whiny-voiced housewife played by Gloria Blondell. (Lauck & Goff and their staff had originally noticed her in the role of a telephone operator on an obscure comedy show starring Bob Sweeney and Hal March.) The housewife, Mrs. Bibberson. wins such terrific prizes as “A case of Dr. Sampson’s New Improved False Teeth Cement, a one-year subscription to Modern Priseilly, an all-expense trip for three to romantic Minot, North Dakota, a complete set of Morocco-bound pictures of the vicepresidents of the United States, an all-expense trip for three back from Minot, North Dakota, and a glass bottom canoe.”
In a finish that has to be heard to be understood, Cedric actually manages to win the $21,000 jackpot, much to Mrs. Bibberson’s disappointment
