Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:19 — 18.0MB)
Show description is taken from the Jot ‘Em Down Journal, the official publication of the National Lum and Abner Society:
Like the previous show, this one is also based on an earlier storyline that ran for most of the month of October 1941. Lum fakes a broken leg to get out of having dinner with Widder Abernathy (in the 1941 story it was Sister Simpson), but things become more complicated once Squire Skimp files an accident claim with Lum’s insurance company.
We have not been able to identify the actress who plays Widder Abernathy in this program; judging from some of her vocal inflections, she may be the same one who played Elsie Lovelace in the October 3 show.
Ben Withers suggests that Lum be treated by his old friend, Mt Ida bone specialist Osbert Van Shrove (“popular club man and retired air raid warden”). “It would be good experience for Osbert,” Ben claims. “And GOODNESS KNOWS, he NEEDS it!! ” Ben goes on to tell of the unfortunate accident Mrs. Zincafoose sustained during the annual Easter egg roll in Mt. Ida in 1932, a story he first related in a December 1947 episode.
For a change, Wendell Niles delivers the Frigidaire commercial to Cedric, who is minding the Jot ‘Em Down Store while Abner “nurses” the convalescent Lum. As he did some seven years earlier.
Squire suggests that the only way Lum can get out of a jail sentence for defrauding the insurance company is to have his fictitious fractured bone “healed” by a Hindu miracle man before the insurance company’s doctor arrives.
In 1941, the phony Prince Ali Kush (aka Louie) was excellently voiced by character actor Jerry Hausner, whose bogus Middle Eastern dialogue was a string of double talk, liberally peppered with slang terms and the names of Lauck & Goff family members. John & Larry Gassman have identified Harry Lang as playing Ali Kush (aka Muggsy) in this 30-minute recreation of the story (we learn that his native habitat is the Bombay Chili Bowl in Kansas City, Missouri), but instead of double talk he recites the lyrics of bizarre current hit songs, such as “Chickory Chick, Cha la Cha la/Mollica Wollica, can’t you see/Chickory Chick is me.”
By-now regular Francis X. Bushman is Dr. Hendon, sent out by the insurance company to check on Lum’s leg. The similarity of “Hindu” and “Hendon” causes some mistaken identity problems for Abner, a bit of business that seems to run rampant throughout these 30 minute shows.
Noticeably absent are the “Old Edwards Saying” routines, which presumably would have taken up too much time in these faster-paced shows.
