The Kangaroo
Alice demands that freeloading Frankie finally find work, and his newest ridiculous job prospect leads the household into a scheme involving a kangaroo.
The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show turns two real entertainment personalities into exaggerated radio versions of themselves. Harris plays the boastful bandleader who is forever overestimating his own cleverness, while Alice Faye supplies the steadier voice at home. Family life, music, money and show business all become part of the same comic household.
NBC comedy/situation-comedy and music vehicle starring fictionalized versions of Phil Harris and Alice Faye with a recurring family, band and supporting cast.
The run breaks into several distinct periods: Fitch Bandwagon: Phil Harris-Alice Faye era (September 29, 1946 to May 23, 1948) on NBC Radio Network, Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show: Rexall era (October 3, 1948 to June 4, 1950) on NBC Radio Network, and Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show: RCA era (October 1, 1950 to June 18, 1954) on NBC Radio Network.
Names that turn up again and again in the surviving run include Elliott Lewis (performer), Phil Harris (performer), Alice Faye (performer), Bill Forman (announcer), Walter Tetley (performer), Anne Whitfield (performer), and Jeanine Roos (performer).
Across its run, the surviving broadcasts are tied to NBC Radio Network, Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, and Armed Forces Radio Service.
The stories often return to music, bands and performance, family and domestic life, money, shopping and household finances, radio work and broadcasting, pets and animals, and travel and vacation.
The show also sits in a wider radio history that includes Postwar domestic and family situation comedy, Commercial sponsorship in network radio comedy, and Hollywood celebrity adapted to radio domestic comedy.
If you are following the same actors and creative circles, related programs worth opening next include Lux Radio Theatre, Screen Directors Playhouse, The Railroad Hour, The Whistler, and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.
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Alice demands that freeloading Frankie finally find work, and his newest ridiculous job prospect leads the household into a scheme involving a kangaroo.
Phil and Alice persuade Mr. Scott to rehire Frankie, but Scott agrees only to put him to work washing dishes at the Rexall soda fountain rather than returning him to…
Already two days late buying Alice's birthday present, Phil sends Frankie to purchase a negligee on his account and gives his friend far too much freedom with the charge.
Phil, Alice, and their friends argue over competing vacation plans until a parking ticket sends Phil to City Hall and derails the supposedly relaxing trip before it even begins.
Phil assumes an important visit from sponsor Mr. Scott means he is about to be fired, but the real problem centers on Scott's daughter and drags Phil into another unwanted…
Phil takes the family to the Clyde Beatty Circus with free tickets from Frankie, but his vanity and Frankie's questionable arrangements threaten to turn the outing into another fiasco.
Alice invites the children's school principal and her husband to Easter dinner, leaving Phil to endure an evening he expects to be painfully dull and overly proper.
Studio executives offer Phil a tiny movie part as bait to lure Alice back to films, but Phil treats the two-word role as the beginning of a major screen career.
Phil tries to prove useful during spring cleaning but injures himself almost immediately and turns a simple household chore into a string of accidents.
Two days before Mother's Day, Phil realizes he has forgotten Alice's gift and goes shopping with too little money while she points out increasingly expensive possibilities.
Phil accepts an invitation to the Scotts' lawn party, where his involvement with the family's Cadillac and garden arrangements leads to a spectacular mishap around the swimming pool.
Phil buys a bargain yacht sight unseen for the family's vacation, only to discover the Flying Mermaid is a decrepit wreck that turns his dream of becoming Commodore Harris into…
After weeks of family pressure, Phil finally agrees to a picnic, only to face a dawn start, a band rehearsal, and a crowd of overenthusiastic companions before the outing even…
Phil prepares for a tonsillectomy with melodramatic fear, while Alice, the children, Willie, and Frankie make his anxiety worse with jokes about surgery and mortality.
Phil and Alice answer a frantic call from Frankie and discover his foster-child arrangement has brought a young French orphan into his already chaotic life.
Frankie plans a hasty marriage so he can adopt a French orphan, but when the boy's relatives are found, Phil and Julius stage an obnoxious-son routine to scare off Frankie's…
As the season ends, Phil becomes increasingly worried that Rexall may not renew the show after Alice reminds him how little the sponsor thinks of his band and comedy.
Phil finally returns from a fishing trip weeks later than promised, and the family retaliates by pretending they barely recognize the husband and father who stayed away so long.
Phil is forced by his sponsor to keep regular nine-to-five office hours, a routine completely at odds with his late-night habits and lack of enthusiasm for ordinary business life.
Fed up with Frankie constantly borrowing his new Cadillac, Phil tricks him into choosing his own bargain used car, but the scheme ends with the wreck crashing through a storefront…
Phil discovers three gray hairs and instantly decides that age has destroyed his looks and career, while Alice and the children mercilessly exaggerate his supposed decline.
A newspaper sensationalizes Phil's scuffle at the Encino Market, and Phil struggles to explain the embarrassing fight to Alice and Remley.
Phil grows suspicious when sponsor Mr. Scott throws a formal party in the Harrises' honor, convinced the unexpected kindness must conceal some bad news.
A ukulele craze sweeps through Phil, Frankie, and their friends, with Phil reviving his claims of past musical greatness while Alice suffers through their terrible playing.
Rexall tests whether Phil can carry a television program by filming his radio rehearsal, but Phil treats the screen test like a costume spectacle and arrives dressed as a cowboy.
A doctor tells restless Phil he needs constructive manual work, so Phil declares himself an engineer and sets out to build something useful despite having no real idea what he…
A studio talent scout notices the Harris children in a school play, and Phil's pride in their supposed movie potential turns a simple screen test into another family show-business obsession.
After Alice criticizes Phil's bad gambling habits and urges him to invest wisely, Phil becomes interested in a very different opportunity: backing a female wrestler.
The intimidating wrestler Myrtle McGursky takes over the Harris household, and Phil tries to find a way to move her out by turning her into someone else's problem.
Phil shops for an expensive Christmas present for Alice, but his efforts to improve the household eventually become tangled with plans for labor-saving kitchen appliances.
While decorating for Christmas, Phil discovers the neighborhood still needs a tree and becomes involved in an expedition to get one from the mountains.
Phil promises the children they can stay up to see Santa and once again plans to play the role himself, despite Alice's vivid memory of how badly his previous Santa…
A badly hungover Phil starts New Year's Day facing criticism from Alice and William, while his attempts to improve himself lead toward an ill-suited ambition for the concert stage.
Phil agrees to care for sponsor Mr. Scott's valuable French poodle, but looking after Madame Bovary quickly turns into a disaster involving the dog's carefully groomed appearance.
After an all-night stag party, Phil and Frankie sneak home through the cellar to avoid Alice, only to become entangled in a household furnace problem while trying not to be…
Phil's birthday celebration goes sour when Willie presents him with a bizarre modern statue that Phil despises and desperately wants out of the house.
Phil prepares to travel to New York with Jack Benny's cast while Frankie, excluded from the trip, schemes to raise his own fare by pawning Phil's valuable wristwatch.
Hungry for New York publicity, Phil stages a fake Brooklyn Bridge jump, but the stunt goes wrong when he is pushed into the river for real and Alice has to…
While waiting for a late Frankie at NBC in New York, Phil and Alice become confused about their studio assignment and are drawn into the wrong broadcast setup.
Returning home from New York, Phil and Alice are greeted not by a peaceful homecoming but by a pile of unpaid bills and the financial trouble waiting for them in…
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