Wabash Avenue
Phil is crushed to learn that most of his work in Wabash Avenue has been cut, including his love scene, dramatic scene, and musical number, and desperately tries to salvage…
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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Phil is crushed to learn that most of his work in Wabash Avenue has been cut, including his love scene, dramatic scene, and musical number, and desperately tries to salvage…
Phil tries to break up Mr. Scott's daughter's romance with an older fortune hunter, but every scheme fails until young Julius unexpectedly charms her and wins Mr. Scott's approval.
Phil is horrified when Julius becomes romantically involved with sponsor Mr. Scott's daughter, especially after realizing the boy may have enough influence with Scott to threaten Phil's own job.
Alice's weeks of indecision over buying a new car drive Phil, Frankie, and a long-suffering automobile salesman to distraction as she continues shopping without choosing.
Phil takes Alice to an exclusive Palm Springs hotel for a restful weekend, but his attempts to impress the staff and secure a room create anything but a peaceful getaway.
On the family's last day in Palm Springs, Phil's attempts to relax by the pool are disrupted by Alice's teasing and Frankie's latest obsession with supposed flying saucers.
Phil gives the children a hopelessly confused explanation of the Easter Bunny, so Alice and the girls decide to stage a convincing visit that will preserve his own belief in…
After Alice takes the girls to Mr. Scott's daughter's birthday party, Phil becomes involved in staging a version of Cinderella and brings his own overprotective, theatrical ideas to the children's…
Phil is thrilled by an invitation to Darryl Zanuck's dinner party and becomes convinced his film career is taking off, while the family punctures his Hollywood self-importance.
Alice advertises for a male secretary to handle Phil's neglected correspondence, clashing with Phil's preference for hiring an attractive young woman and turning the search into a battle over who…
Preparing for a three-week tour, Phil needs a trunk and follows Frankie's recommendation, only to become mixed up with luggage tied to gangsters rather than ordinary travel gear.
Phil tries to give Alice a restful Mother's Day by taking over the household chores, beginning with an elaborate Southern breakfast and quickly turning the good intention into comic disorder.
Alice heads to the Motor Vehicle Bureau to renew her driver's license, but her nervous, hazardous driving on the way there suggests the test may be the least of everyone's…
Phil boasts about securing six impossible-to-get tickets to South Pacific, only to reveal that Alice actually paid for them and his knowledge of the hit musical is far less impressive…
Preparing for a European trip, Alice secretly arranges necessary vaccinations for needle-shy Phil, who believes the shots are only for the children until the truth catches up with him.
Phil negotiates a new RCA contract but balks at a clause excluding Frankie Remley, forcing him to choose between a lucrative deal and his troublesome longtime partner.
With Alice trapped in a burlesque contract and the radio show without a sponsor, Phil and Frankie scramble to secure RCA backing, ultimately obtaining a bizarre deal that forbids them…
After angering their sponsor, Phil and Alice are forbidden to mention the company on the air, leaving Phil obsessed with the humiliation of being paid in secret while sounding sponsorless.
As the Harris girls prepare for an overnight Brownie camping trip, the adults' attempts to organize the outing create more confusion than the children do.
Phil takes to bed convinced he has a mysterious fatal illness, while Alice and his friends insist his dramatic suffering amounts to little more than a minor complaint.
Alice discovers Phil knows almost nothing about the coming election, so his political ignorance becomes the starting point for an effort to get informed and encourage people to vote.
Haunted by fears that people think he has no sponsor, Phil becomes determined to confront Mr. Scott about making the sponsor's name much more prominent on the show.
Alice takes the children to Palm Springs for three days, and Phil's claims that he will miss her badly are undermined by plans to entertain his band while the family…
Phil wants tickets to the big football game but is horrified when Alice unveils a new television set, forcing the devoted radio man to confront the new medium he distrusts.
Phil proudly promotes his novelty hit record while Alice and the children ridicule it, and the household is soon pulled into a comic crisis involving a missing baby.
Alice catches Phil and Frankie recovering from an all-night poker game they lied about, then punishes the pair by ordering them outside to water the lawn.
Phil agonizes over a Christmas present for Alice after she insists she wants an expensive surprise, sending him and Frankie on a difficult hunt for something she does not already…
On Christmas Eve, Phil prepares for the children's visit from Santa while memories of his previous disastrous Santa performance threaten another chaotic holiday celebration.
Sponsor Mr. Scott tries to keep Phil and Frankie away from his quiet New Year's Eve party, while Phil waits confidently for an invitation that has deliberately been mailed far…
Alarmed by his tax bill and the cost of an oversized orchestra, Phil is pressured to cut expenses and wages, putting him at odds with the musicians who depend on…
Worried about his future, Phil decides his young daughters should become professional singers and support him, turning the family into his latest misguided show-business project.
When Phyllis wants an expensive toy pony for her birthday, Phil is eager to indulge her while Alice objects to the price and Frankie's peculiar gift ideas make matters worse.
After William volunteers a pint of Phil's blood to the Red Cross, Phil invents increasingly absurd excuses to avoid donating and turns a simple good deed into a comic ordeal.
After mocking Alice's complaints about household expenses, Phil accepts her challenge to do the grocery shopping himself on a tiny budget and learns how unrealistic his ideas about prices really…
Old scrapbooks and courtship letters raise an alarming question about whether Phil and Alice's marriage was ever made fully legal, sending the couple back through the details of their wedding.
After proving hopeless at first-aid practice, Phil and Frankie are steered toward something they can actually contribute: entertaining soldiers at an Army camp for the USO.
Phil cannot stop bragging about his golf-tournament triumph, then breaks one of Alice's prized vases while reenacting the winning putt and creates a new problem at home.
More than a year after his last movie, Phil sits by the telephone waiting for Darryl Zanuck to offer another role and refuses to consider that Hollywood may not be…
Determined to prove he can act seriously, Phil converts the comedy show into a drama and stages his own male version of All About Eve, with predictably ridiculous results.
Spring fever makes Phil desperate for a few days of freedom, so he and Remley fake a nervous breakdown to escape, only to end up stealing what turns out to…
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