Stewart appeared on The Bing Crosby Show a total of ten times from 1948 through 1954. All of the shows are easily available and all were detailed in Jimmy Stewart on the Air. In this blog entry we’re going to take a look at one of the programs from near the middle of that time period. At this point the Crosby show was being sponsored by Chesterfield cigarettes.
Broadcast on December 5, 1951, from 9:30 -10:00 p.m. on the east coast, a mere three weeks before Christmas. Below is a small ad for the show which appeared in the Bakersfield Californian, Bakersfield, CA, on the day of the broadcast:
Despite the large headline on the following ad from The Cumberland Evening Times, Cumberland, MD, the show barely gets a mention in the listings.
The “Jimmy Stewart Spot,” as it is called in the script, runs just under 12 minutes in length. Stewart had appeared on the Crosby show a few weeks before (November 14th) and Bing had helped him shop for a Christmas present for Gloria. But, Jimmy’s had second thoughts and now wants to exchange the gift for something else and once again he has come to Bing for help.Bing takes him shopping at Fifi’s lingerie shop. Fifi is played by Veola Vonn.
We’ve included both the audio and the script pages for this section of the show below. The script pages are from the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (https://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu). If you would like to read the entire script, you can find it here:
“The Stewart Spot”
At the conclusion of the skit, Bing goes directly to a Chesterfield commercial, receiving a little help from Stewart.
Jimmy isn’t heard again until the show’s closing segment:
