Shower of Stars

A blowhard banker's tomboy daughter upends her family and community by trying out for the high school football team.

The 1956 line of Chrysler, Plymouth and Desoto automobiles is promoted during commercials and sketches. Jack Benny delivers a monologue, with interruptions from Frankie Laine and Joe Besser; in an in-joke about Laine, Besser cracks a whip and sings Mule Train. To keep the sponsor happy, Benny sells his Maxwell to a Japanese gardener and buys a new 1956 Plymouth. Jack's jokes are interrupted by a singing Gary Crosby, who tells him that his father Bing bought the airtime. Benny is upstaged while signing an autograph for a little girl, who takes his violin and plays beautifully. Songs by Marilyn Maxwell, Frankie Laine and The Sportsmen Quartet. Chrysler tells Jack they want him to keep the Maxwell to contrast their cars, so he goes searching to buy it back, only to learn that Gracie Allen has bought it to use as a garden planter.

Red Skelton emcees this episode saluting million selling records. Guests and their songs are Rudy Vallee ("Whiffenpoof Song"), Martha Tilton with trumpeter Ziggy Elman ("And the Angels Sing"), Georgia Gibbs ("Tweedle Dee"), Gene Austin (medley including "My Blue Heaven"), Frankie Laine ("Jezebel"), The Andrews Sisters (medley of hits), comedians Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson and Flournoy Miller (Mack and Moran's comedy "Early Bird Catches the Worm"), and a Vallee and Gary Crosby duet ("Play a Simple Melody").