Leave It to Joan
July 4, 1949 – August 21, 1950 · 43 broadcasts
Joan Davis's last radio series cast her as a department-store sales clerk living with her father -- Joseph Kearns as "Pops" -- with Elvia Allman alongside her. It began in July 1949 as a summer replacement filling the first half-hour of Lux Radio Theatre, did well enough that CBS and American Tobacco's Roi-Tan cigars picked it up for the autumn, and ran a full season at a reported $8,500 a week. Critics were cool; a Billboard review that July was notably unimpressed. Roi-Tan pulled out after twenty-six sponsored episodes, and when CBS offered to keep the show on sustaining, Davis declined -- though it returned briefly in the summer of 1950 to cover for My Friend Irma. Forty-three broadcasts aired in all, documented here from contemporary newspaper radio listings. Only one is known to circulate: the January 1950 program built around a visit from Al Jolson. The rest are catalogued as missing, most without even a surviving title.
Episode Spine
Grouped by year. Jump to the full list below, or open a season on its own page.
1949
1950
Joan Davis's last radio series cast her as a department-store sales clerk living with her father -- Joseph Kearns as "Pops" -- with Elvia Allman alongside her. It began in July 1949 as a summer replacement filling the first half-hour of Lux Radio Theatre, did well enough that CBS and American Tobacco's Roi-Tan cigars picked it up for the autumn, and ran a full season at a reported $8,500 a week. Critics were cool; a Billboard review that July was notably unimpressed. Roi-Tan pulled out after twenty-six sponsored episodes, and when CBS offered to keep the show on sustaining, Davis declined -- though it returned briefly in the summer of 1950 to cover for My Friend Irma. Forty-three broadcasts aired in all, documented here from contemporary newspaper radio listings. Only one is known to circulate: the January 1950 program built around a visit from Al Jolson. The rest are catalogued as missing, most without even a surviving title.