ARTS 059: Life with Luigi

Afternoon Radio Theater Sundae

On today’s Afternoon Radio Theater Sundae, Pepsi-Mama takes you down the immigrant highway with the show, “Life with Luigi”.

Life with Luigi is an American radio situation comedy series which began September 21, 1948, on

CBS Radio and broadcast its final episode on March 3, 1953.

The action centered on Luigi Basco and his experiences as a newly arrived Italian immigrant in

Chicago. Many episodes took place at the night school classes that Luigi attended with other immigrants from different countries. Another common theme involved Luigi's landlord/sponsor, Pasquale, scheming to get Luigi to marry his obese daughter.

[1] Perennial character actor

and two-time Academy Award nominee

J. Carrol Naish played Luigi.

Life with Luigi was created by Cy Howard, who had earlier created the hit radio comedy,

My Friend Irma. The working title was The Little Immigrant, echoed in the sign-off of each episode, "Your lovin-a son-a, Luigi Basco, the li'l immigrant." Other characters on the show included Pasquale (Alan Reed), another Italian immigrant who is always trying to trap Luigi into marrying his daughter Rosa ( Jody Gilbert); native Chicagoan Jimmy ( Gil Stratton), Luigi's young business associate; Miss Spaulding (Mary Shipp), Luigi's night school teacher and ideal woman; and Schultz (Hans Conried), a German immigrant and fellow student in Luigi's citizenship class. Each episode used the framing device of Luigi narrating a letter to his mother back in Italy.

The show was popular, successfully competing with Bob Hope 's The Pepsodent Show . For most of its run, Life with Luigi aired at 9 pm on Tuesdays. Despite an estimated 30% share of the audience in its timeslot, the show was without a sponsor [3] until Wrigley's Gum bought it in 1950, continuing till the show ended in 1953.

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Join Monica Jones and her crew, on The Afternoon Radio Theatre Sundae on Whose Blind Life is it Anyway, every Sundays, at 2:00 pm (EST), 11:00 am (PST), and with no distracting images to focus on, it will simply take you away to faraway lands, distant times and to meet interesting people, all using your imagination.