Magnificent Montague - Diet

March 16, 2026·29 min·2 clips

Edwin Montague faces a diet of dry toast and black coffee while his wife insists he has a spare tire 'off a Greyhound bus'.

First come the sponsors. RCA Victor, Chesterfield, and Anacin all get their turn before the comedy settles in. Montague arrives in full suffering-actor mode, with Jarvis helping him remember the old stage days as if the theater depended on them personally. Agnes cuts through that pretty fast. She turns Macbeth's thunder into kitchen-table trouble and gets banished back toward the breadbox for her trouble. Then the rehearsal starts. Jarvis plays Macduff, Montague plays Macbeth, and the room fills with swords, speeches, and big battlefield energy. The problem is stamina. Macbeth is not beaten by fate here. He is beaten by being winded in the middle of the scene. Montague finally says what is really bothering him: someone told him he looks fat, and the thought of appearing in tights has become its own private disaster. Jarvis tries to be loyal. He calls Montague noble and classic, but every compliment gives Montague another angle to worry about. Agnes is sharper and funnier. She keeps yanking the scene out of grand tragedy and back toward crumbs, pace, and plain sense. The wife helps keep the room steady while Montague and Jarvis keep circling the same wounded ego. That is where the joke works best. Macbeth crashes into vanity, stage glory bumps into sponsor copy, and Montague's big image of himself cannot get past his waistline. The excerpt closes with Don Pardo naming the creators, cast, organist, and NBC programming, snapping the whole fuss back into radio-business speed.

As heard by us

A rehearsal, a diet, and Macbeth collide in brisk old radio comedy.

The Magnificent Montague turns a Macbeth rehearsal into a neat little comedy of vanity, and that is where it lands best. Montague keeps trying to hold onto the tragic tone while Jarvis and Agnes drag everything back toward ordinary life, until the real grievance comes out: he…

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Why you'd press play

For when Macbeth meets a waistline check, and the noble tragedy gets played for radio-broad comedy.

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