In Hollywood on Feb. 15 Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and a notable cast put on the most gala performance of a Dick Tracy story ever known to radio. The occasion was an Armed Forces Radio Service Command Performance, which records programs for U. S. troops overseas. Bing Crosby played the square jawed detective, Dick Tracy, Hope the villainous Flattop, Sinatra the despicable Shaky. Title of the show was “Dick Tracy in b Flat," or "For Goodness Sakes, Isn't He Ever Going to Marry Tess Trueheart?” The show managed to do what Tracy's creator, Cartoonist Chester Gould, had never done: marry Tracy to Tess. The act opened with a Tracy-Tess wedding scene and song, “Oh, happy, happy, happy ... wedding day," which faded into the sound of an auto, the squeal of tires, a machine-gun burst and three pistol shots. Subsequent wedding scenes were interrupted by a bank robbery, a kidnaping, a holdup with 13 killed. At one point Hope sang a You're the Top parody, “I'm the top, I'm the vicious Flattop. I'm the top, Got it in for that cop. I'm a naughty boy, I'm the pride and joy of sin.” But the program's best moment was not in the script and will never be heard on the air. Unplanned and unrehearsed, it is shown on the next page.
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