The run
- Network
- CBS
- Years active
- 1948–1952
- Surviving broadcasts
- 138
- Genre
- sitcom
J. Carrol Naish as an Italian immigrant writing home to Mama — a huge CBS hit whose warmth and caricature both belong to their moment. Public-domain transfers from the Internet Archive, harvested from the Old Time Radio Researchers collections and indexed episode by episode.
Source collection
Internet Archive audio collections
Rights
Public domain — no renewed US copyright
Cataloguing
Air dates and notes from the Archive item record
The shape of the run
What survives, year by year
33 dated broadcasts across 79 years on the air, with 75 years where nothing is known to survive. Brightness is transfer quality; empty cells are months lost to time.
Episodes
Start here
Listen to the run in order
Restored broadcasts from 2024, in original transmission order.
- 1. Signal at Midnight · 19 Nov 2024
- 2. The Last Train Out · 26 Nov 2024
- 3. Night Broadcast · 3 Dec 2024
The Last Train Out
4 Aug 2026 · 36 min
A quiet beginning that turns, halfway through, into something else entirely.
Signal at Midnight
28 Jul 2026 · 51 min
The one everybody argues about.
A Room Above the Street
21 Jul 2026 · 14 min
Short, complete and unexpectedly devastating.
The Long Silence
14 Jul 2026 · 29 min
New tape, a reluctant witness, and a timeline that finally stops making sense.
Dead Air
7 Jul 2026 · 44 min
We go back to the beginning and read everything again.
Sign Off
30 Jun 2026 · 59 min
Three interviews, one archive reel, and a question nobody wanted asked.
The Case of the Missing Hour
23 Jun 2026 · 22 min
Recorded on location, with the room left in.
Night Broadcast
16 Jun 2026 · 37 min
New tape, a reluctant witness, and a timeline that finally stops making sense.
Also on CBS
CBS in 1948–1952
Other series the network carried while Life with Luigi was on the air.
Same seasons
sitcom on the air then
Series in the same genre whose runs overlapped this one.
What it became
The family at home
One house, a recurring cast, and comedy made from small domestic friction. Fibber McGee, Blondie and Ozzie and Harriet built the situation comedy before television claimed it.
Lineage is written by our editors, not inferred from listening data.
Descendants
Working in the tradition of Life with Luigi
Modern series carrying this form forward.
If you liked this
More to explore
Chosen by the same editors.
