;

FRI, SAT, SUN, May 14, 15, 16

DR. DIGIT'S BLASTS From The PAST  From our issue dated May 16, 2000

The Cleveland Plain Dealer is conducting a contest to replace the ACLU challenged state motto: "With God All Things Are Possible."   Leading the suggestions so far, "Ohio -- Iowa Without That Interminable Nightlife."

The folks at Mattel have launched their "Barbie For President" campaign hoping to sell plenty of their $240 Presidential Candidate Barbies.   Let's hope she does better than Liddy did.

The British Parliament is on the verge of removing the 11 p.m. closing requirement of pubs that's been in effect for 80 years.    Now if they can just keep those dentists' offices open a little later.

To bolster slumping sales, Coca-Cola will sack 5200 employees worldwide.  Their new slogan: "The Pink Slip That Refreshes."

Until next time, I leave you with the immortal words of Mrs. Francis Scott Key who reportedly said to Frank, "Oh say can you see... you left the toilet seat up again."
_______________________________

Excerpted From THE LAUGH MAKERS  

Were Hope and Crosby Friends Off-Screen?

Bob and Bing met while working in vaudeville.  A mutual friend who thought they would compliment each other on stage, introduced them.   The friend was correct -- they seemed to have an immediate rapport and enjoyed visiting each other on the circuit where they would do short comedy bits called “cross-overs” (i.e., Two lawyers running into each other… they meet center stage and pick each other’s pocket.)  A producer at Paramount Pictures Corporation in Hollywood happened to see them on stage together and sensed they might be able to transfer the chemistry they shared from stage to screen.  Thus, the “road” pictures were born -- a collaboration that would prove to be one of the most successful film franchises in the history of Hollywood.

On the night of October 14, 1977, only two months after I had joined Bob Hope’s writing  staff, the phone in our Burbank condo rang. It was Hope calling from New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel where he had just learned that Bing Crosby had suffered a fatal heart attack while playing golf in Spain.  He said he was suffering from the worst headache he’d ever endured, had canceled the show that was scheduled that night in New Jersey (Bill Cosby subbed for him), and was flying straight home.  News of Bing’s death stunned Hope since both were the same age (born twenty-seven days apart in 1903) and, while not the pals the Road pictures had led the public to believe — they seldom saw each other socially — they had been inordinately successful business partners and shared a mutual respect.

In the mid-forties, Hope had teamed up with Bing to buy a Texas oil well with some of their movie profits.  Soon, the black gold began gushing in and a vial of it was still on display in Hope’s Toluca Lake office.  Aside from sharing a mutual love of golf -- Bing was a 3 handicap, Hope an 8 -- both enjoyed baseball and once owned shares in the Cleveland Indians baseball team and constantly advised each other of investment opportunities.  In fact, Hope told me once that in the early 40s, when both hosted successful radio shows (Bing‘s was called “The Kraft Music Hall“) and the road pictures were packing them in, their weekly income could reach $150,000.  “We couldn’t invest it fast enough,” he confessed. 

While interacting on the screen, both performers seemed a lot alike.  In truth, they were not.  Hope was gregarious and enjoyed his fans while Bing was more of a loner, preferring to get his work done so he could get back to the tenth tee.  Between takes on a movie set, Hope enjoyed exchanging banter with the crew working behind the camera and counted many of them among his friends.  Bing, on the other hand, was notorious for sitting by himself, engaged in some lone activity like checking race results to see how his horses had done.  In truth, Hope was something short of the “hail-fellow-well-met” that he appeared to be on the screen, but hardly the icy tycoon that some in Hollywood imagined him to be — a characterization that could, at times, accurately describe his pal, Bing.  In the early forties, the Friars’ Club, an exclusive fraternity of successful actors and comedians, decided to honor Hope with a roast.  Though a seat on the dais had been reserved for him, Bing, a Friars’ board member, failed to show up.  Later, when asked by a reporter why he hadn’t attended Hope’s roast, Bing replied, “I wasn’t hungry.”

(Next week:  Hope opens the Perth Entertainment Center in 1978)
_________________________

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WakiLeaks: History Declassified 2000 (Vol. One) is now available on Kindle for $2.99

Compiled from Bob's newsletter "Funnyside Up" published in 2000. This is a yuck and chuckle-filled stroll down memory lane to a time before the Bush administration had inflicted its damage -- a time before the search for WMDs and Osama bin Laden. See what we were laughing at back then, who was in the news and who had yet to enter rehab -- which NFL stars had yet to do time in the Gray Bar Hotel.

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