MONDAY, June 21, 2010

Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria married her fitness trainer Daniel Westling in a Stockholm cathedral.  Royalty in attendance included Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Prince Albert of Monaco, the Earl and Countess of Wessex, Queen Latifah and Larry King.

John Lennon's handwritten lyrics to “A Day In The Life,”  have sold for $1.2 million at auction.  However, no bids were placed for a list of lunch orders written on the same day by Ringo before he left on his daily McDonald’s run.   

Citing an equipment glitch in one of its processing plants, Campbell Soup Company recalled 15 million pounds of SpaghettiOs with meatballs.  For reasons still being investigated, the wire basket trolling the meatball through the sauce suddenly snapped.

The Learning Channel has signed Sarah Palin to host a series on “what it feels like being an Alaskan.”  The show will take viewers into Sarah’s adventure-filled world and producer Rob Burnett (American Idol) hopes it will live up to it’s motto:  “Mediocrity -- not just for the elite few.”

Starting on July 1, Disney will provide specially-trained free interpreters to help non-English speaking tourists visiting its theme parks.  A recent study showed that foreigners often need help locating gift shops to purchase over-priced items they don’t need.
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Excerpted From THE LAUGH MAKERS  

[Bob Hope, Florence Henderson and Barbara Eden are going through Customs in Perth, Australia in 1978.  Charo is the Customs Officer.)

CHARO: What’s going on out here? (to Hope) What are you, a hooligan? I am Inspector Charo. I will inspect your bags, look in your socks, feel in your shoes, open your shirt...

HOPE: Keep going. I may stay at the airport.

CHARO: What is your nationality?

HOPE: I’m an American.

CHARO: You can’t be American. You don’t talk like me.

HOPE: Who does?

CHARO: I must fill out this form. Please indicate the province, state, kingdom, territory, principality or protectorate from which the applicant originally immigrated. (deep breath)

HOPE: Could you read that again?

CHARO: What’s the matter, you don’t understand my inflections?

BARBARA: That’s just the problem. He can’t take his eyes off of them.

FLORENCE: Bob, tell her where you were born or we’ll be here all day.

HOPE: I was born in England. Here’s my birth certificate. (hands it to her)

CHARO: (looks at it) Wow! It’s not every day you see something signed by Queen Victoria!

HOPE: Isn’t that incredible? She was dead forty years at the time.

Interestingly, it was just about this time that we began using Hope’s advancing years as a joke topic. Previously, he’d been sensitive on the subject, but now that he’d reached seventy-five, it seemed silly to keep pretending he was sixty. While age would never become the driving force in Hope’s routines as it would for George Burns, more frequent references to it would find their way into our scripts.

CHARO: Now I must examine your passport.

HOPE: Here you are, darling. (hands it to her)

CHARO: (looks at it) This is a very good likeness.

BARBARA: It should be. It’s by Michelangelo.

HOPE: Wouldn’t you help a starving art student who needed the work?

CHARO: This says your occupation is comedian.

HOPE: That’s right.

FLORENCE: I hope the Aussies don’t have a law against falsifying official documents.

CHARO: I must examine your luggage. Please place your suitcase here on the table.

(Hope tries to lift the bag and it doesn’t budge. He tries two hands with no success.)

HOPE: Some wise guy nailed it to the floor!

FLORENCE: Bob, stand aside. (She easily places the suitcase on the table)

HOPE: Sure, it’s easy when you’ve been on all those vacations with the Brady Bunch.

There were unique problems in staging a show in such a large venue. The microphones were strung on long surf-rods so they’d be under the audience’s line of sight and director Dick McDonough had a total of seven cameras — three is the standard studio setup — perched at strategic locations throughout the auditorium.

CHARO: (opens bag, removes jar): What’s this?

HOPE: Wrinkle cream.

CHARO: (with tube): And this?

HOPE: My mascara.

CHARO: (with bottle): This?

HOPE: Grecian Formula.

FLORENCE: (to Charo): Keep going. There’s more of him in there than there is out here!

HOPE: How would you like to be attacked by my “Waterpik?”

The items removed from Hope’s bag were small, but they were quickly identified so they would be instantly understood by the entire audience.  Otherwise, to get laughs, the objects had to be large enough to be seen by everyone, like these:

CHARO: (removes an orange life-preserver) This?

HOPE: Don’t pull that string! (She does and it inflates. On the back is printed: HELP!)

BARBARA: He’s been carrying that with him ever since he saw Jaws.

CHARO: (removes a bra with three size EEE cups)

HOPE: (to audience) I’m warning you guys. Never date anyone in the cast of Star Wars!

The sketch concluded with Charo discovering a live girl hidden in Hope’s steamer trunk whom he explains is his tennis instructor. As they stroll off together, Charo decides she’d better accompany them “to make sure there’s no ‘coochie coochie’.” Aside from the all-too-obvious blackout, the sketch worked pretty well considering the obstacles we had to overcome. The real problem would come in post-production. Remember those seven cameras? Dick McDonough was getting such good shots, he had the cameramen keep rolling even when they weren’t on the air monitor, thinking the extra footage would make editing easier. But Australian television uses a different format than is standard in the U.S. — there are more lines on the screen so the picture is much sharper. All the extra footage had to be transferred at considerable expense. When told how much, Hope could be heard as far away as Fiji.

Tomorrow:  We’re off to Stockholm, Sweden
    

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