Chest x-rays found among the personal effects of Marilyn Monroe at the time of her death have sold at auction for $45,000. Behavioral scientists believe they're the earliest evidence of Marilyn’s insatiable propensity to disrobe in front of any kind of camera.
Memo to the elementary school officials in Provincetown, Massachusetts who have begun distributing condoms to students riding the school bus: That School Board directive asking you to “make the kids safer” meant by installing seat belts… SEAT BELTS!
Oprah Winfrey dethroned last year’s winner Angelina Jolie as Forbes Magazine’s “Celebrity Top Ten List.” Relegated to #18, Angelina was at a disadvantage since this is the first year sub-Saharan orphans awaiting adoption weren’t allowed to vote.
Visiting royal Prince Harry was taken on a complete tour of New York City, during which he proudly wore a METS ball cap. Not that he even follows American baseball -- someone told him METS stands for “Manchester England’s Tetherball Squad.”
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Excerpted From THE LAUGH MAKERS
JUST THE FAX, MA'AM
Hope was interested in new technology even though his knowledge of matters scientific was limited. When facsimile machines first came on the market, we were confident that they would streamline our system of getting material to him on the road. So we decided to use a little drama to introduce him to the new technology. The earliest faxes were installed in hotels for the convenience of their business guests. Ward Grant, Hope's PR man, was the first to put a machine in his office, so we decided to use it to demonstrate their value the next time he called for material.
A few days later, he called me from New York. He was leaving shortly to fly to his next gig in Boston and needed lines on several breaking news stories. "I'll call you around three your time after I get to the hotel," he said. Ordinarily, I'd notify the others, and they'd call me back with their lines to deliver to Hope verbally. But this time, we'd deliver our typed pages to Ward's office, and he'd fax them to the hotel in Boston with a request to the desk clerk to deliver them to Hope's room at precisely six o'clock.
As always, his call was right on time. "Have the stuff?" he asked. "No," I said, "you do." At that moment, I could hear the bellman's knock. "Hold on, there's someone at the door." Hope got up, and I could hear the clerk delivering our material. He returned to the phone. "What is this?"
"It's what you ordered, sir." Well, to say he was dumbfounded would be an understatement. As he leafed through the pages, he was floored. "How did you guys do this?" "Cutting edge technology, Bob. Pretty neat, isn't it?" He just couldn't believe we could send him pages over a telephone line that looked exactly as they did back home.
"How did you get to Boston?" I asked. "I flew." "No, you didn't. You sat down in an aluminum tube in New York and got out in Boston. The plane did the flying. Do you understand what kept the plane in the air?" "Well... not really." "I don't know how a fax works, either - but we're going to love it."
LINEMEN FOR THE COUNTY
While assignments like eulogies and commencement addresses were included in our job description, the bulk of our creative output was devoted to Hope’s stage act and the television specials. And when it came to television, our services weren’t limited to his own shows. Whenever he was booked on someone else’s show, he made sure to request a script well in advance to give us ample opportunity to “punch up” his lines. The standing rule was that we couldn’t tamper with the speeches of other performers but were encouraged to submit as many alternate lines for him as we could. If for example, we were asked to punch up a sketch for “The Pat Boone Show” in which Hope is cast as an Indian attending the first Thanksgiving dinner — a perfect example since he actually did this one year — we might come up with the following exchange:
PAT (as a Pilgrim): What’s the matter, Chief? Don’t you like
roast turkey?
HOPE: Turkey fine, but I think I’m sitting on a giblet.
Now as long as we leave Pat’s straight line alone, we can conjure up a wide variety of responses, providing that they don’t affect the plot:
• White man still finding ways to give Indians the bird.
• Anything with this many feathers we usually marry.
• Chief just bit into part of turkey that jump over teepee last.
• Don’t say the word “turkey” to me so soon after my last show.
The problem was that Hope would arrive at the taping armed with his own secret arsenal of punchlines that no one else on the show would hear until he actually delivered them. To make matters worse, he’d try a different line on each retake — a practice that produced panic in directors and had fellow cast members furiously rechecking their scripts. It was no surprise that there were more than a few variety shows on which Hope was not welcome. Producers tended to resent guests who volunteered their own material rather than that provided. The plain fact was that Hope didn’t trust writers who weren’t on his own payroll; and from long experience, he knew that the script didn’t exist that couldn’t be improved. And Hope figured that the more comedic ammunition he
could lob at the audience, the more bull’s eyes he’d score. He and Bing had done the road pictures this way, and it had proved a winning formula; although Dorothy Lamour admitted years later that she resented the boys allowing their writers to suggest lines between takes. Maybe because she didn’t have her own writers. Dorothy recalled an incident on the set that took place after the cast had broken for lunch, during which Bob and Bing had huddled with their writers for some last-minute script revision. When they resumed shooting, Dorothy said she didn’t recognize a word and thought she was in the wrong movie. At this point, according to Dorothy, Bing turned to her — with the camera still rolling — and said, “If you see an opening, Dot, jump in!”
Tomorrow: Richard Burton won’t kiss Raquel Welch? We’ll find out why
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