MONDAY, July 19, 2010

Wonder Woman has been given a fashion makeover to more accurately reflect today’s liberated female.  From now on she’ll wear a red and gold blouse, black pants, a midnight blue jacket, bullet-deflecting Bracelets of Victory, a Lasso of Truth…  oops, sorry -- those are the flight attendants on Delta.

Scientists have successfully formulated a synthetic form of marijuana that can be sold legally in forty-two states.  K-2 delivers a genuine high but appears to have one unfortunate side-effect -- it seems to work only if you’re wearing a polyester suit.


Porsche is selling a hybrid sports car that gets 78 miles per gallon and can accelerate from zero to sixty in three seconds.  It has a price tag of $630,000, but so far, buyers who financed made one payment and Porsche hasn’t been able to catch them to collect any more.  

U.S. Marines are being given “ride-a-longs” by the LAPD so they’ll be able to train Afghan recruits as cops.  During their three week, comprehensive course on police tactics, they learn how to interrogate drunk drivers, identify parking lot drug buys and spot unmarked do-nut shops.

Workers excavating at Ground Zero came upon a wooden ship from the 17th century that had been buried in Manhattan’s land fill.  Graphologists were able to determine its age by tracing the Latin graffiti scrawled on the vessel’s sides.

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Serialized excerpt from THE LAUGH MAKERS: A Behind-the-Scenes Tribute to Bob Hope’s Incredible Gag Writers © copyright 2009 by Robert L. Mills

PREFACE

When I was born, Bob Hope was thirty-five and already a star who could boast a vaudeville career that dated back to 1924, a stint on Broadway in Roberta, seven short films beginning with Going Spanish in 1934 and a starring role with Jimmy Durante and Ethel Merman in Red, Hot and Blue!, which had been a highlight of the Great White Way’s 1937 season. 

When, forty years later almost to the day, Hope hired me to write for him, he had dominated the airwaves in radio and had starred in fifty-two movies. (The sudden death of Bing Crosby just two months later would scuttle plans for yet another, The Road to the Fountain of Youth.)  Hope had been visiting America’s living rooms, first on kinescope and later on tape, for almost three decades. Yet, at the age of seventy-five, he was in many ways just hitting his stride and would, over the next fifteen years, produce and star in over eighty-five television specials, many of which would rank among his best.

When you signed on with Bob Hope, it was akin to entering an ancient, tradition-laden religious order where you agreed to forgo the temptations of the secular world in exchange for a life of unwavering loyalty, absolute obedience and, I have to admit, more thrills and excitement than anyone could possibly imagine.  First, there was great professional satisfaction in being a “Hope writer.” In those days, a contract to write for him was considered gilt edged— the comedic equivalent of a degree from Harvard.
 
As for the work itself, he might have been the pope and you a cardinal commissioned by the Almighty to provide a never-ending supply of wit and drollery for delivery to the masses assembled in Vatican Square.

Hope-staff-alumnus Larry Gelbart (M*A*S*H, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), quoted in the Museum of Broadcasting’s "Bob Hope: A Half Century on Radio and Television," summed it up perfectly:

“Hope would never fire anybody. If he bought you,
you were there. He knew pretty much you were
going to stay. He got his help down to a science —
people preparing him, massaging him, laying out
his clothes. It was a little like preparing a bullfighter.”

The only difference being, the work was steadier. When a bullfighter dies, you’re out of a job. When Hope died, he kept coming back for more.  When you were invited to take a seat at his comedy Round Table (to switch to a less religious metaphor), you were keenly aware that your name was being added to a venerable honor roll of humorists.

Hope had employed more writers over a longer period than any performer in history and among the veterans of “Hope’s Army” (so labeled by the press) were Mort Lachman, Mel Shavelson, Larry Rhine, Sherwood Schwartz, Norman Panama, Jay Burton, Jack Douglas, Larry Marks, Si Rose, Mel Tolkin, Al Schwartz, Jack Rose, Les White, Johnny Rapp, Mel Frank, Bill Larkin, Hal Goodman, Marty Ragaway, Ray Siller, Hal Kanter and Milt Josefsberg. To a man, these veteran joke smiths shared a common talent: the ability to put words into Hope’s mouth that appeared to have originated there.
 
Hope himself was the first to point out that having maintained a staff of the most able writers he could find contributed as much to his sustained popularity and prodigious body of work as the uncommon physical stamina with which he had been genetically gifted.  The unique performer-writer symbiosis that developed between Hope and his comedic entourage was the first — and most likely will be the last — of its kind.  What follows is an inside look at how Hope’s system operated — one that I hope will provide clues as to why it did for seventy years

Next:  Chapter 1  “If You See an Opening, Jump In!”

Order THE LAUGH MAKERS on line at Amazon.com and download a FREE MP3 audio version, unabridged and read by the author, by clicking on this link:

http://bearmanoraudio.com/audio/BOB-MILLS-AUDIO-BOOK/