Building a Bob Hope Radio Show

Sunday, December 27, 1942       THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL—SCREEN and RADIO

Building a Bob Hope Radio Show

Comedy half hour is put together piece by piece, rough edges trimmed

By Kate Holliday

“THAT was a boff. Leave it in!” Such a cry might barrel through the NBC control room in Hollywood at a preview of Bob Hope’s radio show. A boff, for your information, is a joke so funny it brings a belly laugh.

What is a radio show preview? Just that: A show before a show—to which the public is invited and at which Hope and company test the merit of gags they have concocted. It explains, to a large degree, Hope’s continued success.

A comedian’s life is usually not a happy one, evidence to the contrary. A guy like Hope, say, doesn’t just amble toward a microphone come Tuesday night and be funny. Instead, he builds his show gag by gag.

It all begins on the Thursday or Friday of the week preceding the program. At that point Hope and his seven writers meet and discuss the main comedy lines for the next broadcast. This usually takes place at Bob’s house in an office which he has fixed up over his garage.

“His seven writers?” I hear you saying. Yes, seven. Oh, you think that’s a lot? Well, he started out with 13!

These men are all trained comedy builders. They don’t merely crack jokes. They put a gag together, element by element, until it possesses what they are seeking: Humor.

However, don’t get the idea that Bob does nothing in the creation of his scripts. On the contrary, he does a lot.

Hope Funny Fellow in Private Also

Most comedians, as you may have heard before, are extremely unfunny away from the microphone. They are serious men whose timing or inflection or physical appearance make them amusing. If they are funny at all in private life, it is because they have accumulated a vast store of comedy lines through the years which may come in handy in conversation.

HOPE is genuinely funny, professionally and personally. Hope is himself when you hear him over the air or see him on the screen. He is not only a master of all the old gags in the book but he can create new ones on the spur of the moment. This, in the trade, is called “ad libbing,” and Bob is its greatest exponent.

No one, for instance has ever been able to heckle Bob successfully. For no matter how unexpected a crack from an audience may be, he has a topper for it. And his topper, furthermore, is usually kindly and in good taste.

They Write the Gags, He Improves Them

The result is that though Bob has seven writers to supply him with material for his broadcasts, many times he takes one of their gags and twists it into something funnier than they ever dreamed of.

Let’s go back to the first meeting of the writers and Bob: After the main comedy lines have been decided on, each writer goes back to his little cell and dreams up gags. He bats out reams of material. He checks the files without which no self-respecting gagman would function, to see if there isn’t an old joke around which might be out into a new dress.

Then he and his six colleagues go back to Bob’s house, where Hope goes through the material and chooses what he likes. This, with a few added lines to give it continuity, is put together into an hour long script, the script which will be tried out on the preview audience.

The people who watch this show really have a much better time than those, who see the finished product. For Bob, on Sunday or Monday nights, is utterly relaxed. If a joke goes over well, he sets his script down on the floor and salaams to the men and women out front. If a gag fails to get a laugh, he creates one by an ad lib that shows his listeners he knows it’s bad, too. He may say, for instance:

“Well, I certainly ran into a lull that time!” or: “That was a sweet little stinker!” or: “That’s a funny joke if you work it out. Visualize! Visualize!—oh, the hell with it!”

And the audience loves it. It falls apart.

MANY comedians, in the parlance of the trade, “milk” the public. They read a line, come to the punch, and then pause for the hilarity.

Bob is different. When he does his monolog at the beginning of the show, for example, he makes the audience stop him. He reads along as if he were utterly by himself, come to the punch line, and goes right on. Only when the nonsense percolates into the audience does he break off. This, whether you realized it before or not, causes his humor to seem much more natural.

During the preview the writers and the technical men sit in the control room. Their main function at that time is to grade the gags. This is done by the amount of laughter each receives and is a very serious business. For on a joke’s reception depends whether it is used or cut out of the final script.

Sometimes a joke is cut even when it receives the highest grade possible. This may occur because of continuity, of timing, or one or two other reasons. But these gags are not just thrown away and forgotten. Instead, they are carefully saved and put into a script where they fit smoothly. When this is done, they are marked on the copy by a peculiar sign: Resuboff. It means, “Resubmission of a boff.”

Cutting Show in Half a Murderous Job

After the preview, the writers and Bob have another conference. First they listen to the recording which has been made of the night’s work. Then they settle to their labors. And this is where the really tough job comes in—to cut a script which may run well over an hour down to one which runs exactly 29 minutes 40 seconds, including time out for commercials.

This is sometimes heart breaking. Gags which all concerned know are good must be sacrificed for time and continuity. The ax is wielded for hours, unmercifully. The result is a bleary-eyed comedian and a covey of exhausted gagmen. But another result is a smooth running script, in which the humor has been tested and the gags fit one upon the other.

Yes, Hope’s show is built scientifically and laboriously. And after it is all finished it only needs one thing: Bob Hope.

It’s the same routine with JackBenny’s show, or Edgar Bergen’s or “Duffy’s.” They are all put together through the co-operative effort of writers and performers. Every joke is tried for “size” before it is marked for finial use in the show, since nobody, not even a Bergen, can tell at a mere silent reading which jokes will go over best.

And after the show is put together letter perfect, it still would fall apart without the star. The jokes are made for his personality. Take out his voice, his inflection, the radio character has build up, and you won’t have a show.

<Bob Hope (below), surrounded by two of his writers, irons out a kink in his Tuesday night show. At the right are Jerry Colonna, Vera Vague and Frances Langford, who don’t seem to see anything very funny about their jobs.