As Hope Goes, So Goes Comedy

Maybe a half-dozen radio comedians could be guaranteed to be found hovering in the top ten of the ratings during much of the Golden Age, especially in the ‘40s. Several of them became institutions as the decades churned on, including one man who never really had a regular show on television.

Despite that, Bob Hope was ubiquitous. He always seemed to be walking onto Johnny Carson’s set, his trips to entertain soldiers were slathered across the pages of the papers and his deal with NBC kept him on TV often enough to be kept in the public eye. Never mind the specials became increasingly forced and hokey, and eventually were embarrassing and sad.

It’s a shame he’s remembered today more for his obvious decline. His early TV specials are fast and funny, and his radio show was enjoyable, too. He had a good supporting cast led by the (as they said in the ‘40s) “zany” Jerry Colonna, and included Barbara Jo Allen, Elvia Allman and Blanche Stewart (later he made places for Irene Ryan and Jack Kirkwood). For a while, his singer was Doris Day!

Even in his laugh-track-filled later TV years, Hope’s monologues were topical. Radio critic John Crosby felt they were so topical, you could tell from Hope what comedians would be joking about. Here’s his column of September 30, 1946.

RADIO IN REVIEW
The Fall Fashions in Jokes
By JOHN CROSBY
The first time I saw Bob Hope was in the 1936 Ziegfeld Follies—one of the post-Ziegfeld shows produced by the Shuberts—in which he and Eve Arden did a song number called "I Can't Get Started With You". Fannie Brice was the star of the Follies and Hope was just a featured player. One reviewer dismissed Hope with about one line: "He tries and tries to be funny."
Last Tuesday night, Hope was back on the air for his ninth season with the same sponsor, Pepsodent, and it's a pretty safe bet his Hooper rating will be either first or second all year long. Somewhere in the last 10 years. Hope stopped trying so hard and became a comedian. Somewhere during the war years, he developed from a comedian into one of the great entertainers of our day. There have not been many comedians who deserved that title. Will Rogers, Fred Stone, Al Jolson and Joe Cook are a few that come to mind and all are dead or retired. Each had his own versatility and each his own personality but all had one thing in common; they were so extraordinarily likable that you forgave them their occasional lapses.
This is particularly true in the case of Bob Hope. Many of his radio programs are a triumph of personality over material. Last Tuesday he bobbed up before the microphone and began a familiar patter that went something like this:
"Yes, sir, just think—nine years with the same sponsor. Two more years and I'll have enough tubes to finish my driveway. (Thunderous applause.) After nine years, we're a national institution. Yes, sir, they just made a movie about us it's called "The Big Sleep". (Hysterical laughter). Our sponsor is very subtle. He doesn't say we lay eggs he just refers to us as Operation Shad Roe." (Pandemonium.)
It takes a great personality to get that response from that material.
It's always a good idea to catch the first Hope program of the season because in it you get a sneak preview of the fall fashion in jokes. Mr. Hope or his gag writers operate under the same formula employed by Clare Boothe Luce in writing plays; if you throw enough gags around some of them are bound to hit the bell. Because there are so many jokes in a Hope program, the first broadcast offers a fair cross-section of all the jokes you will hear on the air this year.
Well, let's take a look at the fall fashions. Bing Crosby's horses are definitely out this year. The new mode is Bing's baseball team, the Pittsburgh Pirates, of whom, I'm afraid, you'll hear a great deal. The staple Crosby jokes—his waistline, his income, his four boys—are still with us. Petrillo jokes are still haute monde. Jerry Colonna modeled the following for the radio audience Tuesday:
"I played "The Unfinished Symphony'."
"Why unfinished?”
"Petrillo."
It's still stylish for the featured comedian to insult himself. "You'll give me half of the Pepsodent Company? Why? Oh, I have to get off the air, huh? You figure that way you can save the other half."
Some jokes have gone the way of the bustle. There wasn't a single nylon joke on the program, not one. Also there wasn't a single mention of a two-way stretch, a joke Mr. Hope has worn with distinction for almost nine years. Jane Russell's body wasn't mentioned once and, believe it or not Frank Sinatra wasn't either.
There are a couple of new jokes in the fall line too. Henry Wallace was good for one. ("The more I listen to you, the more I think Truman muzzled the wrong man.") That's strictly a fall joke and won't last into the winter. However, the Peace Conference will probably, be around until spring.
"Professor, tell me what's going on at the peace conference?"
"You don't know either?"
But the real sensation of the fall line was "Doin' What Comes Naturally". Hope got three jokes out of. that Irving Berlin tune. It's the sort of title which could easily produce infinite variations of double entendre. It may well be to the '48-47 season what the nylon shortage was from 1943 to 1946.
Dear Miriam is back again with her gleaming smile. Come to think of it, Miriam has been around for quite awhile. She has a sponsor but when is she going to get a husband? I don't want to cause a panic in the Pepsodent office, but it seems to me Miriam's teeth are possibly a little too white. It's scaring the men away.

Crosby’s opinion of Hope wouldn’t be so favourable later, and Hope sued him over claims in a 1950 Life magazine article that he stole material from Fred Allen.

Let’s post the other Crosby columns for the rest of the week. He roasted the new Phil Harris/Alice Faye as being insipid and saccharine. Perhaps the writers read the review because they soon boosted the Harris-Remley comedy elements and the show took a leap upward. You can read that review from October 3, 1946 in this post.

Verily, positively artsy prose accompanies a look at an audience participation show on ABC in the October 1st column, while he turns to the scholarliness of conversation programmes in his October 2nd missive, and turns his attention on October 4th to the ridiculous situation of a 27-year-old playing a boy as well as yet another comedy about an innocent bumbler. You can click on them to see them in larger print.