TALES FROM THE SCRIPT: THE BEHIND-THE-CAMERA ADVENTURES OF A TV COMEDY WRITER (18 page)

Bob was also one of the problems for those location shows in
other ways, too. He was a major star. He could disrupt production
if he wanted to. One morning, i sat with him in his suite before a
scheduled shooting. We were due on the set, but Bob didn’t seem to
be worried by that.
He said to me, “What time do we have to be down there?”
i said, “They wanted to shoot at ten o’clock.” it was then about
ten minutes after ten.
He said, “Oh, boy, we’d better get a move on. Do you want some
breakfast?”
He got on the phone and ordered breakfast to be sent up. We ate
and then went down to the set. Of course, Bob was also paying for all
of that, so once he finally got on the set, he acted upset that we were
running behind. “Let’s go, let’s go,” he’d say impatiently. “This is costing me money.”
On one special, we had completed all the taping except for the
“tribute.” The tribute was the ending of the shows where Bob said
a few inspiring words and then sang a short, special lyric version of
“Thanks for the Memory.” We were going to shoot that early the next
morning, and then head to the airport for the journey home.
That evening, Bob, producer Eliot Kozak, and i went out on Bob’s
veranda that had a view of the entire complex and beach. We planned
out the locations for the various tribute segments. At first, Bob was
to stroll along the beach. Then, we were to cut to the waterfall in the
hotel garden, and then we were to go somewhere else. it was all discussed and decided on.
The following morning, Bob showed up on the beach location
and said, “What are we shooting here for? We have a beach in Los
Angeles.” We had to break down all the setups and relocate. it took a
bit of time and our flights were delayed.
in Tahiti, we had an early morning production meeting in the living room of Bob’s suite. We were discussing locations and trying to
plan the shooting schedule for that day. People offered suggestions
and Bob wouldn’t hear them. His hearing was failing a bit at the time
and it was difficult to get our ideas heard.
Finally, we got our day planned out and the crew began to exit
to get their work started. Two guys were just about at the doorway,
a long way from Bob, when one whispered, “i don’t get paid enough
money to put up with this sort of nonsense.”
Bob immediately hollered to them, “You get paid plenty.”
Either he heard everything we said during the meeting and purposely ignored some of it, or he only heard sentences that had the
word “money” in them. We didn’t know.
normally, as a writer, i traveled “above the line.” That means i was
considered part of the talent and that my expenses were covered. i never
had to settle a room bill or pay for any of my meals. While the crew
often had to settle for phone calls made on their room bills, i didn’t. i
simply went and all traveling expenses were on the company, until one
of the writers began abusing the privilege. My philosophy was that i
would treat myself the way i would normally treat myself at home. if
i wanted a steak, i’d have a steak. if i wanted a glass of wine with that
steak, i’d order a reasonable wine. i didn’t put any extras on my tab.
Sometimes, the writers bought wine for the entire table or bought
shirts from the resort and billed them to the room. Rather than a reasonably priced wine, they’d order the more expensive vintages.
Bob found out about that and ordered that the writers would henceforth be put on a per diem. We’d get a certain amount for travel expenses,
and from that, we’d have to pay for our own room, meals, and so on.
i was upset with that—what i considered a demotion. On the
very first trip under the new plan, i got my per diem in cash and
wound up when the trip was over with an extra $400 in my pocket. i
never spent as much as the per diem.
nevertheless, my ego longed for the status of traveling “above the line.”
Despite being a lot of work for the writers, the traveling shows
were fun. Hope surrounded himself with enjoyable people and working with them was usually a delight.
On our flight to Tahiti, our crew had the entire first class section
of a 747. it was about a fourteen-hour flight and it started out to be
a flying party. After meals were served, everyone was ready for a nap
and we all settled back, but then we heard a sound like a voice crackling over a radio or something. it started with static sounds and then
a barely discernible voice. We all listened.
Then, it happened again. Still, we couldn’t make out what was being said, but then we did hear the voice. it began with static, and then
we heard, “Enemy aircraft approaching at eleven o’clock.”
We all popped up and looked out the windows to see what was
happening. it turned out to be Jonathan Winters, with that incredibly
talented voice of his, having some fun with us.
Jonathan was also responsible for one of the funniest moments
i’ve ever enjoyed in show business. in Tahiti, someone threw a part
for us almost every evening. The food was always the same—typical island buffet dishes, and the music was always ukuleles played by
grass-skirted natives.
After about five nights of that, we were all at a buffet where Bob
and Jonathan sat at the head table with the writers and a few others at
a table next to that. We had the same food, and an island band played
throughout the meal. Jonathan got up to stretch his legs, came over to
us writers, knelt down, put his arms around two of us, and then said,
“i don’t know about you boys, but musically, this is the most exciting
evening of my life.”
i could not stop laughing. Hope called me over and asked what
Jonathan said, but since he was sitting next to our host, i had to make
something up. Of course, i told him later.
One of my other favorite moments happened while we were doing a show in the Bahamas. Hope was shooting a scene with Barbara
Mandrell in the main square of nassau. After the taping, we were
headed back to our hotel. There were four of us in the limousine,
including Bob, Bob’s makeup man, who had a large moustache, me
with a bald head and full beard, and the driver, a six-foot, eight-inch
muscle-bound guy, who was as much bodyguard as he was chauffeur.
Traffic was heavy through the main market place, and at one time, we
came to a dead halt. Bob put the back window down for some air.
A very heavy native woman, who was selling woven hats, came
over to our limo, put her head into the car, and was nose to nose with
Bob. She looked at him for a while, glanced at me sitting next to him,
looked at the driver, and then looked at the makeup man in the passenger seat. She smiled, and then went back around, glancing at all of
us again. Finally, she asked, “Okay, which one is Bob Hope?”
There wasn’t a sound from any of us in the car. Eventually, Bob
put up the window and we got moving again. About a block away,
Bob said, “Which one is Bob Hope?” and we all took a fit of laughing.
i got one of my biggest and most memorable laughs when we
were rehearsing for a show in Pope Air Force Base in Fayetteville,
north Carolina. Lucille Ball was a guest on that show and one of the
pieces had to do with reincarnation. in the sketch, Bob had a joke
about what Lucy was some 200 years ago.
During a break in the rehearsal, Lucille called me over and said, “i
want a comeback to Bob’s joke. i want to say something funny about
him 200 years ago. What could Bob Hope have been 200 years ago?”
i said, “Bob Hope.”
Lucy literally fell off her chair and started slapping the ground.
The joke stayed in the show and got big laughs.
While we were taping that show, President Reagan called and
said he would stop in on his flight home from Alabama and be on the
show since it was honoring our fighting men.
We had just received that call when the entire compound was
suddenly overrun with Secret Service men in uniforms and suits, accompanied by bomb-sniffing dogs. Hope told Bob Mills and me to
write “a little vaudeville bit for me and the Prez.”
We wrote about three or four pages of gags for Hope and Reagan.
Bob read them over and said, “Come with me.”
We went to a large trailer on the compound where the Secret Service headquartered. From there, we called Air Force One, which was
en route to our show.
We rehearsed the bit on the phone with the President. He suggested a few changes and we incorporated them into the bit.
A little while later, Air Force One landed on the strip at Pope
AFB, just a few hundred yards from our stage. A limousine drove the
President to the stage. He went over the cue cards with Bob, and then
he taped the segment in front of the troops. Afterwards, he headed
back to whatever work was waiting for him in Washington. His appearance was quite exciting.
i also got a little insight into Hollywood personalities, too. While
we were writing that piece, Gary Morton, Lucille’s husband, was in
the trailer with Bob Mills and me. We knew the President was on
his way, but that was about all. While we were writing, Gary was on
the phone with one of his pals in Hollywood, and we heard him say,
“Yeah, i’ve been kind of busy. Lucy and i spent the whole day with
the President . . . .”
Those jaunts were exhausting for our cast, crew, and writers, but
Hope seemed to thrive on those trips. He stayed lively and energetic.
Maybe he had better accommodations and more rest, or maybe it was
because he forged his career in vaudeville, which was constant travel and
work. His biography wasn’t titled “Have Tux, Will Travel” for nothing.
Our exit from Tahiti was quite confused. We left Moorea in the
rain and journeyed to the airport in Papeete, only to discover that
there was no plane for us. We went to a hotel on Papeete with assurances that we would be called back to the airport within a few hours.
We stayed overnight.
Our luggage had been transported to the airport, so our stay at
the hotel was a bit uncomfortable because we had no toiletries or
change of clothing.
The next morning, we were again told to be ready to go the airport
on a moment’s notice, but no notice ever came. We stayed another
uncomfortable night at the hotel in Papeete. Bob and Dolores Hope
were not traveling home with us from Tahiti. They were going on to
the Orient, so they were unaware of our flight problems. Finally, after
another uncomfortable evening at the Papeete hotel, we got a call the
next day to go to the airport. Ticket counters at the Papeete airport are
all outdoors. We stood in line in the tropical sun for over two hours.
The airline we were originally booked on had no planes available
because of a minor accident in Australia, or some such story. We were
being rebooked on United Airlines, but we could not get boarding
passes until our tickets were paid for in cash. That was the reason for
our delay at the airport.
in any case, we were tired from spending two days at the hotel
waiting for word and standing for over two hours in the sun waiting
for our boarding passes. While we were in line, Bob’s limousine pulled
up to the airport. He was ready to board his flight to the Orient. As
he walked by, he approached Bob Mills and me standing in line.
He said, “Start thinking about the next show.”

Once, Don Rickles was taping a special for television and Bob Hope
walked into the theatre. Rickles stopped his routine and shouted to
Bob, “Who’s minding the war?”

Bob first began entertaining the military with a trip to March Air
Force Base in California in 1941. Eventually, during World War ii,
he traveled to the spots where the battles were being fought and that
became a tradition of his until he retired from performing in the late
1990’s. During the Vietnam era, Bob’s Christmas specials with the
troops were eagerly anticipated and among the highest rated shows
of all time.

i wrote for several of Bob’s Vietnam shows, but i never accompanied him on those jaunts. i was always working on other shows and
couldn’t get the time off. Bob, though, sent me information on the
various bases he visited and i wrote jokes for all of them. i also wrote
generic lines such as:

“it’s so hot here . . . . ”
“it’s so cold here . . . .”
“it’s so muddy here . . . .”
“it’s so dry here . . . .”

A few years later, Mort Lachman, who was Bob’s producer and
head-writer for the Vietnam trips, told me how much of a problem
my lines generated. i asked why, and he explained that the cue cards
that the troupe carried were a major logistic problem. Bob had a different routine for each base and the collection of cards filled a couple
of trucks. They tried to separate them by the different camps they
were visiting so that they wouldn’t have to load and unload the entire
accumulation of cards each time. However, Bob often asked, “Where
are the ‘mud’ jokes?” “Find me the ‘heat’ jokes,” or whatever. Then,
they’d have to go through the entire collection of jokes to find the
‘generic’ routine of mine that Bob wanted to include.

in 1983, Bob was going to journey to the battlefields again to visit
the troops in Beirut, Lebanon. That was a different kind of trip because
it was based at sea. All of his other military travels were on land. Being
at sea limited the number of personnel that could accompany him.

Eliot Kozak, who was producing the shows then, asked me if i
wanted to go. The area was quite volatile at the time, so my first reaction was to say, “no,” and i did, but i immediately regretted my reply.
i had begun my career by studying Bob’s comedy style. i had become
a major contributor to his writing staff and part of the Bob Hope legend. Then, i had a chance to see him in the arena that was to be his
hallmark—entertaining troops in the battle areas, so i went back to
Kozak and said, “i’ll go. i want to go.”

However, no one was sure if there would be room enough for a
writer on that jaunt, so i wasn’t at all sure i would be with the troupe
when they departed on the following Tuesday morning.