From his earliest days, radio interviews were important to Bob Hope’s marketing strategy. In the days prior to a show’s air date, he’d give scores of them to television writers, critics and radio talk-show hosts across the country. Over the decades, he established strong friendships with many of them, upon whom he knew he could rely for strong plugs. In return, he was always available to them as a last-minute fill-in guest.
Logging as many as two dozen calls a day, Hope would spend hours giving listeners a preview of the guests, the sketches and even some of the jokes. He’d take call-ins and answer questions on the air. And always, he’d end each conversation with a reminder of the date and time his special was scheduled.
Hope thought that my background as a former lawyer turned writer was an interesting angle that might help promote the specials. So he had NBC’s publicist send out a detailed bio with photos inviting newspaper columnists to interview me.
I did eight or ten interviews a season and appeared in papers ranging from the Washington Post to the San Diego Union, and in magazines like The American Bar Association Journal and Writers Digest. As it turned out, I was ahead of my time. Today, you need a law degree from Harvard even to land an interview for a writing job on Saturday Night Live.
For my part, I was happy to promote the specials, and in the fall of 1978, when I’d been with him about a year, Hope asked me to help an old friend who had a late-night talk show on the radio in Florida.
His name was Larry King and since his show aired late at night, I’d never heard of him. I thought Hope meant one of my regular telephone interviews, but this time, instead of working from home, I’d be on the air live along with fellow writer Gig Henry from Hope’s house in Toluca Lake. To an inveterate ham, this sounded like fun -- and I wouldn’t have to wear makeup.
When I arrived around quarter of seven (the show would begin at ten in the East), Gig was already there. Larry, working without an engineer, had patched a telephone hookup to his Miami studio and had set up the microphones on a small table in Hope‘s gatehouse.
With his horn-rimmed glasses, white shirt and red suspenders, Larry looked more like an accountant or an insurance salesman than a radio personality and his gruff New York accent made him sound more like a cab driver.
He began the interview and soon Gig and I were taking calls from listeners asking the usual questions about working with Hope. We had been on the radio about an hour when Hope himself arrived and Larry had him pull up a chair and join us. It was the first time I had been interviewed along with the boss and I can still recall the pure thrill of it.
I never heard of Larry again until several years later when he appeared on Ted Turner’s new Channel News Network hosting his own call-in talk show called Larry King Live. The rest as they say…
Recently I ran into him at a luncheon in Los Angeles and asked him if he remembered interviewing Gig and me thirty-six years ago. He told me he recalled that day in 1978 vividly because, while he had known Hope for years, it was his first visit to his home in California. Turns out he was as thrilled to be there as I had been.
Even in show business, everything is relative.
[Adapted from THE LAUGH MAKERS: A Behind-the-Scenes Tribute to Bob Hope's Incredible Gag Writers by Robert L. Mills (c) 2009 and published by Bear Manor Media. Available at: http://www.amazon.com
Or to download the e-version on Kindle for $2.99:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0041D9EPO
Photos from the book can be viewed at http://bobhopeshowbackstage.weebly.com]
Thinking of Bob Hope makes me think about that Elizabeth Taylor joke.
Ron