Actors either like to rehearse or they don’t. Hope didn’t. He felt that over-rehearsing could dull the precise timing and spontaneity that comedy requires. Hope’s propensity to under-rehearse no doubt prevented many guests who preferred more preparation from making return appearances.
Even seasoned performers like Lucille Ball could prefer ample time to rehearse and when guesting on a Hope special often made her preference known. Hope’s personal aversion to rehearsing led to the oft-heard criticism of his television performances — his obvious reliance on cue cards.
Hope was aware, of course, that the audience often caught him glancing off camera to pick up the words being held up by Barney McNulty and his crew positioned in as many as four locations around the set’s perimeter. But for Hope, the alternative — memorizing lines — would have been impractical.
As far as Hope was concerned, appearing on TV wasn’t his primary occupation — appearing live on stage from one end of the country to the other was. He used television as a promotional tool — just a way of keeping the Hope brand in the public eye. As a result, the specials always took a backseat.
If our star was stuck at an airport in Keokuk, preparations for the show simply proceeded without him. When a physical presence was required, his longtime stand-in, Alan Kalm, a former actor Hope had worked with on Broadway, performed the honors.
(Alan was a real character. He had also been Bing Crosby’s stand-in and inherited Bing’s used toupees, which Alan still wore. Viewed from behind, you’d swear he was Bing. Alan was yet another example of someone Hope helped whom he had known before he was a star. Property manager Al Borden was another; so was casting director Onnie Morrow.)
Often, when Hope’s schedule conflicted, the guests were compelled to rehearse without him; they were assured that he would miraculously appear by the time the little red light on the camera flickered to life.
Also, Hope believed that allowing his guests too many rehearsals would give them more time to come up with objections to their lines. Ideally, he preferred to hand them their script just before the first read-through where the actors sit at a long table and recite their lines precisely as they appear in the script. We stood by in case new lines were needed — heaven forbid.
It’s at this point that our guests had the opportunity to voice any reservations about their lines, but because of Hope’s “living legend” status, few ever did. A nice perk for us, to be sure. Occasionally, a guest would bolster the courage to speak up. On a Christmas special one year, Hope and Loretta Swit —”Hotlips”on M*A*S*H — were dressed as department-store mannequins discussing the job after everyone had gone home.
LORETTA: I feel so stupid standing there with hundreds of shoppers pointing at me and shouting, “I want what she’s wearing! I want what she’s wearing!”
HOPE: Yeah, those women can get pretty pushy.
LORETTA: What women? Those were the men.”
As soon as she said it, the table erupted in laughter. Hope beamed. Everyone at the table liked the joke except Loretta. She had recently become active in several gay causes and found the line demeaning to homosexuals.
Ordinarily, no problem. Hope would cut the line, and we’d write her a replacement. But not now — the joke had gotten a big laugh. Its value to the show had been tested and proven. Once Hope knew a joke worked, he’d protect it like it was his idea. And it was, almost — he’d paid for it.
While empathizing with Loretta, he convinced her ever-so-gently that as a professional entertainer, she should never allow personal feelings to get in the way of audience laughter. She “owed the audience that much,” he explained like a kindly grandfather. Loretta was no match for Hope’s logic and gave in. The line stayed and got one of the biggest laughs on the special.
Sometimes, Hope’s notorious last-minute script deliveries backfired. We were in Honolulu for a special that featured guests Tom Selleck, Mr. T and Loni Anderson. The scripts were delivered to their suites in the Honolulu Hilton so they’d be waiting for them when they arrived.
Fellow writer Gene Perret and I had written a spot for Loni and Hope that centered on a recent made-for-TV movie of Loni’s that had gotten high ratings. In the film, she played a high-class call girl who somehow raises a teenage daughter while concealing from her the less-than-wholesome nature of her profession.
Gene and I had assumed — wrongfully, as it turned out — that, since she had done the movie, she wouldn’t mind having a little fun discussing its interesting — if totally implausible — premise. Our make-believe conversation contained exchanges like this:
HOPE: So tell me, how did you ever manage to have all those men sleeping over without your daughter getting suspicious?
LONI: Oh, that was easy. I just convinced her that she had a hundred-and-fifty uncles.
While unpacking, Loni reads the material, concludes that we’ve made light of a serious topic and decides not to do the routine. But she doesn’t voice her complaints to anyone connected with the show. Instead, she calls her agent in California. (That’s how things like this are often done in Hollywood.)
The agent then calls our producer, Carolyn Raskin, who’s quickly on the phone to Hope who hangs up and dials us. We’re dispatched to extinguish the artistic brush fire. We somehow convince Loni that we’re paid to make light of serious topics and that call girls raising teens wasn’t as yet a national scandal. Loni agrees to do the spot, and we breathe easy again.
We also decide never to write another routine about hookers.
I learned early in my script-writing career how common it is for actors to suddenly lose faith in their lines just before going on. I was at the M.G.M Grand Hotel in Las Vegas with the “Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts” — my first big network assignment — when head writer Harry Crane sent me to Zsa Zsa Gabor’s suite to talk her out of just such butterflies.
Zsa Zsa was a frequent guest of Dean’s and had a reputation for getting last-minute cold feet. As instructed by Harry, I went over Zsa Zsa’s segment line-by-line with cue card man Barney McNulty there to make any changes necessary.
Barney and I convinced Miss Gabor that our material was as funny at the M.G.M Grand as it had been in Burbank when she had approved it.
As Harry had predicted, re-inspired that we had, indeed, written strong jokes for her to deliver, Zsa Zsa did her turn on the show and was, as usual, a smash.
And you thought show business was fun.