What was it like to write jokes for Bob Hope?
He’s such a pure joke comedian. You must have been required to come up with thousands upon thousands of jokes. The most important thing for Hope, always, always, always, was the monologue. Whatever else he achieved in his career, he always considered himself primarily a monologist. The writers would look at what was going on in the world—current events, such as Bing Crosby having another son, or maybe it was the World Series, or maybe it was Oscar time. There were also political jokes, but they weren’t very barbed. Hope never had any interest in drawing blood. He was very scrupulous at that point in his life about not siding with one political party or the other. A few teams of writers made up the staff. Each team would write twenty jokes or so on each monologue topic. At a staff meeting, Hope would then read everyone’s jokes aloud; hundreds of them. He’d put a check mark next to any joke that he liked. He’d then read them all over again. If he still liked a previously checked-off joke
