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Hope Gets No Help in Books

The Milwaukee Journal – Sep 27, 1942 Hope Gets No Help in Books By Larry Feathers HOLLYWOOD , Calif.—Thousands of town wits and barbershop cutups throughout the land aspire to the thrones of Jack Benny , Bob Hope , Fred Allen and other top comics of screen and radio—and all entertain the same idea how their goal can be achieved. What to do? Simple! Start off by buying a large filing cabinet and cluttering it with old joke books. Then go through the tomes and “modernize” the antique puns. Thus, where a reference is made to horse car in Joe Miller’s classic volume, the fledgling craftily substitutes “trolley,” repeats the gag to himself—and has visions of wowing ‘em. Nothing to it at all, according to youngsters who aspire to profitable laugh provoking careers. In fact, they firmly believe that Jack Benny and company get by today by pursuing exactly such methods. “Just a lotta silly bunk,” says a rather successful young fellow named Lester Townes Hope, co

Amos ‘n’ Andy Still Struggle for Script Ideas

The Milwaukee Journal – Jul 1, 1941 Amos ‘n’ Andy Still Struggle for Script Ideas TWO gentlemen from the west were entertaining H. Allen Smith of the New York World Telegram in an elegant suite of the elegant Savoy Plaza. One of the two, wearing a tan bathrobe over his shorts, was on a chair next to a window and was squinting into a kaleidoscope—not one of your little cigar size Kaleidoscopes, but a kaleidoscope as big as a virgin bologna. As he turned the thing slowly in his hand he kept saying: “Lawd, lawd! Is that purty! Purtiest thing I ever saw in my life.” The other gentleman from the west—a handsome fellow in expensive togs- sat on the edge of his chair and occasionally reached out hesitantly for the kaleidoscope. “C’mon, now,” he said. “Lemmy look a while. It’s my turn gold urn it, and you had it long enough.” The names of these two are Amos ‘n’Andy . On the desk stood a portable typewriter and in it a script sandwich composed of two sheets of onion