Author of this article: Robert L. Mills.

View Authors profile

Robert L. Mills has been with FAFY - Free Article For You since Friday, 29 January 2010.

View additional articles from this Author!

• Music Was Important in Bob Hope's Success (12 April 2010)
• Bob Hope's TV Itinerary Read Like a Travel Brochure (10 April 2010)
• The One and Only Don Knotts (05 April 2010)
• The One and Only Barbara Mandrell (05 April 2010)
• The One and Only Barbara Eden (01 April 2010)
• The One and Only Danny Kaye (01 April 2010)
• The One and Only Loni Anderson (31 March 2010)
• The One and Only Glen Campbell (30 March 2010)
• The "Perfect Storm" in American Popular Entertainment (25 March 2010)
• Errors in a TV Script Are Seen By Millions (23 March 2010)
• Bob Hope: British And Proud of It (22 March 2010)
• Laughing at it Makes Growing Old Easier (19 March 2010)
• The Fax Machine -- The Twitter of the 1980s (18 March 2010)
• The Disaster of Not Sticking to The Script (18 March 2010)
• Were Hope & Crosby Pals Off-Screen? (18 March 2010)
• Effective Comedy is Based on Surprise (18 March 2010)
• The Late Night Talk Show That Never Was (17 March 2010)
• Forget I'm Bob Hope. When I'm Wrong, Tell Me. (16 March 2010)
• Liz Taylor Survives a TV Appearance With O.J. (11 March 2010)
• I Switched Careers Mid-Stream and You Can Too! (11 March 2010)
• Bob Hope's British Reserve Could Be Mistaken For Insensitivity (09 March 2010)
• Bob Hope Understood the Value of Fans (07 March 2010)
• I'm Richard Burton. Have a Part in Your Show For Me? (06 March 2010)
• Funny Is Money: Writing Jokes For Fun and Profit (06 March 2010)
• Was Bob Hope Funny Off Stage? (05 March 2010)
• Variety Show Sketch Playing Is More Difficult Than It Looks (04 March 2010)
• The Early TV Career of Brooke Shields (04 March 2010)
• When Anxiety Mimics a Heart Attack (04 March 2010)
• Bob Hope's Museum: Smithsonian or Show Biz Garage Sale? (04 March 2010)
• Flying In On a Wing, a Prayer and Some Jokes (27 February 2010)
• Was Bob Hope a Tightwad? Depends on Whom You Ask (27 February 2010)
• Bob Hope in Decline: The Long Goodbye (27 February 2010)
• Learn to Sell From the Master of Promotion: BOB HOPE (19 February 2010)
• A Hollywood Talent Manager Tells All (15 February 2010)
• Bob Hope's Man of Steel -- "Superiorman" (14 February 2010)
• Bob Hope as the "Son of Shogun" (12 February 2010)
• Bob Hope and Gerald Ford -- A Model Friendship (11 February 2010)
• The Bob Hope Show: Camelot in Downtown Burbank (11 February 2010)
• The One & Only Betty White (11 February 2010)
• What it Feels Like to be Interviewed by Larry King (10 February 2010)
• Caught in the Web of China's Secret Police (10 February 2010)
• "Catch a Falling Star" -- Remembering Perry Como (09 February 2010)
• The One and Only George Gobel (09 February 2010)
• Think Only Hoop Stars Pack Heat? (09 February 2010)
• Our Ship Runs Aground in Tahiti (09 February 2010)
• Bob Hope in China: The Peking Opera Meets Gilbert & Sullivan (09 February 2010)
• Language Needn't Be a Barrier to Friendship (09 February 2010)
• Bob Hope Goes to College: From Notre Dame to S.M.U. (09 February 2010)
• Famous Quotes That History Overlooked (08 February 2010)
• History's Oddities (Social Satire) (08 February 2010)
• A Homey Prayer Companion (With Apologies to Garrison Keillor) (08 February 2010)
• Andy Williams Without the Osmonds (07 February 2010)
• SGT. PALIN OF THE YUKON (Political Parody) (06 February 2010)
• Death Wasn't In The Script (06 February 2010)
• Bob Hope & George Burns Bring Back Vaudeville (06 February 2010)
• Bob Hope's Employees Were Also His Friends (05 February 2010)
• Censorship of What We See and Hear Has a Long History (05 February 2010)
• Ever Try To Entertain a Country in Mourning? (05 February 2010)
• The Bob Hope Show at Annapolis (04 February 2010)
• The Bob Hope Show at The Air Force Academy & West Point (04 February 2010)
• Think Airport Security is A Pain? Try Perth in 1978 (04 February 2010)
• Bob Hope Was Just a Phone Call Away From the President (04 February 2010)
• Bob Hope in Tahiti: Paradise or Paradise Lost? (04 February 2010)
• How to Rib Presidents Without an IRS Audit (03 February 2010)
• Harvesting Marijuana in China (03 February 2010)
• Examining the Comic Genius of Don Knotts (03 February 2010)
• When Steve Martin Begged to Be on TV (03 February 2010)
• Here's Johnny! Johnny Carson Was the Shyest Performer I Ever Worked With (03 February 2010)
• The Godfather of Monday Night Football (02 February 2010)
• Can Scripted Comedy Be Over Rehearsed? (02 February 2010)
• How One TV Star Kept the Critics Happy (02 February 2010)
• Chinese Cuisine in 1979 B.C. -- Before the Colonel (02 February 2010)
• Aside From Golf, Football Was Bob Hope's Favorite Sport (02 February 2010)
• Bob Hope in Australia: Opening The Perth Entertainment Centre (01 February 2010)
• Think China Plays Hardball Today? Try 1979 (31 January 2010)
• Bob Hope in China: Translating Hope's Jokes Into Mandarin and Cantonese (31 January 2010)
• Enjoy Searching For Antiques? Try China in 1979 (31 January 2010)
• Bob Hope in China: Lights! Camera! Cue the Great Wall (31 January 2010)
• When Sponsor Loyalty Paid Handsome Returns (30 January 2010)
• When Annual Holiday Specials Brought Families Together (30 January 2010)

You have permission to re-publish this article electronically or in print, as long as you are able to follow the Publishers Guidelines.

Use the tools below to copy the article in plain text form, or you can copy it as HTML, ready to copy and paste directly into a web page.

HTML Version

• <html> <head> <title>A Star's Marriage Can Effect His On-Screen Performance</title> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" leftmargin="0" topmargin="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0"> <h1>A Star's Marriage Can Effect His On-Screen Performance</h1> <strong>Author: Robert L. Mills</strong><br /> <p></p> <p>Note: Please do not repeat/include the intro/summary text in this section.</p> <p>Excerpted from  (c) 2009 by Robert L. Mills and published by Bear Manor Media -- www.bearmanormedia.bizland.com/id370.html<br /> <br /> FREE SAMPLE CHAPTERS + Photos:  www.laughmakers.blogspot.com   An unabridged audio version read by the author is available at:  http://teach.learnoutloud.com/Browse/Arts-and-Entertainment/Film_-Music_-Radio_-TV_-and-Pop-Culture/The-Laugh-Makers/33067<br /> <br /> LONDON, 1979.  It’s the day before we’re scheduled to tape an hour-long special, "An Evening at the Palladium," for a black-tie audience that will include Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. Fellow writer Gig Henry and I are going over the script with Hope in his dressing room, and, as usual when he was about to perform for royalty, he’s wrestling with some last-minute jitters. (“She has the keys to the Tower of London.” ) Also present are executive producers Sid Vinnage and Elliott Kozak, and a British writing team who had been hired to assist us, Dick Vosburgh and Gary Chambers.<br /> <br /> The phone rings. Hope picks it up, and on the other end of the line is one of our guest stars, Richard Burton, whose voice fills the room even though it’s not a speaker-phone. It seems that Dick’s “people” — read new wife of some three weeks, one of Burton’s “between Liz” marriages — don’t think it’s in the actor’s best interest to be doing a love scene with co-star Raquel Welch in a sketch we’d prepared for them — a parody of the popular PBS series "Upstairs, Downstairs" that we had re-titled "Backstairs at Buckingham Palace."<br /> <br /> Hope cups his hand over the mouthpiece and asks us if we can rewrite the sketch omitting the kissing. We all shake our heads “no” — if the love scenes go, there’s no sketch. Hope tells Burton he’ll get back to him and hangs up. We carefully go over the sketch line-by-line just to be sure, and Hope agrees that, unless Burton has lip privileges with the downstairs chambermaid, we’ll have to write a whole new sketch, and time, as they say over there, is frightfully short.<br /> <br /> Hope gets an idea. He calls Burton back and asks him if it would help if the chambermaid were someone other than Raquel. Several minutes elapse while Dick again checks with his people. That would solve the problem very nicely, he tells Hope. Goodbye, Raquel.<br /> <br /> Vinnage starts calling his British contacts and soon locates actress Susan George who’s appearing in a stage play about three hundred miles from London. Susan, an experienced performer who had recently costarred with Dustin Hoffman in the popular American movie, "Straw Dogs," agrees to step in for Raquel despite a case of laryngitis, finishes her matinee and arrives at the Palladium just hours before showtime.<br /> <br /> After a quick rehearsal, she bravely goes on for Raquel and ends up sharing equal-billing with Welch, Burton and Leslie Uggams. Later, Raquel explains to a group of British reporters that she had rejected the sketch because she was unhappy with her lines. This time, we were more than happy to take the rap.<strong><br /> </strong></p> <p><br /> <br /> <br />  </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p>A native of San Francisco, Bob Mills served in the Navy from 1956 to 1959, graduated from San Francisco State University in 1962 and the University of California Hastings Law in 1965 and practiced in Palo Alto, California from 1966 until becoming a television writer in 1976, whereupon he ceased all contact with lawyers. He wrote for the "Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts" 1976-77; "The Bob Hope Show" 1977-92 In 1973, he married his wife, Shelley, with whom he lives in Studio City, California.</p> <p> </p> <p>He writes a daily topical blog entitled "Dr. Digit's Hollywood Memory Blog" online at www.bereftontheleft.blogspot.com. He is a volunteer reader at Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic in Hollywood and hosts a weekly program entitled "Inside Television" for Los Angeles Radio Reading Service for the Blind in Northridge, California, streamed online each Tuesday at 0820-0900 Pacific at www.larrs.org. Each New Years Day, he co-hosts a three-hour audio description of the Pasadena Rose Parade broadcast to 52 radio stations for the blind reaching 2.7 million listeners via NPR satellite. He's also a substitute co-host of "Access Unlimited" heard on Tuesdays 2:30 to 3:00 pm Pacific on KPFK, 90.7 fm Los Angeles, 98.7 fm Santa Barbara. Streamed live and archived at www.kpfk.org</p> <p> </p> <p>In 2009, his book THE LAUGH MAKERS: A Behind the Scenes Tribute to Bob Hope's Incredible Gag Writers was published by Bear Manor Media in both a print and an audio version read by the author. Sample chapters: www.laughmakers.blogspot.com An unabridged audio version read by the author is available at: http://teach.learnoutloud.com/Browse/Arts-and-Entertainment/Film_-Music_-Radio_-TV_-and-Pop-Culture/The-Laugh-Makers/33067 He is an emeritus member of the Writers Guild of America and holds memberships in two organizations: Yarmy’s Army, a group of veteran writers and entertainers who meet monthly for dinner and produce fund-raisers for worthy causes including the Motion Picture and Television House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, and in The Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters, a social club made up of former radio and television professionals that meets bimonthly for lunch and a celebrity “roast.”</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> Article Source: <a href="http://www.freearticleforyou.com/">Article Directory - http://www.freearticleforyou.com</a></p> <p> </p></p></body> </html>

• TEXT Version

  • A Star's Marriage Can Effect His On-Screen Performance Author: Robert L. Mills Note: Please do not repeat/include the intro/summary text in this section. Excerpted from  (c) 2009 by Robert L. Mills and published by Bear Manor Media -- www.bearmanormedia.bizland.com/id370.html FREE SAMPLE CHAPTERS + Photos:  www.laughmakers.blogspot.com   An unabridged audio version read by the author is available at:  http://teach.learnoutloud.com/Browse/Arts-and-Entertainment/Film_-Music_-Radio_-TV_-and-Pop-Culture/The-Laugh-Makers/33067 LONDON, 1979.  It’s the day before we’re scheduled to tape an hour-long special, "An Evening at the Palladium," for a black-tie audience that will include Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. Fellow writer Gig Henry and I are going over the script with Hope in his dressing room, and, as usual when he was about to perform for royalty, he’s wrestling with some last-minute jitters. (“She has the keys to the Tower of London.” ) Also present are executive producers Sid Vinnage and Elliott Kozak, and a British writing team who had been hired to assist us, Dick Vosburgh and Gary Chambers. The phone rings. Hope picks it up, and on the other end of the line is one of our guest stars, Richard Burton, whose voice fills the room even though it’s not a speaker-phone. It seems that Dick’s “people” — read new wife of some three weeks, one of Burton’s “between Liz” marriages — don’t think it’s in the actor’s best interest to be doing a love scene with co-star Raquel Welch in a sketch we’d prepared for them — a parody of the popular PBS series "Upstairs, Downstairs" that we had re-titled "Backstairs at Buckingham Palace." Hope cups his hand over the mouthpiece and asks us if we can rewrite the sketch omitting the kissing. We all shake our heads “no” — if the love scenes go, there’s no sketch. Hope tells Burton he’ll get back to him and hangs up. We carefully go over the sketch line-by-line just to be sure, and Hope agrees that, unless Burton has lip privileges with the downstairs chambermaid, we’ll have to write a whole new sketch, and time, as they say over there, is frightfully short. Hope gets an idea. He calls Burton back and asks him if it would help if the chambermaid were someone other than Raquel. Several minutes elapse while Dick again checks with his people. That would solve the problem very nicely, he tells Hope. Goodbye, Raquel. Vinnage starts calling his British contacts and soon locates actress Susan George who’s appearing in a stage play about three hundred miles from London. Susan, an experienced performer who had recently costarred with Dustin Hoffman in the popular American movie, "Straw Dogs," agrees to step in for Raquel despite a case of laryngitis, finishes her matinee and arrives at the Palladium just hours before showtime. After a quick rehearsal, she bravely goes on for Raquel and ends up sharing equal-billing with Welch, Burton and Leslie Uggams. Later, Raquel explains to a group of British reporters that she had rejected the sketch because she was unhappy with her lines. This time, we were more than happy to take the rap.       A native of San Francisco, Bob Mills served in the Navy from 1956 to 1959, graduated from San Francisco State University in 1962 and the University of California Hastings Law in 1965 and practiced in Palo Alto, California from 1966 until becoming a television writer in 1976, whereupon he ceased all contact with lawyers. He wrote for the "Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts" 1976-77; "The Bob Hope Show" 1977-92 In 1973, he married his wife, Shelley, with whom he lives in Studio City, California.   He writes a daily topical blog entitled "Dr. Digit's Hollywood Memory Blog" online at www.bereftontheleft.blogspot.com. He is a volunteer reader at Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic in Hollywood and hosts a weekly program entitled "Inside Television" for Los Angeles Radio Reading Service for the Blind in Northridge, California, streamed online each Tuesday at 0820-0900 Pacific at www.larrs.org. Each New Years Day, he co-hosts a three-hour audio description of the Pasadena Rose Parade broadcast to 52 radio stations for the blind reaching 2.7 million listeners via NPR satellite. He's also a substitute co-host of "Access Unlimited" heard on Tuesdays 2:30 to 3:00 pm Pacific on KPFK, 90.7 fm Los Angeles, 98.7 fm Santa Barbara. Streamed live and archived at www.kpfk.org   In 2009, his book THE LAUGH MAKERS: A Behind the Scenes Tribute to Bob Hope's Incredible Gag Writers was published by Bear Manor Media in both a print and an audio version read by the author. Sample chapters: www.laughmakers.blogspot.com An unabridged audio version read by the author is available at: http://teach.learnoutloud.com/Browse/Arts-and-Entertainment/Film_-Music_-Radio_-TV_-and-Pop-Culture/The-Laugh-Makers/33067 He is an emeritus member of the Writers Guild of America and holds memberships in two organizations: Yarmy’s Army, a group of veteran writers and entertainers who meet monthly for dinner and produce fund-raisers for worthy causes including the Motion Picture and Television House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, and in The Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters, a social club made up of former radio and television professionals that meets bimonthly for lunch and a celebrity “roast.”   Article Source: Article Directory - http://www.freearticleforyou.com