Pong Hot

Red China's Blue Pencil -- Hardened By the Hammer and Sharpened On the Sickle

(Ed note:  The author was a script-writer for Bob Hope between 1977 and 1992.)

In 1974, soon after Richard Nixon opened relations with the People's Republic of China, Hope began a behind-the-scenes campaign to become the first American entertainer to tape a television special there. He spent the next five years cajoling the State Department and the Department of Defense — at the start of every new season, I'd say, "We doing
China this year?" and he'd say, "Any day now. Stay packed."

Leaning on a raft of influential government pals including Henry Kissinger and calling in markers he'd been collecting from the government since World War II, he finally received permission to take our show there as part of a cultural exchange program dubbed "Ping-Pong Diplomacy" by the press.

On June 16, 1979, after a four-hour flight from Narita, Japan, a Chinese Airlines 707 filled with our merry band of mirth makers eager to get their first look at this hotbed of Communism, touched down at the Peking Airport. The group included Bob and Dolores Hope, their daughter, Linda, her co-producer Jim Lipton — with whom Gig Henry and I would share writing credit — Jim's wife, Kedakai, director Bob Wynn and a support crew made up of pretty much the same gang who had earned their Hope Squadron wings on our trek to Australia the previous year.

Our guest stars would arrive over the next several days — Mikhail Baryshnikov, Crystal Gayle, Big Bird from Sesame Street (Carroll Spinney), mimes Robert Shields and Lurene Yarnell and a popular disco-duo, Peaches and Herb.  Most of the company — staff, crew and talent, forty-five of us in all — were lodged in the Peking Hotel (whose marble-heavy architecture resembled a Hilton shipped in from Moscow). The Russians had supervised its design and construction, and it showed.

Our rooms were basic, comfortable — a color TV was included, but for some strange reason, received only programs in Chinese — and they were never locked. The sliding doors to the balconies were double-pane glass to keep guests insulated from the street noise below.

On each floor near the elevator, a concierge stood guard with the vigilance of a rock concert rent-a-cop. Strangely, we came to feel no hesitation in leaving valuable belongings in a hotel room with the door open. Maybe the penalty for petty theft in China — death — had something to do with this.

Gig and I were assigned a young, affable Chinese college student, who spoke excellent English and was spending his summer with the government, to act as our guide and interpreter and to make sure we didn't wander onto any military installations. When behind the Bamboo Curtain, one feels much safer with a plainclothes agent within earshot. Or
any kind of shot.

Each morning, there would be a large Thermos of hot tea outside the door, which was the closest we ever got to Room Service. All of our meals were served in a cavernous, high-walled dining hall with huge murals of the Yangtze's Three Gorges. It was about the size of UCLA's Pauley Pavilion and every bit as intimate. Mealtimes were posted, and if you
missed them, you were out of luck.

McDonald's and other fast food meccas had yet to invade the People's Republic, but going hungry was never a problem since the Chinese traditionally demonstrate their hospitality through copious gifts of calories. Important visitors rate eight-to-twelve course banquets — almost every evening. We ended up attending more banquets than a major league manager in the off-season.

At first, everything seemed in place for a smooth, uneventful shoot.  We would tape our special and be doing our part in strengthening the newly-discovered bonds between East and West.  Then the Minister of Culture showed up.

The Communist government of the Peoples Republic is divided into Ministries — a Ministry of Commerce, a Ministry of Health, a Ministry of Education and so on. From day one, the nemesis of The Bob Hope Show — and Hope personally — was the Ministry of Culture.  As a condition of being allowed to tape within their borders, the Culture Minister insisted on approving every word of our script beforehand.

As a practical matter, this was not only unrealistic, but virtually impossible since we made script changes right up until tape began rolling. Allowing them to check each segment after it had been shot wouldn't have been a problem, but for some reason known only to Confucius, the Culture Ministers wouldn't go along.

Their insistence on a policy of prior approval would be a major stumbling block during the entire shoot. Looking back on it, I think the Chinese had heard of Hope's legendary reputation for political jokes, feared their Revolution would be in his cross hairs, and decided to make sure they'd be protected from his comedic barbs. (Can't blame them there; they were correct on all counts.)

Our first run-in with the policy evolved as follows. Fellow writer Gig Henry and I had written a spot that was to be taped in front of the Democracy Wall, a poster forum in downtown Peking that had recently received a lot of ink in the world press. Now that they had undergone a Cultural Revolution, so the theory went, any Chinese citizen was free not only to criticize the government, but to post his thoughts for all to read.

Our version of this newly-found right of free speech found Hope strolling along the Wall and coming upon a man pasting a poster on it.

HOPE: (to man) Sir, would you mind translating that for me?

MAN: Not at all. I'm complaining about all the crime in the streets, traffic congestion, loud music at night and air pollution.

HOPE: Gee, I had no idea Peking had all those problems.

MAN: Oh, I'm not from Peking. I'm from from Passaic, New Jersey.

A permit to film at the wall had been requested and granted. The problem was, the actual script was completed just minutes before it was to be shot. There simply was no time to obtain an additional signature on our permit covering the changes.  News of the sketch we shot reached Culture faster than the invasion of Nang King. You'd have thought the guy was from Tibet. The officials demanded the tape right out of the camera. Our director Bob Wynn explained that it couldn't be removed without destroying other material on the same reel.

After several head-to-head meetings, Hope was issued an ultimatum: unless the Democracy Wall tape was turned over to them by day's end, no tape of our special would be allowed to leave the country.

While Hope, producer Jim Lipton and director Bob Wynn continued the delicate negotiations, we managed to smuggle out the offending segment hidden among legitimate news footage being sent back to Los Angeles with Jess Marlow, a local anchor who was covering our trip for KNBC.

The Ministry finally backed down only after receiving a signed affidavit from Hope that the segment wouldn't be included in our special. It wasn't, but from that point on during our visit, even the food served at our honorary banquets seemed markedly cooler.  The Democracy Wall controversy was just round one of what would turn out to be an ongoing game of cat-and-mouse with the Culture Ministers. We would soon learn just how serious they were about enforcing their version of the rules.

Each morning, Gig and I met with Hope to discuss ideas for the show. Gradually, we noticed that Culture was saying "no" faster than the Parole Board on Devil's Island. It was almost as if they knew what we wanted before we submitted a formal request. As it turned out, they did.

One day, as we arrived for our usual strategy session, Hope motioned for us to join him on his 23rd floor balcony. As we slid the door closed behind us, he pointed toward the drain at one end of the deck and invited us to join him at the other.  He whispered that he had learned from someone at the American Embassy that his suite might be bugged, confirming our own suspicions that the rooms were sorely in need of a visit from the Orkin man.

Moreover, we had a feeling that the Red Flag limousine assigned to Hope by the government also sported some after-market wiring. Moving from location to location on shooting days, Don Marando would have to juggle Hope's heavy aluminum makeup case on his lap because, according to the driver, the trunk was off-limits to passengers.

We couldn't blame him. It's not easy to explain why a spare tire needs an antenna.  Needless to say, from then on, we made sure that the only microphone Hope spoke into was connected to our camera. Even though we were with NBC and not the CIA, it didn't seem to matter.

We taped the stage-show segments of our China special on the Fourth of July at Peking's Capital Theater (one of the few things that Chairman Mao had allowed to contain the word capital) before an audience of PRC officials, foreign dignitaries, U.S. Ambassador Leonard
Woodcock, his family, staff and American Embassy employees.

The language breakdown was about half Chinese, half English-speaking.  Waiting backstage with Hope as the audience filed to their seats, we peered through a gap in the curtain as a dozen high-ranking Communist Party leaders were being seated in the front row. They wore gray, baggy suits with the impeccable tailoring of pajamas from Wal-Mart. They looked to be in the neighborhood of 80 — and it must have been a rough neighborhood. Their lined faces reflected years of proletariat struggle, party in-fighting, industrial revolution and chain smoking.

Watching this grim potpourri of Maoists, Hope frowned. "Look at them. Not a smile and they don't even speak English. How am I supposed to get laughs?"  "Don't worry, Bob," Gig offered soothingly. "How many peasants could they have purged? A couple of million. Three on the outside."  Hope said, "You're right. What am I worried about? I survived vaudeville."

At rehearsal that afternoon, we had to settle on the most efficient method of translating the material into Mandarin. First, we tried projecting the Chinese characters on a large screen beside the stage, but the Chinese, well-known as fast readers, would laugh before Hope could finish each joke. We decided he'd need an interpreter on stage beside him.

We called for a volunteer and we got a good one — Ying Ruo Cheng, one of China's leading actors, who a decade later, would play the disgraced Mayor of Peking in "The Last Emperor."  Cheng's sense of comic timing proved an equal of Hope's and he got as many laughs from the Chinese as Hope was getting from the Westerners. I had seldom seen
Hope more delighted — two laughs for the price of one.

Of course, the entire monologue had to be pre-approved by Culture, but we somehow slipped by them an opening line that was hardly designed to divert the minds of our hosts from the Cold War:

*   I can't believe I'm really here, but this must be China. Last night, I went to a movie called "The America Syndrome."

Starring Jack Lemmon and Jane Fonda, "The China Syndrome" was playing to big box office in the states and concerned a threatened nuclear meltdown, a somewhat touchy subject in the PRC. But we were there to get laughs, and remember, this was before the age of political correctness.  Hope continued...

*   I've been seeing all the sights. Yesterday, I stopped by the Academy of Science and they offered me a job as an exhibit.

*   Then I visited the Hall of Longevity. I promised my insurance man I would.

*   And I loved the Great Wall of China. Of course, I love anything as old as I am.

Though Hope was now seventy-seven, until recently lines like these would never have made it into the monologue. But he was beginning to take a certain pride in having arrived in Senior-Citizenland. And especially in China, where age is revered, jokes like these fell on appreciative ears.

*   Then we visited the Forbidden City. What opulence! It looks like Caesar's Palace without the slot machines.

At this juncture, interpreter Cheng turned to Hope and asked, "What's a Caesar's Palace?"

The Chinese may have been in the dark, but as you would expect, the line got a huge laugh from the Westerners. Hope said, "It's a little place that takes the money the IRS didn't get." That's a pretty quick ad-lib, but they ain't seen nothin' yet.  A few lines later, Hope delivered this line:

*   Yesterday, I visited your Marble Boat at the Summer Palace.  A boat made entirely of marble. At first they said it wouldn't float — and then Billy Graham showed up.

Again, Cheng interrupted his translation and asked, "Who is Billy Graham?"  And in one of the quickest ad-libs I had ever heard, Hope replied "Billy Graham is an advisor at Caesar's Palace." The line proved yet again what a consummate ad-libber Hope was.

During rehearsal, we got word that the Ministry of Culture had cut this joke from the monologue:

*   They serve a drink over here called "mao tai."  One sip and your head feels like it's going through a Cultural Revolution. Two sips and it feels like a Gang-of-Four.

We gladly complied and excised the offending material. After all, we were batting five hundred. We lost this joke, but we managed to slip "America Syndrome" by them — most likely because they didn't have a clue as to its meaning.

 

Excerpted from THE LAUGH MAKERS: A Behind-the-Scenes Tribute to Bob Hope's Incredible Gag Writers (c) 2009 by Robert L. Mills and published by Bear Manor Media.

To order:  http://bobhopeslaughmakers.weebly.com Kindle e-book $2.99: www.amazon.com/dp/B0041D9EPO

View photos from the book:  http://bobhopeshowbackstage.weebly.com

About the Author

A native of San Francisco, Bob Mills served in the Navy after high school, graduating from San Francisco State University in 1962 and the University of California Hastings Law in 1965.  He practiced in Palo Alto, CA for ten years before moving to Hollywood to write for television.  He worked on the Dinah Shore Show, the Steve Allen Show and the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts before joining Bob Hope as a staff writer  in 1977. He traveled the world with Hope for the next seventeen years. 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 and was named one of Leonard Maltin's "Top 20 Year-End Picks."  To order:  http://bobhopeslaughmakers.weebly.com

Kindle e-book $2.99: www.amazon.com/dp/B0041D9EPO

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