FRANCHISE PLAYER: Bob Hope spent decades in front of microphones and TV cameras at NBC.

Broadcast highlights A timeline of big moments in Bob Hope's television career. Archives The Beverly Hills branch of the Museum of Television and Radio, which opened in March 1996, has a library of 75,000 programs. It has cataloged 157 television programs and 72 radio programs that star or feature Hope. To see or hear them, you pay $5-$10 at the front desk. The price of admission reserves time in the library upstairs. You use a computer to select up to four programs. Once they spin up the shows, staff members escort you to a cubicle with a TV screen and headphones. You have two hours to enjoy your selections. If you know the title, you can find non-cataloged Bob Hope shows, like the 1969 'Roberta,' in the museum's archives. It takes up to two weeks to access archive material. The museum is at 465 N. Beverly Drive, one block east of Rodeo Drive and one block south of Santa Monica Boulevard. (310) 786-1000.

By Bruce Fessier
The Desert Sun

Being Bob Hope was a full-time job for the wiseacre from Cleveland--and a great many other people.

King of kidding Bob Hope was the undisputed king of comedy from the bombing of Pearl Harbor through the fall of South Vietnam. Although Hope enjoyed topical jokes, observers saw gentleness in his humor. He could kid without going for the jugular. 'He was not only a superb entertainer,' said former President Gerald Ford, 'but a generous person with people of all walks of life--military, charities, friends. 'His greatest contribution is his indelible mark in the field of comedy. It'll last forever. Nobody in this century has had any career achievements that are comparable.' The late Diana 'Mousie' Powell, a close friend to the Hopes, believed Hope would be remembered for maintaining his humor through thick and thin. 'He could rib the heck out of Democrats and Republicans,' she said. 'He just gave the American people a lot of humor when they needed it. That's probably what he'll be remembered for -- that he did bring some laughter when things weren't very funny.'

Hope ruled the airwaves in the 1940s, the golden afternoon of radio and the dawn of television.

'He was one of the funniest comedians around,' said Palm Springs resident Larry Gelbart, a former comedy writer for Hope. 'He was the best monologist certainly. He was a wonderful comic actor in movies.

'Some people are not the best anything. They're just the only one in their class and there was nobody like Bob in the same way that there was nobody like Jack Benny, nobody like Groucho and the pantheon of funny people.'

Benny was leading in radio ratings until Hope's 'Pepsodent Show' became the nation's No. 1 program in 1941, a spot it held throughout most of World War II.

In his early radio work, he pioneered the opening monologue, paving the way for Johnny Carson, Jay Leno and David Letterman. In the 1950s, he hosted an experimental afternoon talk show.

Hope got his first NBC television show in 1950, the late Gene Autry, a fellow desert resident, said Hope worked in the medium before that.

'He dates back before I owned KTLA, which was the first TV station that went on the air in Los Angeles and Bob was the first artist to go on KTLA in 1947,' he said. 'I remember we had a lot of film from those days and we had Bob Hope on there.'

By that time, Hope and Bing Crosby were the biggest box office attractions in the country with their 'Road' series, and Hope was getting heavily involved in business ventures such as oil and real estate. That's when he started hiring scores of top writers for his TV and personal appearances.

Among them were Sherwood Schwartz, who later gave the world 'Gilligan's Island' and 'The Brady Bunch,' and Norman Panama and Melvin Franks, who wrote films for Paramount like 'White Christmas.'

Gelbart, who went on to create TV's 'M.A.S.H.,' joined Hope's legendary team of radio writers in the late 1940s and gained immense respect for his boss.

'He is a remarkable fellow and it was a remarkable experience,' Gelbart said. 'I joined the Hope show and saw the world. We traveled everywhere and it was a special time.

'I was lucky in a way, the four years I spent with Bob were not over-populated with writers. There were just six people that I recall, and contrary to some other stories and legends, he was very respectful of our position. We weren't subjects of the king, we were his court. Over the years, Hope has hired masses of writers, but then he's done masses of material.'

'He was dependent on writers mainly because he was so spread out in his career,' Gelbart said. 'He would do concerts and he would do television and films and radio, public appearances, charity performances--all sorts of things. So he was constantly having new material prepared for him. Of course he was dependent, but I don't think of that in a negative way. We fueled the machine is what we did.'

The writers also kept him in touch with what young audiences were laughing at. Phyllis Diller recalled that, when she toured Vietnam with Hope, he would always have his writers go to their next camp and mix with the soldiers.

'That was the routine,' said Gelbart. 'You would go ahead and find out what would be suitable material. What the name of the local personnel or particular gripes or aspects of specific situations were and those would all be fed into the material. That was very much a part of it, going out in advance and being prepared to write stuff that would be tailor made for each place he visited.'