From Bob Hope's very beginnings in radio, product association played an indispensable part in his career.   The first in a long list of products with which he would be associated over the years was Pepsodent toothpaste. Following glowing reviews in Paramount’s Big Broadcast of 1938, the makers of Pepsodent offered Hope his own radio show to replace their sponsorship of the popular "Amos ‘n’ Andy Show." Hope had wanted to get into radio ever since his first appearance on Rudy Vallee’s "Fleischmann’s Yeast Hour" earned him $700 for a two-minute interview.  "This is my kind of business," he thought.

The offer from Pepsodent, which came as a result of his successful appearances on NBC’s "Woodbury Show" with Frank Parker and the Shep Fields Orchestra, was his first real opportunity to host his own program.  He was off and running.  He assembled a crack staff of veteran radio writers that included Milt Josefsberg, Norman Sullivan, and Jack Douglas, an experienced announcer named Bill Goodwin, an orchestra leader, Skinnay Ennis — soon replaced by Les Brown — and a walrus-mustached, former trombonist named Jerry (“Greetings, Gate”) Colonna.

The Pepsodent Show debuted on September 27, 1938 and had all the earmarks of a hit. Unexpectedly, it got off to a rocky start.  “We really had no idea what we were doing,” Hope admitted. He told us it took ten or twelve weeks of tinkering with the format before he was satisfied with the laughs he was getting from the studio audience, many of whom he personally corralled in the hall outside his studio as they emerged from "The Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show."  Radio was in its infancy. There was, as yet, no reliable method of measuring listenership. Later, the Hooper Ratings and the Crosleys, audience sampling systems similar to today’s Neilsen Media Research, would be used to set advertising rates. In this excerpt, you'll learn how Hope found out how much his show was effecting Pepsodent's sales --- a lesson he never forgot.

(Read by the author 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.  www.bearmanormedia.bizland.com/id370.html