Punch Lines at the Pinnacle : Writer Went From Church Skits to Gags for Bob Hope

In a tract neighborhood just off the Simi Valley Freeway, Martha Bolton spends her days avoiding housework and searching for punch lines.

Her husband is usually at work. The children may be at school, or playing outside. Bolton sits at a desk in her home. She gazes out the window at the Spanish tile roof of her neighbor’s house and tries to think of funny words.

She visualizes Bob Hope, and the jokes come to her:

“I don’t tan. I just wait for my liver spots to connect. . . .”

“After that earthquake, my house is still up on a hill, but my view just got lowered. . . .”

“I’m not saying how old the stewardess was, but when she demonstrated the oxygen mask, she kept it on.”

Bolton types the jokes up, sends them to Bob Hope and he reads them off cue cards on his television specials. Bolton, 36, is one of six writers on Hope’s full-time staff.

She found the way to Hollywood by staying at home. Her jokes, once the material for church skits, are now delivered by a legend, she says.

“It’s the ultimate dream to write for Bob Hope. Sometimes I can’t believe it. When you’re writing his jokes, there’s a little Bob Hope in your head saying the jokes.”

Friends call her to say how funny they think she is. Regal Books, a publisher, wants her to write “an Erma Bombeck kind of thing.” Hope will use Bolton’s latest jokes on a Jan. 9 NBC special documenting the comedian’s recent USO tour through the Persian Gulf.

“I’ve really been having fun on this trip. Why, just last night, Miss USA asked if I’d mind taking a walk. . . . by the way, what’s a ‘plank?”’

Lines like these don’t come easy and they don’t come to you overnight, Bolton says. It takes years.

The work began when she was 9, writing one-liners and sketches and plays. As an adult, Bolton worked as a medical insurance biller, tending to her family in the evening and writing late at night. Her jokes got no farther than church functions or local business roasts.

“Beginning comedy is all smirk and no pay,” Bolton says.

Family and friends weren’t always convinced that she could make it as a writer, especially after Bolton quit her job to write full-time in 1979. She and her husband, Russell, a Los Angeles police officer, have three sons--Rusty, 13, Tony, 11, and Matt, also 11. Their Little League trophies clutter the fireplace hearth.

“When I worked in medical insurance, it was good pay,” Bolton recalls. “There were times when I had some doubts. I was just about to go back to work.”

About that time, she sent some one-liners to Joan Rivers. Bolton said she picked Rivers because she thought they had similar philosophies on cleaning house.

“I serve leftovers the easy way. I never clear the table . . .”

“For years my family thought mold was a frosting.”

Rivers bought the jokes. Soon, Bolton was regularly selling to Rivers and Phyllis Diller at $10 to $50 a punch line. In 1982, she began sending jokes to Hope, and two years ago he hired her.

“I knew from the start that Martha would add spice to our television shows,” Hope said. “Her low-key whimsy is just what comedy needs.”

Bolton says of her salary only that “I can’t complain. He’s very generous.”

Such comediennes as Rivers, Diller and Roseanne Barr have made their careers on household humor. That was grist for most of Bolton’s early work: housekeeping, cooking, husbands.

Writing for Hope has been a change of pace--most of his comedy is topical or plays off specific themes. The transition, Bolton says, was natural.

“My style is his style. And you can pretty well write comedy on anything.”

Hope said he thinks Bolton’s home life complements his brand of humor.

“Anyone going through the pangs of raising three sons and who has a husband who is a cop facing life on the streets of L.A. has plenty of material to draw on,” the comedian said.

Now that she’s hit the big time, and past age 30, Bolton prefers morning work to late-night writing. When preparing for a television special, she will first meet with Hope and the other writers to outline sketches and monologue topics.

Then comes the writing. If the topic is taxes, she will list words associated with taxes, like deductions and returns. Bolton writes set-up lines, which she repeats to herself over and over until the punch line comes.

When she needs inspiration, she picks up a ceramic doll of Bob Hope and strokes its head.

Some jokes occur to her late at night. Bolton says she sleeps with a pencil and note pad under her pillow. When she wakes in the morning she must decipher midnight scribblings.

“Cooking, I think of a lot of jokes . . . as does my family,” Bolton says. “They say, ‘Send this joke to Bob Hope . . . and the food.’ ”

Bolton has also written four books of comedy skits for children. She is now working on one-liners for Hope’s personal appearances.

Her family doesn’t seem to mind the busy schedule. “They’re for anything that keeps me out of the kitchen,” Bolton said. “We go out a lot. The kids think that family dinner is the corner booth at Bob’s.”