Card Sharp Flips for Stars

GOOD MORNING, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. WE HAVE A GREAT SHOW

TODAY, AND IT SEEMS ONLY FITTING TO BEGIN THIS WAY.

LET’S HEAR IT FOR A MAN WHO WORKED FOR HOPE, SINATRA AND

OTHER LEGENDS--THE KING OF THE CUE CARDS, BARNEY McNULTY!

And then this wiry senior citizen with white hair and white beard strolls in, a couple of 40-year-old props in hand--cue cards from a Tennessee Ernie Ford show. Barney McNulty turned 75 not long ago but seems younger. The cards hold a lyric, and since I can’t place the melody, McNulty sings it for me, flipping as he goes. YES, IT’S A GOOD DAY FOR SINGIN’ A SONG

(Flip.)

AND IT’S A GOOD DAY FOR MOVING ALONG . . .

(Flip.)

Something of a performer himself, McNulty keeps flipping and singing and smiling. Yes, it seems to be a good day to be Barney McNulty, and to hear him tell it, he’s had nearly half a century of good days in The Biz.

Next year, Barney McNulty will celebrate 50 years since his first gig on “The Ed Wynn Show.” McNulty,

who lives in Studio City with his wife, Jill, was a pioneer of the use of so-called “idiot cards” to help performers remember their lines.

The tens of thousands of cards McNulty has saved make for a distinctive strata of TV history.

“They’re like my children. . . . I just like the cards. When you self-create something, you don’t want to throw it away.” McNulty thinks he may have 3,500 songs on cue cards. He shrugs and drops a one-liner: “Well, I always thought variety was coming back.”

Not long ago, a TV trade publication, Emmy magazine, featured McNulty on its cover in recognition of his long and singular career. McNulty celebrated his birthday in June at his church, First Presbyterian of North Hollywood. Bob Hope, now 95, dropped by for 45 minutes. Other guests included actress Angela Lansbury and longtime writer-director-

producer Hal Kanter. Milton Berle sent greetings on video.

A cue-card sharp, McNulty explains, must be “in the right place at the right time.” There is a craft to creating the cards; many had to be tailored to the performer. Nearsighted performers Jimmy Durante, George Burns and Dorothy Lamour wanted large lettering. There is a craft to breaking the phrases, he says, and a knack to flipping--to keeping in sync. “The right flipper,” he adds, “can handle anything.”

The best-laid plans can go astray. Once, with Hope on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, a gust of wind sent McNulty’s cards into the Pacific along with the sheet music from Les Brown’s Band of Renown. Another time, McNulty was in the wrong place at the wrong time--and that was a good thing.

This too happened on one of Hope’s overseas tours, this one to Vietnam. Hope later told Emmy magazine the story of Barney McNulty, American hero:

“A bomb went off at the hotel where we were staying--just 10 minutes before we arrived. Later, we found out that the bomb was meant for us, and then we remembered that Barney McNulty had been 10 minutes late getting the cue cards off the plane. He and his cards saved our life.”

McNulty’s recollection is a tad different, but the gist is the same. Hope, he said, reacted with an ad-lib: “Saved by the idiot cards . . . Once again.”

To hear McNulty tell it, there’s no people like show people. He’d make a lousy source for the scandal sheets. Ask for a Sinatra story and McNulty will tell you what a decent guy he was. Big stars, he says, are just regular folks.

He grew up around the business, his family following his older sister, an actress, to Hollywood. It is said that Humphrey Bogart’s first screen kiss was with Dorothy McNulty. Later, after marrying and also adopting her nickname, she became better known as Penny Singleton--”Blondie” on radio and film (and later the voice of Jane Jetson).

During World War II, McNulty served stateside in the Army Air Corps, working in communications. Among his tasks was to swiftly transcribe Morse code into block letters--a skill that would come in handy later.

McNulty later worked as an usher at CBS and got his break when Ed Wynn became ill. Back then, cue cards offered just that--simply cues. This was live TV, and Wynn figured the show must go on. Fretting that Wynn’s medication would cause him to forget his lines, Kanter, the head writer, asked McNulty the day before the telecast to put the entire script on cards. McNulty stayed up until 4 a.m. doing just that and flipped them the next day. “I’ve been flipping ever since.”

A career was born. McNulty peddled his services around Hollywood and took on apprentices. Satirist Stan Freberg, he says, told him: “I can see it now: Barney McNulty, president of the Cue Card Corporation of America!” McNulty actually calls his company Ad Libs. His business card includes the line “. . . since the first grain of sand passed through the hourglass”--a reference to Ad Libs’ 33-year relationship with the soap “Days of Our Lives.”

Hope, Sinatra and Berle, McNulty says, were his three most important clients--and in that order of priority. “I hated it when they all wanted me on the same day.”

The Valley Historical Society once featured McNulty as a guest speaker. Certainly he was a witness to TV history. Lately, he’d been searching his memory, compiling a list of the Top 10 shows he had worked on. This list includes the pilots for “I Love Lucy” and “You Bet Your Life.”

He once held cue cards for Hubert Humphrey at a political convention and poet Carl Sandburg in a TV appearance. Sandburg, he says, asked for the cards as mementos.

McNulty likes to point out that the late Orson Welles had requested his services for what turned out to be his last performance--on an episode of “Moonlighting.”

It all, he says, leaves him feeling blessed that his humble, hidden craft helped performers with their art. When the TV show “The Real McCoys” ceased production, McNulty says, Walter Brennan put his arm around him and thanked him for extending his career.

Such appreciation keeps Barney McNulty going. After one tour, Bob Hope presented him with a gold watch inscribed “To Barney, from the idiot.”

McNulty has four children, one of whom, Keith, followed in his footsteps programming cuing devices. McNulty still prefers the old-fashioned ways and says he has no plans for retirement. It’s been awhile, of course, since Hope performed on stage, but McNulty doesn’t rule anything out.

“I consider that I’m on call now,” he says. “His eyes aren’t too good, his ears aren’t too good.

“But if he’s game, I’m game.”