Barney McNulty; Hollywood’s Honored ‘King of the Cue Cards’

The bomb in the Saigon hotel, Gen. William C. Westmoreland later said, was meant to kill Bob Hope and his entertain-the-troops troupe. But Hope’s motorcade arrived 10 minutes after the bomb exploded, killing or injuring more than 100 people.

Members of the group credited their tardiness to the cue-card man, who was delayed in moving Hope’s 5,000 pounds of cardboard cheat sheets.

When the comedian learned about his narrow escape, Hope told the cue-card man: “Saved by the idiot cards again.”

Barney McNulty, known as “the king of the cue cards,” who held lines in front of Hope for 43 years, and cued a host of other stellar entertainers over his half-century career, has died at the age of 77.

McNulty died Sunday in his Studio City home.

The affable McNulty, who toured the world with Hope, was crowned king of his unusual business by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in a 1990 cover article for its Emmy magazine.

But decades earlier, shortly after McNulty lettered and flashed the first television cue cards in 1949, satirist Stan Freberg had told him: “I can see it now--Barney McNulty, president of the Cue Card Corporation of America!”

McNulty came to Hollywood in the footsteps of his older sister, actress Penny Singleton, the “Blondie” of radio and film and the voice of television’s Jane Jetson.

During World War II, McNulty served in Army Air Corps communications, perfecting a skill that presaged his future--swiftly transcribing Morse code into block letters.

After the war, he became an usher at NBC, and by 1949 was working on “The Ed Wynn Show.”

When Wynn became ill, the veteran entertainer feared that his medication would interfere with his memory on the live show. So McNulty was asked to put the entire script on large sheets of cardboard. The young usher stayed up until 4 a.m. completing the task and then flipped the cards for Wynn during the show, launching his own career.

He called his freelance cue card business Ad Libs. Eschewing computerized electronic TelePrompTers as they were developed, McNulty preferred cardboard and fast-drying ink. His most vivid memories, he told The Times a few years ago, were trying to keep cue cards dry by placing them under airplanes in rainy tour sites, coping with frozen marker ink in Korea and having cards blow into the Pacific during a Hope performance on an aircraft carrier.

McNulty tailored his lettering to each performer--large letters for nearsighted George Burns, Jimmy Durante and Dorothy Lamour, and especially Hope toward the end of the comedian’s active career.

McNulty’s travels with Hope highlighted his life with celebrities, all of whom he seemed to admire. Globe-trotting for Hope to entertain military personnel meant transporting from 3,000 to 5,000 pounds of cue (or “idiot”) cards, putting the right ones aboard helicopters for specific shows, and then flipping them in proper sequence with proper timing. The cue-card man became a backstage fixture in Hope’s entourage, busy with his marking pens and cards as he quickly printed up new cards to accommodate any sudden script changes. Equally familiar were Hope’s impatient microphone asides, “All right, Barney, get those cards up, get ‘em up.”

Hope clearly appreciated McNulty’s efforts. At the end of one tour, the comedian gave the cue-card king a gold watch inscribed, “To Barney, from the idiot.”

McNulty amassed more than 100,000 of his cue cards, noting in 1983, “I want to keep them because it’s a continuing history of show business.”

McNulty was something of a walking history of entertainment. He flipped the cards to cue Lucille Ball for the pilot of “I Love Lucy” and Groucho Marx for the pilot of “You Bet Your Life.” And he was personally requested by Orson Welles for what would be the final performance by the great actor and producer--an appearance on the Cybill Shepherd-Bruce Willis series “Moonlighting.”

He also cued Hubert Humphrey, the former vice president, at a political convention.

Others for whom McNulty flipped the cards were Frank Sinatra, Milton Berle, Angela Lansbury, Carol Burnett, Jack Benny, Dinah Shore, Fred Astaire and even the poet Carl Sandburg, who asked to keep his cue cards as a memento of an appearance on television.

McNulty told The Times in 1998 that Hope, Sinatra and Berle had always remained his three most important clients, in that order, adding with showmanship of his own: “I hated it when they all wanted me on the same day.”

One of McNulty’s greatest challenges occurred when he was holding the cards for actors including John Wayne during filming of a John Ford western. The Duke beckoned McNulty during a break, insisting he join a poker game with the challenge: “Now we’ll see how good you really are with cards.”

In addition to his sister, McNulty is survived by his wife, Jill, of Studio City; son Keith of Malibu; three daughters, Audrey Schwartz of Ojai and Brynna and Erin McNulty of Studio City.

Services are scheduled today at the Sherman Oaks Presbyterian Church, 4445 Noble St. The family has asked that memorial donations be made to the USO at 1008 Eberle Place No. 301, Washington, D.C. 20374, or to McNulty’s church, the First Presbyterian Church of North Hollywood, 5000 Colfax Ave., North Hollywood, CA 91601.