Dear Diary,
Johnny Mercer, the traitor, didn’t even mention Bob tonight, but that can’t last, on account of because Jerry Colonna will be his guest next week. Imagine Jerry Colonna as a guest on the Tuesday night Pepsodent show! That’s like having Rochester as a guest on the Jack Benny program, or making F.D.R. an honorary citizen of the United States. And it’s almost as bad as having Bob Hope as a guest on the Pepsodent show. It all goes to show you what peculiar things can happen during summer vacations. There are still eleven weeks left before Bob comes back, and anything can happen.
Counting my sever hours today, I’ve spent 51 hours at the rationing board.
Dear Diary,
Apparently the cast of the Bob Hope show didn’t want to go off the air this summer. At eight o’clock Vera Vague was a guest on Eddie Cantor’s show. At eight thirty Jerry Colonna was the guest star on Jack Carson’s program. Jerry was a cleaner, and Carson brought his trousers to be cleaned. He said, “Aren’t you Jerry Colonna of the Bob Hope show? Then what you you doing here?” Jerry replied, “Just because I work for Hope, is that any reason why I should starve to death?” Jerry later sang the cutest song I have ever heard him sing, “Sam, You Made the Pants too Long.” It was written for him, or sounded like it.
I now have 44 hours of rationing.
Dear Diary,
It’s hard to realize that the happiest day of my life was just two months ago today. It seems like longer than that, in that I want to see Bob in person again so badly that I can feel it. And yet in another way it seems like only yesterday, because I can read that newspaper article or think about it, and recall every little incident. I can even remember the lovely, deep tone of his voice as he turned around from the mike, his eyes searching the platform, and started a sentence, “I wonder _ _ _.” When he saw me, he said, “Oh, yes” low, and it actually happened. (Ain’t I silly? But happy.)
I now have a total of forty hours at the mailing center to my credit.
Dear Diary,
I spent eight more hours at the ration board today, for a total of thirty-three hours.
A picture of Bob at a rehearsal of the Mayor of the Town broadcast joined my collection today.
I heard Bob’s program rebroadcast by short wave for the last time this season today. Everything with the word Pepsodent in it was cut out as usual, but the best part of the whole show, the duet, was left in. I’ve been waiting for almost three months for the results of the Movie-Radio Guide’s poll. I was afraid they wouldn’t be announced before Bob went off the air. I said some time ago that Bob would win all three titles, and he did.
Dear Diary,
I worked at the ration board four hours today, making a total of twenty-five hours. I’m slipping. I’ll have to go pretty regularly this week to make up for the time I lost while waiting for my carpet to be delivered.
While looking through the list of coming attractions at the various neighborhood theaters, I noticed that “Never Say Die,” Bob’s fifth picture, will be here for a return engagement Wednesday. That picture is one of the several in which Bob co-starred with Martha Raye. Fortunately, it hasn’t happened since I’ve been liking him so darn much. I saw him in all those first six pictures, but it took “The Cat and the Canary” to make me a dead duck.
Dear Diary,
I spent over four hours at the rationing board this afternoon, making a total of twenty – one hours, or an average of three and a half hours a day since I started last Friday.
Bing didn’t come back on the Kraft Music Hall as scheduled tonight, so Bob Crosby carried on again. As usual, he was thoroughly enjoyable, and, as last week, I rather hate to see him go. But I’ll also be glad to hear Papa Crosby again. He’ll probably offer condolences to Bob (Hope, not Crosby). After all, Bob lost one of his chief sources of material when Don Bingo won a race.
According to Garry Moore tonight, his new job is this: “I’m the bloke who pokes cokes and smokes at folks for the guy who buys pies and dies ties in a fancy farmers’ pharmacy on a high hill in back of a haystack in Hackensac, New Jersey.”
Dear Diary,
I worked at the rationing board more than eight hours today, and put out twice as many books as anyone else at our table. Not that it matter who does the most, as long as the job is done well in as short a time as possible. Volunteers are badly needed now to get the job finished by July 15, when the third ration books will be needed. It’s a tiresome day’s work, and it’s not exactly glamorous, but it has to be done. It helps me feel that Bob Hope and the armed forces aren’t the only ones doing something to win this damned war. I just realized that my entire contribution to the war effort has been: (1) a couple of days a week at the USO last summer; (2) three war bonds; (3) a first aid course; and not much else.
Muriel Windham's Diary 