“Radio was a medium where, every week, more people would hear my jokes than had seen my vaudeville act in ten years,” Hope wrote. “The radio season ran thirty-nine weeks. That meant I had to tell thirty-nine times as many jokes as I had used in a whole year of vaudeville.” Hope’s facility at delivering rapid-fire topical monologues attracted more than 23 million listeners each week. Critics voted him radio’s “leading entertainer” in 1941.