Hope, Inc.

The advertisement was as gaggy as the book it was advertising: "Piqued by the small sale of I Never Left Home (1,620,000 copies, mostly to relatives), Bob Hope has written another book. It is called So This Is Peace, and it deals, off the bottom of the deck, with Reconversion." At the bottom of the ad was what seemed to be an added fillip in the same joking vein: "Published by the Hope Corporation."

But the Hope Corp. was no gag. It was part of a three-way corporate parlay by which Bob Hope expects to solve the No.

1 question of those in the million-a-year income bracket: how can they get around the enormous income taxes which would normally take all but $150,000 of that million?

Last year Bob Hope thought he saw a way out. He split up some of his talents and earnings into a family of corporations. Like many of his gags, the basic idea was not new but the Hope treatment was. He set up the Hope Corp. for books, and Hope Records, Inc. for records. Both were wholly owned by Hope. But a third corporation, Hope Enterprises, Inc. had 25 other stockholders, including Bing Crosby, Director Leo McCarey, was designed for independent movies and personal appearances.

So This Is Peace was the first venture of Hope Corp. The corporation put up $25,000 to have the book printed, paid Simon & Schuster to distribute it. If it sells as well as his first (it made $175,000, which Hope turned over to charity), Hope should make far more than $175,000--and keep a big share of it.

Bob Hope has also launched Hope Enterprises on its first ventures. A personal-appearance tour poured $500,000 into its coffers (net before taxes: $200,000); an independent movie, My Favorite Brunette, for which the stockholders put up $100,000 and the banks $1,000,000, will be released next March. Hope Records is now spending $25,000 to make recordings from Hope broadcasts. Hope's income from the broadcasts, $10,000 a week, along with money from his other noncorporate activities--part ownership of the Cleveland Indians, two pictures yearly with Paramount, etc.--goes into his pocket and is taxable at the personal income rate. The profits in his corporations are taxable at a lower corporate rate.

And if Bob Hope should decide to dissolve his corporations, or sell his assets, as many movie producers have done (TIME, Aug. 5), he would pay only a 25% capital gains tax. Last week, as Hope rubbed his hands over sales of 115,000 on his book, he said he had no intention of dissolving his mushrooming companies. He liked the feel of being a big businessman. Gagged he: "We're not on the Big Board yet, but we're coming along. Pretty soon we ought to cut a lemon."

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