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Bob Sweeney: in TV, at least, he's lucky. B OB SWEENEY is that rare ani¬ mal among actors, the supporting comic who doesn’t step on the star comedian’s lines but who still man¬ ages to establish himself firmly as a ranking pro. It’s not an easy bit. Now comfortably settled as the slightly stuffy Gilmore Cobb in My Favorite Husband, starring Joan Caulfield and Barry Nelson, Sweeney has been around long enough to know the Hollywood score inside and out. A veteran of both radio and TV, he is wholly in love with his new assign¬ ment—as well he’d better be. He’s under exclusive contract to CBS for five years, with a minimum of 30 Favorite Husband shows per year. The permanent role as Gilly was bound to happen to Sweeney sooner or later. He has appeared in virtually every filmed show done in Hollywood, including 12 appearances on 1 Mar¬ ried Joan. The initial script of Favor¬ ite Husband had him cast in a tran¬ sient role, the husband of one of George Cooper’s old flames, but the sponsors liked him so much that the writers were told to move the Cobbs into the Cooper neighborhood on a permanent basis. “That,” Sweeney says, “is Holly¬ wood. It takes a couple of mattress and silverplate executives I never met in my life to haul me out of the free lance ranks and get me up to the contract level.” As a free lance, however, Sweeney was never hard up for work. A radio announcer 10 years ago in San Fran¬ cisco, he came to Hollywood in 1944 and soon teamed up with Hal March, another eminently successful free lance (he was the second Harry Mor¬ ton on the Bums and Allen show), to do the Sweeney and March show on radio. “It was pretty much of a trade show,” Sweeney says today. “We were doing rather sharp satire and it wasn’t getting across. The trade loved it, but not the public—and it’s the public that pays the freight.” When Sweeney and March finally decided to call it quits, both went their separate ways and each today is a success on his own. Sweeney, particularly, became a fixture on dozens of radio shows. His lone re¬ gret today is that his CBS contract prevents him from working on Bob Hope’s NBC program. “Nobody is more fun to work with than Hope,” he says. “There’s a guy who really appreciates the rest of the cast.” 18