 Panama and Frank lured him to Hollywood in 1940, where he managed to sell some jokes to Bob Hope for his radio program.From there, 
he later wrote for radio, for Eddie Cantor's "The Eddie Cantor Show", and Rudy Vallée for his "Rudy Vallee's Sealtest Program", he would in later years, write comedy material for Fred Allen, Danny Thomas, Red Skelton, Phyllis Diller and Carol Burnett.After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, he sent his new bride, the former Eileen Ito, east to avoid the internment camps, and moved in with fellow Rudy Vallee writer Jess Oppenheimer (who 13 years later would hire his former roommate to write for "I Love Lucy").