On the Job | Mihalap ’56 on how to be funny

Jamie Rosen Staff Writer

Hope Mihalap ’56 was an English major at Vassar. She participated in student government and theater while at the College. After graduation, Mihalap worked for several opera companies, then drifted into a career as a professional humorist, writer and public radio announcer.

The Miscellany News: What were your career goals while at Vassar?
Hope Mihalap: In that era, in 1956, it was a time when people very rarely had career plans. It was that famous time before the feminine mystique, when everyone just wanted to get married. That was the main goal of everyone who graduated. People would get engaged senior year or junior year, and that was all they were there for, really.

MN: What extracurricular interests and activities did you pursue while at Vassar?

HM: I tend to be a funny person…and a lot of people enjoyed me and enjoyed what I did. I was in many plays. I played with the idea of being a drama major, but I changed my mind, because I thought this was a good opportunity for me to do good hardcore intellectual stuff. When I did finally graduate, I had a lot of miscellaneous courses under my belt, because I became an English major only junior year. I finally discovered there was only one department that you could get a major without a million prerequisites, and that was English. So, I went ahead and became an English major, and that taught me good writing, but I still had no plan as to what to do after college.

MN: How did you get into humor?

HM: [After graduation] I said maybe I could be a substitute teacher, and then my mother said, “What do you like?” And what I like is opera. My father was an opera lover. I said, “I wish I could work at the Metropolitan Opera, that’s what I wish.”

I went to Boston. I tried to find a job in the music world, and I was not a music major, either. I got the Yellow Pages of the Boston telephone book. I called the New England Conservatory of Music, and said “Do you have any jobs in opera?” She told me to call a man named Goldovsky. I called in, and he told me he needed a secretary. I typed ten words per minute...I knew how to spell opera terms...I worked for him for a year and a half, and during that time he took me with him to different opera workshops across the nation.

He recommended me for a job at the Metropolitan Opera. On the strength of his recommendation, I got a job at one of the administrative office...I saw all the operas I wanted for free. I came back home to Virginia, and some club called me and asked me to speak about opera. I made it sort of funny, and they liked that.

Word spread that there was someone in town that was giving these funny lectures about opera in New York. What I was, in addition to having worked at the Met, was funny. And I had developed these funny monologues that I would tell at parties. After dinner [at one party], my mother said, “Tell everybody that hilarious story about when you went shopping at Macy’s.” Later, one of the guests came up to me—he was a museum curator—and he said, “Could you come and entertain us for two hours?” Then he said a magic phrase: he said, “We’ll pay you.” Nobody had ever offered to pay me before. So then I sat down and with the help of my family thought of every funny thing I had ever said or done, and I made up some new ones, too, about Virginia garden clubs and I played piano and imitated people, and within a month, some other group called. And this went on probably for another year or so.

I got a job at the leading newspaper in Virginia. In those days they had a section called the Women’s Section, which later became Style or Leisure, and from time to time people would call me to ask for a lecture.

The speaker’s bureau called and offered me two jobs in neighboring states...At one point, I was making more money than my husband, who was an associate professor.

MN: Did you have any other jobs?

HM: I’m on the radio locally, on the classical music station. [I have an] opera show every Saturday. Generally, I try to make it pretty funny. In addition to that, I do voiceovers for commercials. Those are great because I do character voices. I get to be a harassed housewife, things like this.

MN: Was there a highlight of your career?

HM: In the National Speaker’s Association, they do give certain awards. The highlight of my career was to get that award [in 1992], which is called the Speaker Hall of Fame award.

MN: How did your Vassar experience prepare you for your current job?

HM: I think it did because the classes were all so good that in terms of being articulate and certainly when I worked at the newspaper it was valuable, you know, I could write well. God knows that a lot of people who write professionally do not write well. I think Vassar helped me certainly in the writing and the speaking, because I feel that when you’re speaking you should use the language right. Clearly, all the extracurricular drama I did prepared me for the performances I do.

MN: Any advice for students who hope to pursue careers in humor or broadcasting?

HM: You can make a living this way, and it’s a lot more interesting that sitting at a desk someplace...I would think that in humor, by far the best thing you can use as material is personal life and personal experience. That’s why I call myself a humorist [rather than a comedian]...And that way you’re not doing what comedians do, which is using as targets politicians or celebrities. The best humorists are those that tell stories in a funny way, with a slight bit of exaggeration.

Having a career like this does not prevent you from having a very good and warm family life. I don’t think anyone ever felt neglected, and we had a lot of fun. I think it’s because it’s a freelance career, because you don’t have to be away from home every day from eight to six. They got used to me going away and doing things.