Bob Hope

For other uses, see Bob Hope (disambiguation).

Bob Hope

Bob Hope, KBE (May 29 1903 – July 27 2003), born Leslie Townes Hope, was an English-born American entertainer who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, on radio and television, in movies, and in performing tours for U.S. Military personnel.

British origins

Hope was born in Eltham, London, England, the fifth of seven sons. His English father, William Henry Hope, was a stonemason from Weston-super-Mare and his Welsh mother, Avis Townes, was a light opera singer but later had to find work as a cleaning woman. The family lived in Weston-super-Mare, then Whitehall and St. George in Bristol, before moving to Cleveland, Ohio in 1908. The family came to America as passengers on board the SS Philadelphia. They were inspected at Ellis Island on 30 March 1908. Hope became a U.S. citizen in 1920 at the age of seventeen.

Early career

From the age of 12, Bob Hope worked at a wide variety of odd jobs at a local board walk. When not doing this he would busk, doing dance and comedy patter to make extra money. He entered many dancing and amateur talent contests, and won prizes for his impersonation of Charlie Chaplin. He also boxed briefly and unsuccessfully under the name Packy East. Fallen silent film comedian Fatty Arbuckle saw one of his performances and in 1925 got him steady work with Hurley's Jolly Follies. A year later Hope had formed an act called the Dancemedians with George Burns (who would also live to see his own 100th birthday) and the Hilton Sisters, conjoined twins who had a tap dancing routine. After five years on the Vaudeville circuit, by his own account Hope was surprised and humbled when he and his partner Grace Louise Troxell failed a 1930 screen test for Pathé in Culver City, California. Hope returned to New York City and subsequently appeared in several Broadway musicals including Roberta, Say When, the 1936 Ziegfeld Follies, and Red, Hot and Blue with Ethel Merman. His performances were generally well-received and critics noted his keen sense of comedic timing. He changed his name to "Bob", reportedly because people in the US were calling him "Hopelessly". His given name as stated above is Leslie, although in the 1920's he sometimes used the name "Lester Hope".

Films

File:BobHopegettingOscar.jpg

Bob Hope receiving an (honorary) Oscar

Hope returned to Hollywood during the mid-1930s, but at first was relegated to indifferently produced B-pictures and several one-reel comedies for Warner Brothers. However, his movie career soon accelerated. In the 1938 film The Big Broadcast of 1938, during a duet with Shirley Ross, Hope introduced the bittersweet song later to become his trademark, "Thanks for the Memory", which became a major hit and was praised by critics. The sentimental and fluid nature of the music allowed Hope's writers (whom he is said to have depended upon heavily throughout his career) to later invent endless variations of the song to fit specific circumstances, such as bidding farewell to troops while on tour. According to Hope, early during his film career a director advised him that movie acting was done mostly with the eyes, resulting in the exaggerated and rolling eye movements which characterized many of his onscreen performances. Hope's regular appearances in Hollywood films and radio made him one of the best known entertainers in North America, and at the height of his career he was also making a large income from live performances. For example, during an eight-week tour in 1940, he reportedly generated $100,000 in receipts, a record at the time. (This is the equivalent of $1.4 million dollars in 2006 money.) As a movie star he was best known for My Favorite Brunette and the highly profitable "Road to..." movies in which he starred with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour, (whom he had first seen performing as a nightclub singer in New York and subsequently invited to work with him on his USO tours). Lamour is said to have shown up for filming fully prepared with her lines, only to be baffled by completely new material which had been written by Hope's own staff of writers without the studio's permission. Hope and Lamour were lifelong friends, and she is the actress most associated with his film career along with others such as Paulette Goddard, Lucille Ball, Jane Russell, and Hedy Lamarr. He never won any Oscars for his performances, but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored him with several special awards and he served as host of the Academy Awards ceremony many times beginning in the 1950s and through the 1980s. While hosting one of these presentations he famously quipped that Oscar season was, "as it's known at my house, Passover."

Broadcasting

Hope first appeared on television in 1932 during a test transmission from an experimental CBS studio in New York. His career in broadcasting spanned sixty-four years and included a long association with NBC. Hope made his network radio debut in 1937 on NBC. His first regular series for NBC Radio was the Woodbury Soap Hour. A year later The Pepsodent Radio Show Starring Bob Hope began, and would run through 1953. Hope did many specials for the NBC television network in the following decades and these were often sponsored by Chrysler and Hope served as a spokesman for the firm for may years. Hope's Christmas specials were popular favorites and often featured a performance of "Silver Bells" (from his 1951 film The Lemon Drop Kid) done as a duet with an often much younger female guest star (such as Olivia Newton-John or Brooke Shields). His final television special was in 1996 with Tony Danza helping Hope present a retrospective about presidents of the United States.

He also made a guest appearance on the NBC show "The Golden Girls" in the late 1980's.

Theater

Bob Hope appeared as Huck Haines in the musical "Roberta" in 1958 at The Muny Theater in Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri.

USO

Bob Hope and golf club, Lackland Air Force Base, 1990

Hope performed his first United Service Organizations (USO) show on May 6 1941, at March Field, California. He continued to travel and entertain troops for the rest of World War II and later during the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the 1990–1991 Persian Gulf War. When overseas he almost always performed in Army fatigues as a show of support for his audience. Hope's USO career lasted half a century, during which he headlined approximately sixty tours. For his service to his country through the USO, Hope was awarded the prestigious Sylvanus Thayer Award by the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1968.

A 1997 act of Congress signed by President Clinton named Hope an "Honorary Veteran". He remarked, "I've been given many awards in my lifetime — but to be numbered among the men and women I admire most — is the greatest honor I have ever received."

However, there were also critical voices relating to the entertainer's patriotic activities. In his biography, Bob Hope: The Road Well-Traveled (1999), Lawrence J. Quirk writes that Hope was making sacrifices to entertain U.S. servicemen, whom he called "my boys". But according to the author, the government always paid for Hope's trips, and by Vietnam, his routines had grown thin.

Interest in sports

Hope had a widely reported passion for sports. He boxed professionally during his youth, was a pool hustler, enjoyed watching football and was at times a part owner of the Cleveland Indians and Los Angeles Rams. Hope, who was good friends with San Diego Chargers owner Alex Spanos attended numerous Charger games and was even honored by the team during a halftime of a home game at Qualcomm Stadium. Hope was also famous for his interest in golf. He played in a few PGA tour events and the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic is named for him. Hope played golf with nearly every President of the United States from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush and, as seen in the accompanying photo, often used a golf club as an on-stage prop. He appeared in an episode of The Simpsons, "Lisa The Beauty Queen" as himself, on stage at Fort Springfield. His opening lines were "You know, that Mayor Quimby is some golfer. His golf balls spend more time underwater than Greg Louganis."

In 1978, he and Bing Crosby were voted the Bob Jones Award, the highest honor given by the United States Golf Association in recognition of distinguished sportsmanship in golf. Both men are also members of the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Marriages and personal life

According to biographer Arthur Marx, son of Hope's long-time professional rival Groucho Marx, Hope's first wife was his vaudeville partner Grace Louise Troxell, whom he married on January 25 1933. When the marriage record was unearthed some years later, Hope denied that the marriage had any substance and said they had quickly divorced. There were rumours that he fathered a daughter with Troxell and that he continued to send generous checks to her despite a widely documented reputation for frugality. . According to his CNN obituary, Hope donated about one billion dollars to various causes.

Hope married his second wife, Dolores DeFina, on or about February 19 1934 (no record of the marriage is known to exist). A devout Roman Catholic, the Bronx-born nightclub singer of Irish and Italian ancestry was known professionally as Dolores Reade and had met Hope two months earlier at The Vogue, a Manhattan nightclub where she was performing. DeFina and Hope remained together until Hope's death sixty-nine years later, one of the longest-lasting high profile marriages in Hollywood history. They adopted four children, all from the same orphanage in Evanston, Illinois.

Later life

In 1988, Bob Hope filmed a PSA for GLAAD (http://www.glaad.org/publications/media_library/glaad_psas.php#).

Hope lived so long that he suffered premature obituaries on two separate occasions. In 1998 a prepared obituary by The Associated Press was inadvertently released on the Internet, prompting Hope's death to be announced in the US House of Representatives. In 2003 he was among several famous figures whose pre-written obituaries were published on CNN's web site due to a lapse in password protection.

Hope celebrated his 100th birthday on May 29 2003, joining a small group of notable centenarians in the field of entertainment (including Irving Berlin, Hal Roach, Senor Wences, and George Burns.) To mark this event, the intersection of Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles, California was named Bob Hope Square and his centennial was declared Bob Hope Day in 35 US states. Hope spent the day privately in his Toluca Lake home where he had lived since 1937. Even at 100 years of age and with failing health, Hope is said to have maintained his self-deprecating sense of humor, quipping "I'm so old, they've canceled my blood type." He was reported to be worth in excess of one billion dollars, much of which had been made through timely investments in Southern California real estate. According to one of Hope's daughters, when asked on his deathbed where he wanted to be buried, he told his wife, "Surprise me." He died two months later at 9:28 p.m. July 27 2003 at his home in Toluca Lake, north of Hollywood. He had entertained 11 U.S. presidents.

In a final obituary-related twist, Hope's pre-written obituary in The New York Times was under the byline of arts critic Vincent Canby. Canby had himself died several years earlier.

After the comedian's death, Cardinal Roger Mahony, Archbishop of Los Angeles, confirmed that Hope had converted to Roman Catholicism some years before he died and added that he had died a Catholic in good standing. Observers have remarked that it is "certain" his devoutly Catholic wife Dolores influenced him.

The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. has a wing dedicated to a miracle in Pontmain, France which was funded by Dolores and Bob Hope in memory of his mother.

Bob Hope is interred in San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Professional awards

Bob Hope's Star for Television on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

• In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted amongst the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.

Academy Awards

• 2 Honorary Oscars

• 2 Special Awards

• Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award

Stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

• Motion picture star at 6541 Hollywood Blvd.

• Radio star at 6141 Hollywood Blvd.

• TV star at 6758 Hollywood Blvd.

• Live theatre special plaque at 7021 Hollywood Blvd.

Honors

Medals

• Congressional Gold Medal (June 8 1962)

Bob Hope's Presidential Medal of Freedom

• Presidential Medal of Freedom (awarded by Lyndon B. Johnson, January 20 1969)
• Sylvanus Thayer Award, United States Military Academy at West Point, 1968

Titles and designations

• Honorary mayor of Palm Springs, California (1950s)

• Hasty Pudding Man of the Year (first awardee, 1967)

• Board of Governors of the National Space Institute, forerunner of the present-day National Space Society, a nonprofit educational space advocacy organization founded by Dr. Wernher von Braun (1974)

• Honorary Veteran of the United States Armed Forces, a tribute from the United States Congress given in recognition of the entertainment he provided US troops during war and peacekeeping missions (October 29 1997)

• Honorary Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE) In recognition of his contributions to film, to song, and to the entertainment of troops in the past. (1998). He had previously been made an Honorary Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1976.

• Knighthood from the Knights of Malta and the Order of St. Sylvester from the Vatican

• Silver Buffalo Award (highest adult award given by the Boy Scouts of America)

• The Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels.

• Made a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great by Pope John Paul II in 1998

Memorials and commemorations

The Spirit of Bob Hope is a USAF C-17 Globemaster III that was named after the performer.

• The PGA Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, which was an existing tournament (The Desert Classic) renamed in recognition of the comedian's lifelong passion for the game, 1966

• Bob Hope Drive, streets in both Burbank, California and Rancho Mirage, California. The Rancho Mirage street is the location of Eisenhower Medical Center which Hope and his wife were instrumental in creating.

• The Spirit of Bob Hope, a United States Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft (1997) [3]

• Bob Hope: 50 Years of Hope, an exhibition of Hope's service of entertaining the United States military at the National Museum of the United States Air Force near Dayton, Ohio [4]

• Bob Hope Square (naming of the intesection at Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles to commemorate Hope's 100th birthday, May 29 2003)

• Bob Hope Airport: Hope had joked with his family that he wanted an airport named for him after hearing in 1979 that Orange County officials had renamed their airport after John Wayne. On November 3 2003 the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority voted unanimously to rename the facility and on November 18 2003 the Glendale, and Burbank city councils voted unanimously to approve it. Pasadena followed on December 10. The FAA three-letter designation BUR did not change. A rededication ceremony took place on December 17, the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' first powered flight.

• Bob Hope Theatre, a renovated Fox Theatre movie house in Stockton, California (2004)

• USNS Bob Hope (T-AKR-300), one of the few naval vessels to be named for a living person

• Asteroid 2829 Bobhope

• The Bob Hope Theatre, an amateur theatre (although professional musicians receive payment) in Eltham, London where he was born.

• Blue plaque at 44, Craigton Road Eltham, London, Hope's place of birth.

• The Bob Hope Theatre, an on-base movie theatre and lecture hall at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, San Diego, California.

• "The Bob Hope Theatre", a 392-seat facility at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. It has a proscenium stage, continental seating and a hydraulic orchestra pit.

Famous quotations

• Quotations at WikiQuote.org

Filmography

Features

• The Big Broadcast of 1938 (1938)
• College Swing (1938)
• Give Me a Sailor (1938)
• Thanks for the Memory (1938)
• Never Say Die (1939)
• Rhythm Romance (1939)
• The Cat and the Canary (1939)
• Road to Singapore (1940)
• The Ghost Breakers (1940)
• Road to Zanzibar (1941)
• Caught in the Draft (1941)
• Nothing But the Truth (1941)
• Louisiana Purchase (1941)
• My Favorite Blonde (1942)
• Road to Morocco (1942)
• Star Spangled Rhythm (1942)
• Combat America (1943) (documentary)
• They Got Me Covered (1943)
• Let's Face It (1943)
• The Princess and the Pirate (1944)
• The Story of G.I. Joe (1945) (voice)
• Road to Utopia (1946)
• Monsieur Beaucaire (1946)
• My Favorite Brunette (1947)
• Variety Girl (1947)
• Where There's Life (1947)
• Road to Rio (1947)
• The Paleface (1948)
• Sorrowful Jones (1949)
• The Great Lover (1949)
• Fancy Pants (1950)
• My Favorite Spy (1951)
• The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) (Cameo)
• Son of Paleface (1952)
• Road to Bali (1952)
• Off Limits (1953)
• Scared Stiff (1953) (Cameo)
• Here Come the Girls (1953)
• Casanova's Big Night (1954)
• The Seven Little Foys (1955)
• That Certain Feeling (1956)
• The Iron Petticoat (1956)
• Beau James (1957)
• Paris Holiday (1958)
• Alias Jesse James (1959)
• The Five Pennies (1959) (Cameo)
• The Facts of Life (1960)
• Bachelor in Paradise (1961)
• The Road to Hong Kong (1962)
• Critic's Choice (1963)
• Call Me Bwana (1963)
• A Global Affair (1964)
• I'll Take Sweden (1965)
• The Oscar (1966) (Cameo)
• Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966)
• Not with My Wife, You Don't! (1966) (Cameo)
• Eight on the Lam (1967)
• The Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell (1968)
• How to Commit Marriage (1969)
• Cancel My Reservation (1972)
• The Muppet Movie (1979)
• Spies Like Us (1985)
• A Century of Cinema (1994) (documentary)
• That Little Monster (1994)
• Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's (1997) (documentary)

Short subjects

• Going Spanish (1934)
• Paree, Paree (1934)
• The Old Grey Mayor (1935)
• Double Exposure (1935)
• Calling All Tars (1935)
• Soup for Nuts (1935)
• Watch the Birdie (1935)
• Shop Talk (1936)
• Don't Hook Now (1938)
• Screen Snapshots Series 19, No. 6 (1940)
• Hedda Hopper's Hollywood No. 4 (1942)
• Strictly G.I. (1943)
• Show Business at War (1943)
• The All-Star Bond Rally (1945)
• Hollywood Victory Caravan (1945)
• Weekend in Hollywood (1947)
• March of Time Volume 14, No. 1: Is Everybody Listening? (1947)
• Screen Actors (1950)
• You Can Change the World (1951)
• Screen Snapshots: Memorial to Al Jolson (1952)
• Screen Snapshots: Hollywood's Invisible Man (1954)
• Screen Snapshots: Hollywood Beauty (1955)
• Showdown at Ulcer Gulch (1956)
• Screen Snapshots: Hollywood Star Night (1957)
• The Heart of Show Business (1957)
• Rowan & Martin at the Movies (1968)

Listen to

• Bob Hope Show radio archive (27 episodes from Bob Hope radio Show)

External links

• Bob Hope at IMDb
• Bob Hope at the Internet Broadway Database
• Bob Hope at the National Radio Hall of Fame
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• Bob Hope Official Website
• "Hope-ful Century of Wit and Laughter" MSNBC.msn.com Tribute
• "100 Years of Hope: The Early Years" MSNBC.msn.com Tribute
• "100 Years of Hope: Slapstick and the Great Divide" MSNBC.msn.com Tribute
• Bob Hope's Official Myspace page
• CNN obituary
• Satellite photograph of Hope's second home in Palm Springs, California.
• Bob Hope at Find A Grave
• MaritimeQuest Tribute to Bob Hope
• A National Salute to Bob Hope and our Military (currently inoperative)