Hope: Entertainer of the Century

by Richard Zoglin

  He lived just two months longer. On Sunday night, July 27, 2003, with family members and a few household staff gathered at his bedside in Toluca Lake and Dolores holding his hand, Bob Hope died peacefully, officially of pneumonia. The family waited until early morning to notify the police, who had a security plan in place and set up roadblocks around the house to keep away gawkers and the press. Some TV news crews beat the roadblocks and camped outside anyway.

  • • •

  The funeral was low-key, with a hundred family members, household staff, and caregivers gathered at 6:00 a.m. Wednesday morning in the chapel at St. Charles Borromeo Church. Hope’s two sons, Tony and Kelly, and his grandson Zach, spoke briefly at the thirty-minute service. Hope could have been buried with pomp at Arlington National Cemetery, or in the Hollywood showplace for dead celebrities, Forest Lawn. But Dolores opted for quieter dignity, and his flag-draped coffin was transported in a police motorcade to the San Fernando Mission Cemetery, in Mission Hills, California, where he was laid to rest.

  A month later, on August 27, the family held a larger, invitation-only funeral mass at St. Charles Borromeo. The eulogists included Senator Dianne Feinstein and General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mickey Rooney, Kathryn Crosby, Tom Selleck, Raquel Welch, Brooke Shields, Nancy Reagan, and former president Gerald Ford and wife, Betty, were among those in the audience. “He was leading us to something deeper than laughter—joy,” said Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles, who conducted the service. Later in the afternoon, a more raucous memorial was held at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, where friends and colleagues—including Sid Caesar, Jack Carter, Lee Iacocca, and Larry King—paid tribute with stories and jokes. “I couldn’t be here in spirit, so I came in person,” said Red Buttons.

  His oldest son, Tony, died unexpectedly of a heart aneurysm just a year later, at age sixty-three. Dolores lived long enough to celebrate her own hundredth birthday and then some (she died in September 2011, at age 102). Linda, the daughter who tended to her father so loyally in his final years, took charge of the legacy, orchestrating the tributes that dribbled on for years and tending to his estate, estimated at around $300 million at the time of his death.

  His death triggered the usual round of media tributes that routinely follow the passing of any major showbiz celebrity: the front-page obituaries, the encomiums from colleagues and friends, the endless loop of film clips on the entertainment shows and cable news channels. There was more, befitting a national hero. The flags were lowered to half-staff. “Today America has lost a great citizen,” said President George W. Bush in a statement. Former president Clinton praised Hope’s “matchless legacy of laughs to people all over the world.” Nancy Reagan said, “Losing him is like losing a member of the family.”

  Yet the response to Hope’s passing seemed restrained, almost dutiful. The master of comic timing had, quite simply, lingered too long, the memories of his great years tarnished by his long and very public decline. The New York Times’ obituary for Hope had been sitting on the shelf so long that its author, former film critic Vincent Canby, had himself been dead for three years. Time magazine gave the comedian of the century a polite but meager one-page send-off. (The death of George Harrison, the third-best Beatle, rated a cover story.) NBC, having just aired its hundredth-birthday tribute to Hope in April—and rerun it on his birthday in May—opted not to gear up another one. Instead, on the evening after his death, the network ran a two-minute “salute” to Hope at the beginning of prime time—then returned to regularly scheduled programming.

  In the years that followed, even the people most indebted to Hope seemed to take him for granted. Younger stand-up comics, when asked about the comedians who influenced them, would cite rebel role models such as Lenny Bruce, and occasionally an old-timer such as Groucho Marx or Jack Benny. Almost no one mentioned Bob Hope—an odd omission, considering that he essentially invented their art form. His movie work never enjoyed a revival-house rediscovery or received the kind of film-buff attention accorded more fashionable comics—W. C. Fields or the Marx Brothers—or the silent-film clowns. Unlike Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason, and other comedy stars of TV’s golden age—who starred in sitcoms that lived on endlessly in cable reruns and thus gained new generations of fans—Hope appeared mainly in variety shows that have been out of circulation for years, leaving most younger audiences with little memory of him, except in his declining later years.

  Yet the show-business world he left behind would not have been the same without him. Every late-night talk-show host who does an opening monologue is tilling the ground that Bob Hope first plowed. Every year’s burst of Oscar frenzy—the obsessive handicapping of nominees, tracking of odds, dissection of the studios’ Oscar campaigns—can be traced back, at least in part, to Hope’s role in making the Academy Awards show an annual must-see event. The entire image-making industry that rules Hollywood—the publicists, agents, managers, and studio executives who create the stars, shape their careers, and protect their private lives—is an elaboration of the publicity and brand-building machinery that Hope pioneered.

  His passion for public service had a lasting impact as well. During the Iraq War, comedians as distant from his sensibility as David Letterman and Stephen Colbert carried on his tradition of traveling to the war zone and entertaining the troops. When George Clooney, at the 2010 Emmy Awards, accepted a Bob Hope Humanitarian Award for his work for human rights and disaster relief around the world, he took a moment to credit the award’s namesake—Bob, and Dolores too—for their charitable work and for embodying, as Clooney put it, “the best version of the term celebrity.”

  Even his long, long good-bye was somehow inevitable and fitting. Hope needed to keep performing because he couldn’t stop believing that the audience needed him. It was understandable for an entertainer who never forgot the days when a visit from Bob Hope meant everything to a lonely soldier on a distant battlefield, or an anxious family gathered around the radio in times of national crisis.

  In 1943, on his first tour of England during World War II, Hope and his entertainment troupe were traveling from camp to camp through the moors of Devonshire. But they couldn’t go everywhere, and one unit of six hundred men found out that Hope was going to miss them. Disappointed, they heard that he was doing a show ten miles away, and the entire camp, officers as well as enlisted men, marched the ten miles across the wild moors to see him. But when they arrived, they found that the show was indoors and packed to capacity, with no room for them. All they could do was turn around and start the ten-mile trek back.

  After the show Hope was told of their disappointment. He commandeered a couple of jeeps, piled his troupe into them, and caught up with the soldiers, still trudging back to their camp. With a few boards laid out across the jeeps for a stage, Hope did a forty-minute show for the men in the driving rain. “I love the English weather,” he cracked, wearing a tin hat borrowed from one of the GIs. “It’s so dependable.” By the end of the show, Frances Langford’s hair was streaming wet across her face, and Tony Romano’s guitar was so drenched he had to spend half the night drying it. The applause was like nothing they had ever heard.

  “Never make ’em think you don’t care,” Hope once told a reporter, explaining why he always signed autographs. “Your time’s not your own. You owe ’em.” They owed him too. He may have taken a little too long to leave the stage, but at his peak—a peak that lasted longer than almost anyone else’s—he was the best version of celebrity. He was there in spirit. And he was there in person.

  The house in Eltham, England, where Leslie Towns Hope was born. (Photograph by author)

  His parents, Avis and Harry, in Cleveland. (© Hope Enterprises, Inc.)

  A family portrait, taken in England: Leslie is front and center; younger brother Sidney, in a dress, is on Avis’s knee. (© Hope Enterprises, Inc.)

  With his first dance partner—and sometime girlfriend—Mildred Rosequist. (© Hope Enterprises, Inc.
)

  Hope started out in vaudeville with partner Lloyd Durbin (left); the pair was broken up early by tragedy. (© Hope Enterprises, Inc.)

  Hope and George Byrne formed a successful comedy-dance team before Hope decided to strike out on his own. (© Hope Enterprises, Inc.)

  Hope in Roberta, the show that made him a Broadway star, with Tamara, Fay Templeton (seated), and George Murphy (far right). (© Underwood & Underwood/Corbis)

  When Hope finally moved out to Hollywood in 1937, at age thirty-four, he was ready for his close-up. (© Bettmann/Corbis)

  Paramount teamed him with Martha Raye in several routine B pictures, including 1938’s College Swing. (© Bettmann/Corbis)

  In My Favorite Blonde, with British star Madeleine Carroll, Hope began to develop his distinctive screen persona: the brash coward, always chasing women but helpless in their grasp. (© Bettmann/Corbis)

  On the Road to Morocco with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour, third in the greatest buddy series in movie history. (© Bettmann/Corbis/AP Images)

  With the help of sidekick Jerry Colonna, Hope finally broke through on radio in 1938 with The Pepsodent Show. (© Associated Press)

  Bob and Dolores sail for England in August 1939, just weeks before the outbreak of World War II. (© Bettmann/Corbis/AP Images)

  Hope in his World War II glory, entertaining servicemen in New Caledonia on his tour of the Pacific theater in 1944. (© Bettmann/Corbis)

  “Don’t get up”: Hope and his “gypsies” (from top: Jerry Colonna, Frances Langford, Tony Romano, and Patty Thomas) visit with wounded soldiers. (© Bettmann/Corbis)

  Heading west, with Jane Russell, in The Paleface (1948). (© Boulevard/Corbis)

  Getting serious, with Mary Jane Saunders, in Sorrowful Jones (1949). (© Getty Images)

  They weren’t close friends, but in movies, onstage, and in front of any camera that happened by, Hope and Crosby were a matchless team. (© Popperfoto/Getty Images)

  Marilyn Maxwell appeared with Hope in three movies and nearly two hundred times on radio, TV, and the stage. They also had a long-running romance. (© Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)

  Hope, with Bea Lillie, dons Western garb for a sketch on his first TV show, sponsored by Frigidaire, in April 1950. (© Corbis)

  By 1955, when he wrestled playfully over a statuette with Best Actor winner Marlon Brando, Hope had made his Oscar snubs a running gag. (© Associated Press)

  Dolores and Bob with the family in the mid-1950s. From left to right: Tony, Nora, Kelly, and Linda. (© Bettmann/Corbis/AP Images)

  Mother had Hopes: Bob and his brothers, from left to right (and oldest to youngest), Ivor, Jim, Fred, Jack, Bob, and George. (© Hope Enterprises, Inc.)

  The Facts of Life, with Lucille Ball, showed a new, more mature side of Hope on screen, but it was his last good film. (© John Springer Collection/Corbis)

  Among his multitude of awards, none pleased Hope more than his Congressional Gold Medal, presented to him by President Kennedy in September 1963. (© Corbis)

  Carroll Baker was just one of a string of beauties Hope brought to Vietnam for the troops to ogle. (© Corbis/AP Images)

  With Phyllis Diller on his 1966 trip to Vietnam: the crowds grew with America’s commitment to a troubling war. (© Bettmann/Corbis)

  Hope’s corny spoofs of the counterculture (here with Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé) planted him firmly on the geriatric side of the generation gap. (© Bettmann/Corbis)

  Nixon hugs Sammy Davis Jr. (with Les Brown looking on), as Hope’s Republican politics become more open. (© Bettmann/Corbis)

  Hope in Hawaii with two of his later writers, Bob Mills (left) and Gene Perret, and the cue cards that by then had become indispensable. (© Robert L. Mills)

  The old guard: Hope and two presidential pals, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford. (© Bettmann/Corbis)

  On the golf course, as nearly everywhere else, the picture of determination and class. (© Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

  Acknowledgments

  This book would not have been possible without the generous help and cooperation of Linda Hope, Bob Hope’s daughter. She sat for several hours of interviews; allowed me access to her father’s papers, both at the Library of Congress and at the Hope home in Toluca Lake; and in general made sure all doors were open to me during the researching of the book. I am enormously grateful and honored that she placed her confidence in me to tell the story of her father’s extraordinary life and career. For someone as dedicated as she is to her father’s legacy, it must have been difficult at times to relinquish control and trust a journalist to tell that story fairly and honestly. I sincerely hope the finished product justifies her trust.

  I am grateful also to the many other members of the Hope family who shared their recollections and insights with me, especially Bob’s surviving son, Kelly Hope, and grandchildren Miranda and Zachary Hope. I also want to thank Jim Hardy, Jan Morrill, and all the staff members of Hope Enterprises for their help during my reporting and research.

  I am appreciative and touched that so many former colleagues and friends of Bob Hope’s were generous enough to spend time with a strange reporter, ransacking their memories to help me piece together my story. Many of them were, understandably, quite old, and it saddens me that so many have passed away since our interviews. I feel privileged to have been able to record some of the last reminiscences of a vanishing show-business generation.

  Much of my time was spent in libraries, and I want to thank all the people who facilitated my work. Mike Mashon, head of the Library of Congress’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, in Culpeper, Virginia, was a gracious host for my many days of research there. Sam Brylawski and Alan Gevinson, curators of the two Hope exhibits assembled for the Library of Congress, were invaluable in guiding me through the mountain of material. Rebecca Jones was an always-congenial minder while I was in Culpeper, and Karen Fishman kept me focused while I was at the main library in Washington, DC.

  At the Paley Center for Media in New York City, where I spent many long hours watching and listening to Hope TV and radio programs, I’m grateful to Richard Holbrooke for making the process so pleasant and efficient, and to Carrie Oman, for always opening the doors. For research help, I would also like to thank Bill Hooper, custodian of the magazine archives at Time Inc.; Angela Thornton and Susan Weill, in the Time magazine research library; Karen Pedersen, at the Writers Guild of America library; Ann Sindelar at the Western Reserve Historical Society library; Jim Ciesla, who tracked down some key Cuyahoga County court records for me; and the entire staff of the Motion Picture Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library, for making sure I always wrote in pencil.

  I’m a writer who likes doing my own research, but I could not have done as thorough a job without the help of three people: Caroline Stevens, who supplemented my work at the Library of Congress, both in Culpeper and Washington; Konni Corriere, who prowled some of the back shelves at the Margaret Herrick Library; and Nona Yates, who was an expert guide through the California court and real estate records.

  Alan Blackmore, a retired schoolmaster in Weston-super-Mare, England, has done more work on the Hope genealogy than anyone else, and he was an invaluable resource in sorting through the family’s history in England. He also provided me with a copy of Jim Hope’s unpublished memoir, “Mother Had Hopes,” with its fascinating chronicle of the family’s early years in England and later in Cleveland.

  I am indebted to Meg and Kay Liberman, who gave me a copy of their father Frank Liberman’s unpublished memoir, with its thoughtful and candid reminiscences of Hope and his world. Elizabeth Frank was kind enough to transcribe for me some key passages from the journal of her father, Melvin Frank. I spent an entertaining afternoon in Los Angeles with Miles Krueger, Broadway archivist extraordinaire, who showed me the only surviving footage of Hope’s appearances on Broadway. Richard Behar, my former Time magazine colleague, excavated his notes and tape-recorded interviews for the article he wrote on Hope’s finances for Forb
es magazine. Michael Feinstein supplied me with rare early recordings of “Thanks for the Memory” by Al Jolson and the songwriters Robin and Rainger. And my brother Paul Zoglin helped me navigate the genealogical archives and locate many key census and immigration documents.

  Jim Shepherd, of the Bob Hope Theatre in Eltham, England, and local historian John Kennett were welcoming hosts and tour guides on my visit to the town where Hope was born. In Cleveland, Mike Gavin was most helpful in showing me the neighborhoods where Bob grew up, providing me with family photos, and in many other ways.