“If the other guy got a laugh”: Jonathan Winters, interview with author.
“He was usually at dinner”: Avis Truska, interview with author.
Every fire truck and volunteer firefighter: “Showplace Home of Bob Hope Destroyed in Palm Springs Fire,” Los Angeles Times, July 25, 1973.
Construction was put on hold . . . recovered $430,000 in damages: Peter Aleshire, “But I Wanna Tell Ya About This House,” New West, September 11, 1978.
“Eddie Cantor haircut”: Don Marando, interview with author.
“Watching him throw on that pancake”: Ibid.
only if he got paid more than any other performer: Elliott Kozak, interview with author.
Rosemary Clooney . . . challenged the woman’s story: Anecdote related by Michael Feinstein, interview with author.
“The next time you talk to Bob”: Lande, interview with author.
“It was his way of saying”: Ben Starr, interview with author.
Waiting for him there: Marando, interview with author.
“I now know why you were captain”: Typewritten draft for telegram, March 15, 1974, Hope archives.!
“I would like the President to know”: Hope letter to Rose Mary Woods, May 31, 1974, Hope archives.
“It was so sad for that poor bastard”: Tom Donnelly, “Bob Hope: I’ve Enjoyed All of It,” Washington Post, February 14, 1975.
“I told him The Towering Inferno”: “Hope, Wayne Talk Politics,” UCLA Daily Bruin, April 14, 1975.
“I just think that Nixon got himself”: Johns, California, March 1977.
“Of all the Presidents”: Bob Hope, Dear Prez, I Wanna Tell Ya! (Hope Enterprises, 1996), 99.
The statement caused a stir; “Don’t you dare!”: Accounts of the Schneider brouhaha in Wiley and Bona, Inside Oscar, 504–7; and Daily Variety, April 10, 1975.
a “cheap, cheap shot”; “the Academy’s authorized representative”: Ibid.
“So he was screwed up”: Shirley MacLaine, interview with author.
“He was stingy to the end”: The eulogy is contained in Lachman’s papers in the Writers Guild archives, strongly implying that he wrote it.
she had to pester her former boss: Letters from Hughes to Hope, November 1974, Hope archives.
Texaco . . . agreed to pay $3.15 million: Faith, Life in Comedy, 392.
“It had to be done”: Ibid., 393.
“Bob caved in”: Kozak, interview with author.
“He was very sad”: Lachman, video interview, ATAS archives.
“I was shocked, disappointed and dismayed”: Letter from Felix De Cola, Los Angeles Times, July 15, 1976.
“much harder than writing”: Letters to the editor, Los Angeles Times, July 24, 1976.
“the Queen and Prince Philip enjoyed”; “to have such a great man as Bob Hope”: Ibid.
“The problem with Dad”: Linda Hope, interview with author.
“I was in England writing a show”: Lande, interview with author.
She was paid . . . only $600: White, Rolling Stone, March 20, 1980.
“My God, Kanter”: Hal Kanter, interview with author.
The production was beset with problems: Barney Rosenzweig, interview with author.
“He felt he failed”: Ibid.
“Bob and Dolores thought everyone”: Judith Richards Hope, interview with author.
“Bob called Tony a lot”: Ibid.
“It looks like you’ve been writing for me”: Gene Perret, interview with author.
“I’ve got six more weeks”: Bob Mills, interview with author.
“He liked people who worked fast”: Perret, interview with author.!
the audience was actually a group of chiropractors: Gene Perret and Martha Bolton, Talk About Hope (Jester Press, 1998), 26.
“How much time do you have?”: Mills, interview with author.
“I pay you with new money”: Perret and Bolton, Talk About Hope, 15.
“The other guys will be hot”: Perret, interview with author.
Hope said he was going to play golf: Robert L. Mills, The Laugh Makers: A Behind-the-Scenes Tribute to Bob Hope’s Incredible Gag Writers (Robert L. Mills, 2009), 16.
“Milton Berle liked to retake jokes”: Sid Smith, interview with author.
“She thinks I just got into this business”: Howard Albrecht, interview with author.
“What the fuck!” cried Hope: Dennis Klein, interview with author.
“It’s unlikely that I’ll be able”: Bing Crosby, letter to Hope, May 3, 1977, Hope archives.
“He had tears in his eyes”: Linda Hope, interview with author.
“The whole world loved Bing Crosby”: Daily Variety, October 17, 1977.
but not Dorothy Lamour: Lamour, My Side of the Road, 222.
Hope was unhappy that he had to use a teleprompter: Kaplan, New Times, August 7, 1978.
“So many guys can’t do that”: Marty Pasetta, interview with author.
“I can’t . . . tell the whole world I’m seventy-five”: Kozak, interview with author.
“It’s taken over a year”: Tom Shales, “Bob Hope Breakthrough,” Washington Post, May 24, 1978.
“I’m pretty sure I’m seventy-five”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 403.
“Can’t we change it to eleven?”: Ibid.
“that peculiarly square and predictable style”: Variety, May 31, 1978.
“Are you still working for me?”: Liberman, unpublished memoir.
“When he pays you a salary”: Kozak, interview with author.
“Oh, you don’t have time for me anymore?”: Ibid.
“he’s gotta come up with the fifty thousand”: Ibid.
“You don’t trust me”: Ibid.
Nixon put in a call: White House tapes, March 8, 1973, Nixon Library.
Hope called choreographer George Balanchine: James Lipton, Inside Inside (New American Library, 2008), 216–17.
When he and his entourage got off the plane: Accounts of the China trip in Lipton, Inside Inside; Mills, Laugh Makers; and interviews with Linda Hope and Marcia Lewis Smith.
“The Chinese were very, very difficult”: Marcia Lewis Smith, interview with author.
Linda Hope . . . had the cameras record all of it: Linda Hope, interview with author.!
“Dad was really aggravated”: Ibid.
An aide to President Carter worked with Tony Hope: Judith Richards Hope, interview with author.
“When my mother took me to see”: Film tribute to Hope, Film Society of Lincoln Center archives.
“Oh, go on, highbrows”: Kaplan, New Times, August 7, 1978.
“Age cannot wither”: Tom Dowling, Washington Star, May 26, 1978.
Fortune magazine put him on its list: Arthur M. Louis, “America’s Centimillionaires,” Fortune, May 1968.
“Mrs. Hope was kind of a frustrated architect”: Nancy Gordon Zaslove, interview with author.
“I love that little house”: Andy Williams, interview with author.
CHAPTER 14: LEGEND
“Bob Hope would go to the opening”: Quoted in Joan Collins, Second Act (St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 112.
“Hell, if I did”: Al Martinez, “Comedy in Motion,” TV Guide, October 25, 1980.
stewed fruit, decaffeinated coffee, and a B-complex multivitamin: Jolie Edmonson, “Where There’s Hope, There’s Life,” Saturday Evening Post, October 1981.
“Procrastination is the number one cause”: Ibid.
Hope made 174 personal appearances: Faith, Life in Comedy, 415.
“The thing that impressed me”: Rick Ludwin, interview with author.
“We had so many problems”: Fred Silverman, interview with author.
“I know that Nancy”: Letter from Bob Hope, October 22, 1981, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
“Please don’t concern yourself”: Reagan reply, October 27, 1981, Reagan Library.
“Do you want us to stick to policy on this?”: Memo from Dodie Livingston to Mike Deaver, April 10, 1981, Reagan Libra
ry.
“Randy, don’t overdo”; “Keep it short”: Various memos, Reagan Library.
“The thing I remember . . . is that he’d show up”: Stu Spencer, interview with author.
“I always felt your career”: Ann Jillian, interview with author.
“He was bigger than life”: Cathy Lee Crosby, interview with author.
Hope got embroiled: Guardian, December 20 and 21, 1983.
“When you’re bringing stars over”: Ibid.
“He was very demanding”: Linda Hope, interview with author.!
he asked if the dedication ceremony . . . was disappointed to find out that the building: Faith, Life in Comedy, 416–17.
Hope’s staff worked diligently: Ibid., 418.
Forbes magazine put him on its list: “The Forbes Four Hundred,” Forbes, September 13, 1982.
“I’ll kiss your ass”: Richard Behar, “How Rich Is Bob Hope?,” Forbes, October 1, 1984.
“When we’re proved wrong”: “On Trusting Bob Hope,” editors’ note, Forbes, October 1, 1984.
It was the first Cavett had heard of it: Dick Cavett, interview with author.
His writers drove around the neighborhood: Mills, interview with author.
“He supported the workingman”: Tom Dreesen, interview with author.
“Gene, that’s all of us”: Perret, interview with author.
“I’d come over to his house”: Brooke Shields, interview with author.
“Take the tape”: Dave Thomas, interview with author.
“Dave Thomas had a better handle”: Casey Keller, interview with author.
“I knew why they were doing it”: James Lipton, interview with author.
“It’s fake wood”: Mills, interview with author.
“The Statue of Liberty has AIDS”: Quirk, Road Well-Traveled, 305.
“Johnny admired Hope’s place”: Peter Lassally, interview with author.
“We’d get a request”: Ibid.
“We’d say, give us two minutes”: Jeff Sotzing, interview with author.
Hope asked during a commercial break: Anecdote related by Bob Dolan Smith, e-mail to author.
“There was nothing spontaneous”: Andrew Nicholls, interview with author.
Tartikoff even suggested that Hope try: Memo from Rick Ludwin, July 26, 1983, Hope archives.
“There might have been a time”: Margy Rochlin, “Funny Man,” Los Angeles Times Magazine, February 1, 1987.
“permitting his team of writers”: Variety, April 19, 1989.
“The whole show would cost him”: Kozak, interview with author.
“He just takes the check”: Ibid.
In the mid-1970s, the town of Hope: Memo from Frank Liberman, Hope archives.
“I live for the press”: Philip Shenon, “A Curtain Falls on Bob Hope’s Show,” New York Times, December 26, 1990.
“He was stronger than most”: Perret, interview with author.
Alberti had to kneel: Alberti, Up the Ladder, 135.
“Great job”; “Aw, come on”: Lipton, interview with author.
“Starting in the late eighties, it was affecting”: Ludwin, interview with author.!
“He got really mad”: Shields, interview with author.
“If I ever end up like that”: Andrew Nicholls and Darrel Vickers, interview with author.
The fading star was shunted; “We’ll do it later”: Perret, interview with author.
But what set off a firestorm: The dispute is chronicled in numerous Los Angeles Times articles in 1990 and 1991, as well as Tom Johnson, “Bob Hope’s Last Road Show,” Los Angeles magazine, November 1990.
“No one has a larger ownership”: Alan Citron, “Park Advocates Pressure Bob Hope for Land Gift,” Los Angeles Times, March 7, 1990.
HONK IF YOU THINK BOB HOPE: Johnson, “Hope’s Last Road Show.”
“Hope doesn’t owe anyone”: Stephen Padgett, letter to the editor, Los Angeles Times, March 16, 1990.
“I didn’t hold it for twenty-five years”: Johnson, “Hope’s Last Road Show.”
“Bob Hope is making a special gift”: “Hope Signs Deal to Turn His Acreage into Parkland,” Los Angeles Times, November 8, 1991.
“The knocks he’s taken”: Ron Russell, “Of Faith, Hope and a Little Charity Parks,” Los Angeles Times, November 14, 1991.
“just a lot of old stuff”: Santa Monica Daily Breeze, October 24, 1993.
“Her dream was to marry a shoe salesman”: Linda Hope, interview with author.
“I don’t think it really deeply affected him”: Ibid.
Johnny Carson agreed . . . on the assurance: Don Mischer, interview with author.
“I don’t know if I can do this”: Ibid.
“Bob Hope could have done”: Bill Zehme, “Heeeeeerrrre’s Dave,” Rolling Stone, February 18, 1993.
“I said, ‘Dad, you don’t want to keep on’ ”: Linda Hope, interview with author.
“I’m not doing that!”: Anecdote related by Dave Thomas, interview with author.
Hope puttered around; “Dammit,” Hope grumbled: Andrew Coffey, interview with author.
“I practically fell out of my chair”: Bill Clinton, interview with author.
“He could see the ball below his feet”: Ibid.
“Brandon Tartikoff regarded Bob Hope”: Ludwin, interview with author.
“We’re doing this one”: Related by Michael Thompson, the Hopes’ estate manager at the time, interview with author.
“devote our energies toward specials”: Los Angeles Times, November 30, 1995.
“There came a point where all the parties”: Ludwin, interview with author.
“I’ve decided to become a FREE AGENT”: Ad in Variety et al., October 23, 1996.
“It was sort of a mutual thing”: Linda Hope, interview with author.
“This TV entry?”: Daily Variety, November 20, 1996.
“Backstage he was not in good shape”: Feinstein, interview with author.!
“Her timbre was clear”: Stephen Holden, New York Times, May 23, 1997.
“Mrs. Hope joined Bob”: Bill Tush, e-mail to author.
Paulin would let him take the wheel: J. Paulin, interview with author.
AP actually reported his death by mistake: Bob Pool, “Yes, America, There Is Still Hope,” Los Angeles Times, June 6, 1998.
“He was in very critical condition”: Paulin, interview with author.
“His eyes light up”: Army Archerd, Daily Variety, May 28, 2003.
“I couldn’t be here in spirit”: Patricia Ward Biederman, “Friends Recall Hope with Tears, Laughter,” Los Angeles Times, August 28, 2003.
The New York Times’ obituary: Vincent Canby, “Bob Hope, Comedic Master and Entertainer of Troops, Dies at 100,” New York Times, July 28, 2003.
Time magazine gave the comedian: Richard Schickel, “Bob Hope: The Machine-Age Comic,” Time, August 11, 2003.
one unit of six hundred men . . . marched the ten miles: Time correspondent files, August 1943.
“Never make ’em think”: Kaplan, New Times, August 7, 1978.
Bob Hope’s Major Work
MOVIES
Going Spanish (short, 1934). Educational Films. Director: Al Christie.
Soup for Nuts (short, 1934). Universal. Director: Milton Schwartzwald.
Paree, Paree (short, 1934). Warner Bros. Director: Roy Mack.
Calling All Tars (short, 1935). Warner Bros. Director: Lloyd French.
Watch the Birdie (short, 1935). Warner Bros. Director: Lloyd French.
Double Exposure (short, 1935). Warner Bros. Director: Lloyd French.
The Old Grey Mayor (short, 1935). Warner Bros. Director: Lloyd French.
Shop Talk (short, 1936). Warner Bros. Director: Lloyd French.
The Big Broadcast of 1938 (1938). Paramount. Director: Mitchell Leisen.
College Swing (1938). Paramount. Director: Raoul Walsh.
Give Me a Sailor (1938). Paramount. Director: Elliott Nugent.
Thanks
for the Memory (1938). Paramount. Director: George Archainbaud.
Never Say Die (1939). Paramount. Director: Elliott Nugent.
Some Like It Hot (1939). Paramount. Director: George Archainbaud.
The Cat and the Canary (1939). Paramount. Director: Elliott Nugent.
Road to Singapore (1940). Paramount. Director: Victor Schertzinger.
The Ghost Breakers (1940). Paramount. Director: George Marshall.
Road to Zanzibar (1941). Paramount. Director: Victor Schertzinger.
Caught in the Draft (1941). Paramount. Director: David Butler.
Nothing But the Truth (1941). Paramount. Director: Elliott Nugent.
Louisiana Purchase (1941). Paramount. Director: Irving Cummings.
My Favorite Blonde (1942). Paramount. Director: Sidney Lanfield.
Road to Morocco (1942). Paramount. Director: David Butler.
Star Spangled Rhythm (1942). Paramount. Director: George Marshall.
They Got Me Covered (1943). Samuel Goldwyn. Director: David Butler.
Let’s Face It (1943). Paramount. Director: Sidney Lanfield.
The Princess and the Pirate (1944). Samuel Goldwyn. Director: David Butler.
Road to Utopia (1946). Paramount. Director: Hal Walker.
Monsieur Beaucaire (1946). Paramount. Director: George Marshall.
My Favorite Brunette (1947). Paramount. Director: Elliott Nugent.
Variety Girl (1947). Paramount. Director: George Marshall.
Where There’s Life (1947). Paramount. Director: Sidney Lanfield.
Road to Rio (1947). Paramount. Director: Norman Z. McLeod.
The Paleface (1948). Paramount. Director: Norman Z. McLeod.
Sorrowful Jones (1949). Paramount. Director: Sidney Lanfield.
The Great Lover (1949). Paramount. Director: Alexander Hall.
Fancy Pants (1950). Paramount. Director: George Marshall.
The Lemon Drop Kid (1951). Paramount. Director: Sidney Lanfield.
My Favorite Spy (1951). Paramount. Director: Norman Z. McLeod.
The Greatest Show on Earth (1951, cameo). Paramount. Director: Cecil B. DeMille.
Son of Paleface (1952). Paramount. Director: Frank Tashlin.
Road to Bali (1952). Paramount. Director: Hal Walker.
Off Limits (1953). Paramount. Director: George Marshall.
Scared Stiff (1953, cameo). Paramount. Director: George Marshall.
Here Come the Girls (1953). Paramount. Director: Claude Binyon.
Hope: Entertainer of the Century Page 60
