Bob Hope
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For other persons named Bob Hope, see Bob Hope (disambiguation).
Bob Hope KBE (May 29 1903–July 27 2003) was an English-born, Academy Award-winning entertainer who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, in radio, television, movies, and on numerous USO tours for U.S. military personnel. Hope was 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 who later had to find work as a cleaning woman.[1] The family lived in Weston-super-Mare, then Whitehall and St. George in Bristol, before moving to Cleveland, Ohio in 1908. The family traveled to the United States as passengers on board the SS Philadelphia. They were inspected at Ellis Island on March 30 1908. Hope became a U.S. citizen in 1920 at the age of seventeen.[2] Hope is noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his renowned USO tours. Hope always incorporated a handful of talented performers and celebrities to accompany him on these tours. Most of the time he was flanked by beautiful television and film actresses such as Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable.[3] Throughout his career he was decorated by many presidents for his humanitarian work.
Early careerBob Hope was born Leslie Townes Hope in Eltham, London, England and from the age of twelve he worked at a 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, making it once as far as the semi-finals of the Ohio novice championship.[4] Fallen silent film comedian Fatty Arbuckle saw one of his performances and in 1925 got him steady work with Hurley's Jolly Follies. Within a year, 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. Hope and his partner George Byrne had an act as a pair of Siamese twins as well, and both danced and sang while wearing blackface before friends advised Hope that he was funnier as himself.[5] 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 at Culver City, California. (Hope had been on the screen in small parts, in 1927's The Sidewalks of New York and 1928's Smiles.)[6] 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 from "Leslie" to "Bob," reportedly because people in the U.S. were calling him "Hopelessly," although in the 1920s he sometimes used the name "Lester Hope." FilmsImage:BobHope.JPG
The handprints of Bob Hope in front of The Great Movie Ride at Walt Disney World's Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park
Hope, like other stage performers, made his first films in New York. Educational Pictures hired him in 1934 for a short-subject comedy, Going Spanish. Unfortunately for Hope, he sealed his own fate with Educational when a newspaper columnist asked him about his new movie. Hope cracked, "When they catch John Dillinger, they're going to make him sit through it twice." Educational fired him, but he was soon back before the cameras at New York's Vitaphone studio, where he starred in 20-minute comedies and musicals. Paramount Pictures signed Hope for the 1938 film The Big Broadcast of 1938. During a duet with Shirley Ross as accompanied by Shep Fields and his orchestra, 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. Image:Bob Hope in The Ghost Breakers trailer.JPG
in The Ghost Breakers (1940)
According to Hope, early in 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 Hope's onscreen performances. Hope became one of Paramount's biggest stars, and would remain with the studio through the 1950s. 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 concert performances. 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" 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. Other female co-stars included Paulette Goddard, Lucille Ball, Jane Russell, and Hedy Lamarr. Hope was host of the Academy Awards ceremony 18 times between 1939 and 1977. His alleged lust for an Oscar became part of his performing shtick, perhaps most memorably in a scene from Road to Morocco in which he suddenly erupted in a crazed frenzy, shouting about his imminent death from starvation and heat. Bing Crosby reminds him that rescue is just minutes away, and a disappointed Hope complains that Crosby has spoiled his best scene in the picture, and thus, his chance for an Academy Award. Although Hope never did win a Oscar for his performances (nor a nomination), the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored him with four honorary awards, and in 1960, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. While introducing the 1968 telecast, he famously quipped, "Welcome to the Academy Awards, or, as it's known at my house, Passover." Hope would also gain some recognition as "America's Favorite Funnyman" as well. [7] BroadcastingImage:Barbara Eden and Bob Hope NASA.jpg
Barbara Eden and Bob Hope honor the Apollo 7 astronauts
Hope did many specials for the NBC television network in the following decades. These were often sponsored by Chrysler and Hope served as a spokesman for the firm for many 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). Hope's 1970 and 1971 Christmas specials for NBC—filmed in Vietnam in front of military audiences at the height of the war, and both of which actually aired in January, after he had returned from overseas—are on the list of the Top 30 U.S. Network Primetime Telecasts of All Time. Both were seen by more than 60 percent of the U.S. households watching television at the time they aired. His final television special, Laughing with the Presidents, was broadcast in 1996, with Tony Danza helping Hope present a retrospective about presidents of the United States. TheaterBob Hope appeared as Huck Haines in the musical Roberta in 1958 at The Muny Theater in Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri. USOImage:BobHope-T-33.jpg
Bob Hope in Korea climbing out of a T-33 Shooting Star, which flew him from Taegu to Kimpo airfield in Korea, on his entertainment tour.
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. Of Hope's USO shows in World War II, writer John Steinbeck, who was then working as a war correspondent, wrote in 1943:
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