Lester Townes "Bob" Hope (; May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was a British-born American comedian, actor, entertainer and producer with a career that spanned nearly 80 years and achievements in vaudeville, network radio, television, and USO Tours. He appeared in more than 70 short and feature films, starring in 54, including a series of seven Road to ... musical comedy films with Bing Crosby as his partner. He reached his 100th birthday 59 days before he died in 2003.
Hope hosted the Academy Awards ceremony a record 19 times. He also appeared in many stage productions and television roles and wrote 14 books. The song "Thanks for the Memory" was his signature tune. He was praised for his comedic timing, specializing in one-liners and rapid-fire delivery of jokes that were often self-deprecating. Between 1941 and 1991, he made 57 tours for the United Service Organizations (USO), entertaining military personnel around the world. In 1997, Congress passed a bill that made him an honorary veteran of the Armed Forces. (now part of the Royal Borough of Greenwich), in a terraced house at 44 Craigton Road in Well Hall, where there is now a British Film Institute 'Centenary of British Cinema' commemorative plaque in his memory. He was the fifth of seven sons of William Henry Hope, a stonemason from Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, and Welsh mother Avis (née Townes), a light opera singer from Barry, Vale of Glamorgan, who later worked as a cleaner. William and Avis married in April 1891 and lived at 12 Greenwood Street in Barry before moving to Whitehall, Bristol, and then to St George, Bristol. The family emigrated to the United States aboard the SS Philadelphia, passing through Ellis Island, New York on March 30, 1908, before moving on to Cleveland.
From age 12, Hope earned pocket money by singing, dancing, and performing comedy on the street. He entered numerous dancing and amateur talent contests as Lester Hope, and won a prize in 1915 for his impersonation of Charlie Chaplin. He legally changed his name from Leslie to Lester.
In 1921, while working as a lineman for a power company, Hope was assisting his brother Jim in clearing trees when a tree fell, striking his face; his injuries required reconstructive surgery, which contributed to his later distinctive appearance. In his teens, he worked as a butcher's assistant, then briefly at Cleveland's Chandler Motor Car Company in his early 20s.
right|thumb|300px|<small>Byrne & Hope inscribed photo for the [[Hilton Twins</small>]]
Hope and his girlfriend later signed up for dancing lessons, encouraged after they performed in a three-day engagement at a club. Hope then formed a partnership with Lloyd Durbin, a friend from the dancing school. Silent film comedian Fatty Arbuckle saw them perform in 1925 and found them work with a touring troupe called Hurley's Jolly Follies. Within a year, Hope had formed an act called the "Dancemedians" with George Byrne and the Hilton Sisters, conjoined twins who performed a tap-dancing routine on the vaudeville circuit. Hope and Byrne also had an act as Siamese twins; they sang and danced while wearing blackface until friends advised Hope that he was funnier by himself.
In 1929, Hope informally changed his first name to "Bob". In one version of the story, he named himself after racecar driver Bob Burman. In another, he said that he chose the name because he wanted a name with a "friendly 'Hiya, fellas!' sound" to it. In a 1942 legal document, his legal name appears as Lester Townes Hope. After five years on the vaudeville circuit, Hope was "surprised and humbled" when he failed a 1930 screen test for the RKO-Pathé short-subject studio at Culver City, California.
Career
1927–1937: Early theatre and film roles
thumb|upright|Bob Hope
In the early days, Hope's career included appearances on stage in vaudeville shows and Broadway productions. Hope's first Broadway appearances, in 1927's The Sidewalks of New York and 1928's Ups-a-Daisy, were minor walk-on parts. He returned to Broadway in 1933 to star as Huckleberry Haines in the Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields musical Roberta. Stints in the musicals Say When, the 1936 Ziegfeld Follies with Fanny Brice, and Red, Hot and Blue with Ethel Merman and Jimmy Durante followed.
He began performing on the radio in 1934 mostly with NBC radio, and switched to television when that medium became popular in the 1950s. He started hosting regular TV specials in 1954, and hosted the Academy Awards 19 times from 1939 through 1977. Overlapping with this was his movie career, spanning 1934 to 1972, and his USO tours, which he conducted from 1941 to 1991.
Hope signed a contract with Educational Pictures of New York for six short comedies. The first was a comedy, Going Spanish (1934). He was not happy with it, and told newspaper columnist Walter Winchell, "When they catch [bank robber] Dillinger, they're going to make him sit through it twice." Educational Pictures took umbrage at the remark and canceled Hope's contract after only the one film. He soon signed with the Vitaphone short-subject studio in Brooklyn, New York, making musical and comedy shorts during the day and performing in Broadway shows in the evenings.
1938–1949: Hollywood contract and stardom
thumb|Bob Hope in [[The Ghost Breakers trailer (1940)]]
Hope moved to Hollywood when Paramount Pictures signed him for the 1938 film The Big Broadcast of 1938, also starring W. C. Fields. The song "Thanks for the Memory", which later became his trademark, was introduced in the film as a duet with Shirley Ross, accompanied by Shep Fields and his orchestra. The sentimental, fluid nature of the music allowed Hope's writers—he depended heavily upon joke writers throughout his career—to later create variations of the song to fit specific circumstances, such as bidding farewell to troops while on tour or mentioning the names of towns in which he was performing.
thumb|upright|Hope and [[Bing Crosby sing and dance during the number "Chicago Style" in Road to Bali (1952)]]
As a film star, Hope was best known for such comedies as My Favorite Brunette and the highly successful "Road" movies in which he starred with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour. The series consists of seven films made between 1940 and 1962: Road to Singapore (1940), Road to Zanzibar (1941), Road to Morocco (1942), Road to Utopia (1946), Road to Rio (1947), Road to Bali (1952), and The Road to Hong Kong (1962). At the outset, Paramount executives were amazed at how relaxed and compatible Hope and Crosby were as a team. What the executives didn't know was that Hope and Crosby had already worked together (on the vaudeville stage in 1932), and that working so easily in the "Road" pictures was just an extension of their old stage act.
Hope had seen Lamour performing as a nightclub singer in New York, and invited her to work on his United Service Organizations (USO) tours of military facilities. Lamour sometimes arrived for filming prepared with her lines, only to be baffled by completely rewritten scripts or ad-libbed dialogue between Hope and Crosby. Hope and Lamour were lifelong friends, and she remains the actress most associated with his film career although he made movies with dozens of leading ladies, including Katharine Hepburn, Paulette Goddard, Hedy Lamarr, Lucille Ball, Rosemary Clooney, Jane Russell, and Elke Sommer.
Hope and Crosby teamed not only for the "Road" pictures, but for many stage, radio, and television appearances and many brief movie appearances together over the decades until Crosby died in 1977. Although the two invested together in oil leases and other business ventures, worked together frequently, and lived near each other, they rarely saw each other socially. After the release of Road to Singapore (1940), Hope's screen career took off, and he had a long and successful run. After an 11-year hiatus from the "Road" genre, he and Crosby reteamed for The Road to Hong Kong (1962), starring the 28-year-old Joan Collins in place of Lamour, whom Crosby thought was too old for the part. They had planned one more movie together in 1977, The Road to the Fountain of Youth, but filming was postponed when Crosby was injured in a fall, and the production was canceled when he suddenly died of heart failure that October.
Hope starred in 54 theatrical features between 1938 and 1972, as well as cameos and short films. Most of his later movies failed to match the success of his 1940s efforts. He was disappointed with his appearance in Cancel My Reservation (1972), his last starring film; critics and filmgoers panned the movie. Though his career as a film star effectively ended in 1972, he did make a few cameo film appearances into the 1980s.
thumb|upright|[[Jerry Colonna (entertainer)|Jerry Colonna and Hope, as caricatured by Sam Berman for NBC's 1947 promotional book]]
Hope's career in broadcasting began on radio in 1934. His first regular series for NBC Radio was the Woodbury Soap Hour in 1937, on a 26-week contract. Serving as the master of ceremonies for these Rippling Rhythm Revue radio broadcasts, Hope collaborated with the big band leader Shep Fields during this period of transition from vaudeville to radio. A year later, The Pepsodent Show Starring Bob Hope began, and Hope signed a ten-year contract with the show's sponsor, Lever Brothers. He hired eight writers and paid them out of his salary of $2,500 a week. The original staff included Mel Shavelson, Norman Panama, Jack Rose, Sherwood Schwartz, and Schwartz's brother Al. The writing staff eventually grew to 15. The show became the top radio program in the country. Regulars on the series included Jerry Colonna and Barbara Jo Allen as spinster Vera Vague. Hope continued his lucrative career in radio into the 1950s, when radio's popularity began being overshadowed by the upstart television medium.
1950–1979: Television specials
Hope did many specials for the NBC television network in the following decades, beginning in April 1950. He was one of the first people to use cue cards. The shows often were sponsored by Frigidaire (early 1950s), General Motors (1955–61), Chrysler (1963–73), and Texaco (1975–85). 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 Barbara Mandrell, Olivia Newton-John, Barbara Eden, and Brooke Shields, or with his wife Dolores, a former singer with whom he dueted on two specials.
On April 26, 1970, CBS released the Raquel Welch television special Raquel!; in it Hope appears as a guest. Hope's 1970 Christmas special for NBC—filmed in Vietnam in front of military audiences at the height of the war—is on the list of the highest-rated broadcasts in US history. It was seen by more than 60 percent of the US households watching television. Likely the most unusual of his television specials was Joys!, a parody of murder mystery narratives, where the audience discovers at the end of the broadcast that Johnny Carson was the villain.
Beginning in early 1950, Hope licensed rights to publish a celebrity comic book titled The Adventures of Bob Hope to National Periodical Publications, alias DC Comics. The comic, originally featuring publicity stills of Hope on the cover, was entirely made up of fictional stories, eventually including fictitious relatives, a high school taught by movie monsters, and a superhero called Super-Hip. It was published intermittently and continued publication through issue No. 109 in 1969. Writers included Arnold Drake, and illustrators included Bob Oksner and (for the last four issues) Neal Adams. The special, though different from his usual specials, received high praise from Variety, A 1997 act of Congress signed by President Bill 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." In an homage to Hope, comedian/TV host Stephen Colbert carried a golf club on stage during the week of USO performances he taped for his TV show The Colbert Report during the 2009 season.
Sports car racing
During a short stint in 1960, Hope became a part owner of the Riverside International Raceway in Moreno Valley, California, along with Los Angeles Rams co-owner Fred Levy Jr. and oil tycoon Ed Pauley for $800,000 (adjusted to $7.0 million in 2020). Les Richter was made president of the raceway.
Influence
In an interview on NPR, Terry Gross said, "Woody Allen and Conan O'Brien are two of the people who have referred to Bob Hope as influences. And I think influences in part on their own personas as not being this suave, handsome, macho guy." Hope biographer Zoglin agreed saying, "Woody continually said, this was the guy who influenced me more than anyone else. And that character - that kind of scared character, the guy talk - nervous, talking his way through, you know, bad times and scary times. That was Woody Allen's character in Sleeper (1973) and Love and Death (1975). He always said that he and Diane Keaton in those films were basically like Hope and Crosby".
Conan O'Brien also cited Hope as an influence saying, "I loved Woody Allen. And Woody Allen says, oh, I love Bob Hope, he really influenced me. And I thought, what are you talking about? How did Bob Hope influence you in any way?...Then I went back and I started looking at seeing some of the movies. And you see it, you see that that the character that Woody Allen does is a character that I think was really, to a large extent invented by Bob Hope."
Artistry and legacy
thumb|[[Douglass Montgomery, Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard and John Beal in The Cat and the Canary (1939)]]
Hope helped establish modern American comedy. By the 1970s, his popularity was beginning to wane with military personnel and with the movie-going public in general. However, he continued doing USO tours into the 1980s and continued to appear on television into the 1990s. Former First Lady Nancy Reagan, a close friend and frequent host to him at the White House, called Hope "America's most honored citizen and our favorite clown".
thumb|upright|Hope, a golf fan, putting a golf ball into an ashtray held by President [[Richard Nixon in the Oval Office in 1973]]
Hope was well known as an avid golfer, playing in as many as 150 charity tournaments a year. Introduced to the game in the 1930s while performing in Winnipeg, Canada, In memory of his mother, Avis Townes Hope, Bob and Dolores Hope gave the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., a chapel called the Chapel of Our Lady of Hope. of the U.S. Military Sealift Command was named for the performer in 1997. It is one of very few U.S. naval ships that were named after living people.
In 1978, Hope was invited to dot the "i" in the Ohio State University Marching Band's "Script Ohio" formation, an honor only given to non-band members on 14 occasions from 1936 through 2016. Woody Allen wrote and narrated a documentary honoring him, My Favorite Comedian, shown at Lincoln Center. In Hope's hometown of Cleveland, the refurbished Lorain-Carnegie Bridge was renamed the Hope Memorial Bridge in 1983, though differing claims have been made as to whether the bridge honors Hope himself, his entire family, or his stonemason father who helped in the bridge's construction. Also, East 14th Street near Playhouse Square in Cleveland's theater district was renamed Memory Lane-Bob Hope Way in 2003 in honor of the entertainer's 100th birthday.
In 1992, Hope was honored with the "Lombardi Award of Excellence" from the Vince Lombardi Cancer Foundation. The award was created to honor the football coach's legacy, and is awarded annually to an individual who exemplifies his spirit. He was also inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa, the National Leadership Honor Society, in 1992 at Ferris State University. On May 28, 2003, President George W. Bush established the Bob Hope American Patriot Award.
Academy Awards
Although he was never nominated for a competitive Oscar, Hope was given five honorary awards by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences:
The couple had shared headliner status with Joe Howard at the Palace Theatre in April 1931, performing "Keep Smiling" and the "Antics of 1931". They worked together at the RKO Albee, performing the "Antics of 1933" along with Ann Gillens and Johnny Peters in June of that year. The following month, singer Dolores Reade joined Hope's vaudeville troupe and was performing with him at Loew's Metropolitan Theater. She was described as a "former Ziegfeld beauty and one of society's favorite nightclub entertainers, having appeared at many private social functions at New York, Palm Beach, and Southampton".
His marriage to Reade was fraught with ambiguities. As Richard Zoglin wrote in his 2014 biography Hope: Entertainer of the Century,