“That’s Hedley,” plnnr. Actually, it was Dorothy Lamour. Though I’m sure Bing and Bob would have been quite happy to have Hedy Lamarr hitch a ride with them, too.
I found this amazing, from his AP obit:
“He was born Leslie Townes Hope on May 29, 1903, in Eltham, England, the fifth of seven sons of a British stonemason and a Welsh singer of light opera. The Hopes emigrated to the United States when he was 4 and settled in Cleveland. They found themselves in the backwash of the 1907 depression.”
Jiminy crickets! Most people think they’re old if they remember the 1930s Dpression!!
You know, Eve, I knew that I botched that as soon as I hit the send button. I always do that - I guess it is the similarity in name (sort of like Una Merckle and Una O’Connor).
Pardon my sarong.
Bob, we’re gonna miss ya.
Man, what a rich, full life! A little piece of me died when Bob Hope left us for good. So much influence, so many memories, such a good man. Thanks, Bob, for everything.
plnnr:
I always used to wonder, while watching Dorothy in those Road movies, how something sarong could be so right.
Adios, Paleface! You gave us a good time, except in those lame NBC specials.
“May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest”
Thanks for the service to six decades of our freedom fighters.
Rest in peace. You are the rare and fortunate individual who got to “Live long and prosper”.
Road to Heaven
(still need to get Road to Utopia and Road to Singapore on DVD to have them all)
I asked my Grandad on his 100th birthday last month about Bob Hope. Surprisingly, he too thought that, as mentioned, Hope was a little risque. I think having the gals onstage had bothered him at the time but Lord knows it did a lot for the troops.
Back in the '80s, we were leaving a hotel and saw a group waiting near a curbed limo. Turned out Hope was on his way out. We waited for a couple of minutes until he appeared and then about two dozen of us gave him a nice round of applause for a little over a minute. He stood by the door, obviously moved, until we finished, and nodded graciously towards us many times. I’m glad I had the chance to say thanks.
I always enjoyed watching the old movies from his prime, and kept watching those TV specials long after I knew how unfunny they had become and how obvious his cue card reading was out of loyalty and nostalgia.
He was an American institution, and an immigrant who embodied the American dream of coming to this country with little or nothing and achieving your dreams. And he gave back to this country with his USO shows and trips to spread some laughter and joy to the troops overseas who needed it in war and during peacetime.
He was willing to laugh at himself and from what other performers have been saying was as comfortable playing the straight man and giving the laughs to others as he was running with his “bold little coward” screen persona. I always thought it was stupid of Howard Stern to call himself “The King Of All Media” even jokingly when Hope had done it all so much better and to a greater degree decades earlier.
He lived a full life, made a lot of people happy doing it, and seems to have been a sincerely nice person offstage as well. It’s rare that the death of a celebrity can make me gush this much, but Hope went beyond mere fame.
Rest well, old friend, you earned it.
Two Bob Hope stories.
A woman I worked with in LA was in Palm Springs one weekend with her husband and two kids. Her youngest, about 6 at the time, was an uninhibited ham. He would just suddenly start to sing and at an IHOP (or Denny’s?), he was just wailing away having a grand old time. For a little kid, he could actually carry a tune and the waitress asked for another song.
My co-worker friend said, “don’t encourage him or we’ll be all day.”
Suddenly, an older gentleman in the booth next to her said, “go ahead, let him sing. He is actually pretty good.”
It was Bob Hope.
Well, she said yes and the boy went out and just wailed away to a nice round of applause by the other patrons and Bob Hope.
Another story:
About the time the Vietnam war was ending, Bob Hope was sent to entertain the troops. However, what they didn’t like to mention back then was that a lot of the troops were very much against the war and were none-to-thrilled to have to go to a gung-ho Bob Hope show. A friend of mine stationed over there remembers there was so much bitching about having to go, there was an official order making attendance mandatory. He told me that although the audience was almost hostile at the beginning, Bob seemed to pick up on the fact and toned down his usual patriotic rant and stuck to generic Hollywood jokes. Even the guys who hated going the most had to agree Bob was clever enough to know his audience and adapt the material.
100 years…simply amazing.
Talk about a nice run…
You must not ever have read the very unauthorized The Secret Life of Bob Hope/an Unauthorized Biography, by Arthur Marx. While not as bad as the legendary Eddie Cantor, his treatment of his writers was nothing I would put up with.
Assessing Hope’s career is among the most difficult tasks in all of show business. While he’s known for the Road movies and was fine in a few other pictures, no major star/box-office king has ever left a weaker total filmography. While he was on top the ratings in both radio and television, his shows got worse and worse - and worse - over the years. His record of entertaining the troops is unparalleled, but the Vietnam years were deadly for him. He was capable of good acting but too lazy to do any in most of his roles. He was capable of the finest monologues but too insecure to do anything but pander to his audiences. He was a multi-talented actor who increasingly circumscribed himself in the narrowest and safest of appearances. He took credit for the best-selling books written for him by his staff.
Personally he took care of his family and relatives, while being one of most flagrant womanizers in Hollywood, using his road shows to feature his latest mistress. He amassed huge wealth but was unstinting in his time and giving to charity.
A fascinating contradiction. An outsized ham, in the best sense of the word. But he outlasted all his contemporaries, was a star in vaudeville, broadway, radio, television, movies, and stand-up. He is also the only - I believe - actor to have introduced two Oscar-winning Best Songs. There aren’t any more like him, and won’t be again.
That’s Hedley Lamarr!
Some of my most precious childhood memories are of my grandfather and I staying up late watching Bob Hope and Bing Crosby’s road movies.
What a long and wonderful life he led. There are very few celebrity deaths that move me to tears and his is one of them.
RTFT, Mockingbird. Eve already beat you to the “Hedley” joke.
Turns out he stole the show one last time, too, by outliving his freakin’ obit writer! Now that’s how you make an exit!
Whenever a Hope or a Hepburn or a Berle (who was a veddy veddy bad man) dies, I’m struck at how many incredible and dazzling memories are now lost. Hope had forgotten more WW2 stories than you’ll probably ever read in books; he presented the Oscars to GWTW and worked with Eddie Foy (whom he later played) and was investing in Beverly Hills real estate when it was still pastoral- a vast library of information died with him. Maybe one day reinstantiation will allow us to download the memories onto silicon, but til then we’ll just have to guess what scent Hattie McDaniel wore to the Oscars or what it feels like to hear Vietcong mortar fire while you have your arms around Angie Dickinson.
[/babbling]
Actually, others have accomplished the two-fer, including Judy Garland, Doris Day, Barbra Streisand & Madonna. The most Best Songs performed in the winning movies go to Bob’s buddy Bing: “Sweet Leilani”, “White Christmas”, “Swinging on a Star”, and “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening”.
I grew up watching all of Bob’s movies (multiple times), so it was always a little weird revisiting his films as an adult. Very few held up the way I remembered, but there are still golden moments. I think he comes off a little too strong on most occasions, but when teamed with the right people (Bing was a terrific partner; Jane Russell too), he could deliver a lot of laughs. He was a particular favorite of my father’s and one of the few genuine American institutions left around. Sad.
Bob Hope is THE hollywood legend. One of the greats if not the greatest. I jave no personall stories about the man. I just know how entertained me from when I was a kid watching road pitcures with my dad who loved him. To when I was a teenager, going to watch his later pitcures and finding them horrible. To when I was a little older wacthing his older stuff and stand up routines on late night TV. To a little later when I finally “get” the hollywood insider jokes, risque ennuendoes and double entendres. To now when I regard him as a great legend passed away, knowing that he has been of ill health these past years buty sad to know that he has passed on to a greater medium.
Bob Hope epitomizes Hollywood and America just like John Wayne. He made us laugh, feel good about being american, comforted us in times of war, entertained many generations. We lost a precious jewel in his passing. He is truly a star now, up in the heavens.