I feel as if I’ve lost my favorite funny uncle or grandpa who I visited every Chrismas or Thanksgiving.
That might have been the key to his success over such a long period. He didn’t let himself get stuck in a particular era, recycling the same gags until nobody wanted to hear them. He had enough intelligence and flexibility to keep his material fresh and topical throughout the generations (literally). Combined with the perfect timing that he never lost, due partly to his never taking even a long break, kept him just as funny at 80 as he was at 30.
Another anecdote: I used to play and host games on Prodigy’s chat rooms (remember them?) in the early-mid Nineties. It got to be a standing in-joke to comment about Bob Hope’s death in slower moments, to see who’d get fooled by it. We’d joke about it, even give out Bob Hope videos as prizes - but nobody ever thought he’d outlive Prodigy, and by a good 5 years.
There was never a more dedicated public servant, as we all know. Thanks for everything, Bob. You’ve earned your rest.
Okay, he’s gone, so are the Queen Mum and Milton Berle. Who’s at the top of the Death Pool odds boards now?
I’m curious–I remember reading some time back (probably here on the boards) that Hope had lied about his age early in his career to make himself one year younger, but that he had come clean a few years ago. I haven’t seen a mention of that in todays coverage. Is “100” the adjusted total or his proper age? Or did I halucinate that whole factoid?
Hope is best remembered for his movie, radio, and TV work, but it’s worth noting he was one of the last links to the now-vanished world of vaudeville. (Straightwoman in haunted house: “Don’t these big, empty houses scare you?” Hope: “Not me - I was in vaudeville!” The Cat and the Canary, 1939)
Something I didn’t know until today – in addition to “Thanks for the Memories” and “Buttons and Bows,” Hope introduced the standard “I Can’t Get Started” on Broadway, in the Ziegfield Follies of 1936.
According to Dwight Whitney, a former writer for TV Guide, those stories were not always easy to come by in Hope’s case.
–The Book of TV Lists by Gabe Essoe
Truly the end of that era. My grandfather was in Bing Crosby’s band, and played in the Road movies. He really enjoyed that gig; Hope and Crosby made it an easy-going experience, as movie-making goes. I still have an awfully garish tie that Dorothy Lamour gave my grandfather during one filming. Guess I’m just rambling, but Hope was the last Guy of that age, a time I heard many tales of from my grandfather. All past, now.
Grace go with you, Mr. Hope.
How long did George Burns make it after his 100th birthday? I have a sneaking suspicion that Hope wasn’t willing to let himself die until after he’d broken Burns’s record.
In the early 70s my mother and someone (my aunt, maybe?) came across Bob Hope making a phone call from a booth at the Minneapolis airport. Not being … erm … “sophisticated”, they both stopped in their tracks, turned, stared, and said, “THAT’S BOB HOPE!!” My mother thinks they may have stared at him for hours had he not asked them if they wanted his autograph.
Unfortunately I mostly know him from the TV specials but I will certainly remember him fondly, and I still occasionally chuckle over that Camelot parody… “My name is Lancelot and I like to dance a lot and wear iron pants a lot”
I think people are a little harsh in judging Bob Hope’s work at times, mainly because they compare him (unfavorably) to more modern post-Lenny Bruce comics. Bob Hope was an entertainer, perhaps the last all around one left.
What I find amazing is that he was mid-30’s by the time his first movie came out. He was a radio and vaudeville star … and then started the Movies/USO stuff in his late 30’s. Eventually that too died and he became basically a USO TV special guy from his 60’s on.
That really is at least 3 good careers & the stuff most folks remember him for coming in the last part of his life — AFTER his star had burned his brightest and most Show-Biz careers have ended or are ending.
Kind of like a young hot comic from the early 90’s starting to make movies now, after that career has kind of fizzled a bit
An editorial cartoon that made me smile.
A huge collection of Bob Hope cartoons from the Daryl Cagel Professional Cartoonists Index. A place you should all have bookmarked, anyway.