That’s a good point. The big stars could support satellites, peripheral celebrities who shone with reflected light. The patron saint of such peripheral celebrities being, of course, Ed McMahon, King of the Second Bananas.
Some, me included, would ask what was Bob Hope’s.
mmm
He filmed part of one of his specials at Syracuse University when I was there and I was in audience.
He wasn’t blue when the camera was rolling but as soon as it turned - especially if something was a little different than he expected - he just let loose a string of blue.
Often mean too.
Never thought his specials were top of the entertainment heap (some of his movies were decent) but I didn’t bother watching any more after that.
I’ve seen Letterman twice in the past couple of weeks. The first time on PBS when he appeared on Bill Murray’s Mark Twain award show. He gave a speech praising Murray with clips from his shows. (Paul Shaffer and the World’s Most Dangerous Band also appeared.)
The second time he was the guest star on NatGeo’s 2nd season debut episode of Years of Living Dangerously. He traveled to India to talk about how they are (or are not) coping with their energy problems. And to buy a long shirt with “DAVE” on the back.
The first should be available via the PBS app and the second is free on Amazon Prime video.
Both guys appeared together last year in Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
Leno is basically all over the tube. Click on “self”. He’s turning into our generation’s Dr. Joyce Brothers.
Anyway, back to the thread topic: Another Crystal voter.
He is notably swinging into old guy humor that more and more people don’t get. And his movies are getting quite generic and unfunny.
Cher?
More likely Jerry Colonna, who had even less of a resume than Hope, and was known to most people in the 70s as someone who toured with his USO shows.
For the Sports World, it’s Lou Holtz.
If the measure of a Bob Hope replacement is his/her ability to support peripheral celebrities, then I’d suggest Adam Sandler.
But at least Sandler is still making movies that people sort of want to see. As long as he keeps making money, he keeps churning them out.
Bob Hope seemingly didn’t do anything except appear on TV.
Lots of people knew of him without knowing who he was due to being characterized numerous times in old Warner Bros. cartoons. Those Termite Terrace guys must’ve loved him.
Not just his cars. The last episode featured Joe Biden’s and Colin Powell’s Corvettes, for example.
Maybe Don Rickles or his best friend Bob Newhart. Don is still a frequent guest on the late night talk shows, but if you’re not old enough he’s nothing more than the voice of Mr. Potato Head in the Toy Story movies. And I don’t think Newhart’s two big shows are on anywhere except maybe some obscure cable channel. So when he guest starred on The Big Bang Theory many younger viewers might not have realized that the admiration the main characters were showing to his character (a tv science show host who inspired them) was really a thinly veiled attempt to show how much the actors were honored to be working with a TV comedy legend.
Not just a TV comedy legend. Stand ups who understand the history of the form revere him as one of their pioneers. His comedy albums were very influential.
Newhart is not a bad suggestion, although he’s not as ubiquitous as Hope was back in the 80s and 90s. I know very well who Bob Newhart is, both from his TV shows and his stand-up albums, but I see plenty of younger folks on Big Bang Theory forums wondering why they keep bringing back that “unfunny old guy with the stutter.”
That’s one show, though. As many people have stated, Bob Hope showed up regularly on talk shows, and his TV specials always got a lot of hype and publicity, enough to really make you think, as a kid, that this guy was important for some reason. There really isn’t anybody quite comparable working today. I don’t remember when I first became aware of the Road movies–I had a friend in high school who was really into them, but I may have vaguely known about them before that–but they seemed somehow separate from the Bob Hope doing not very funny stand-up from various naval bases every few months on NBC.
Yeah, his movies were on weekend matinee-type showings on UHF stations all the time- I’d seen enough of his movies to know who he was (I’m 44, FWIW).
I’d say Betty White is probably the most obvious choice, although I think that the fragmentation of television and direct-to-syndication shows have eliminated the showing of old movies on weekends that they did in bygone days.
The opportunity to be casually and more or less involuntarily exposed to older movies is a lot less than it was in say… 1981 when there were the 3 networks and maybe a couple of local UHF stations if you were lucky, and on a Sunday afternoon, the big networks were typically showing sports, and the UHF stations were showing old movies.
Nowadays, you can find what you want, and there’s not that “Hmmm… I think I’ll watch “Road to Zanzibar”, because it’s cold and rainy outside, and there’s nothing else on.” kind of situation.
I’d think that Bob Newhart is probably another good choice; unless you’re in your early 40s, you’ve probably never heard of him, yet there he is as "Professor Proton’ on the Big Bang Theory. He hasn’t done anything significant in 20+ years, but he’s still a respected and beloved comedian.
I nominate Steve Harvey. He started off as part of the Kings of Comedy, eventually went solo and had a string of bit parts and ham-and-egger variety shows until he became both a talk show host and the host of Family Feud. It’s like the amount of people who knew of him increased slowly but steadily until he became ubiquitous.
Does “the current Bob Hope” have to be somebody who’s a comedian and/or TV/Movie star? There are a number of rock stars who, for the most part, are in the “elder statesmen” phase of their careers but are still regarded as superstars of the highest order even though most haven’t done anything relevant in years. Paul McCartney is first person that comes to mind (even though his collaboration with Kanye West did get him back on the charts).
[slight hijack]
Speaking of Bob Hope, his fantastic Palm Springs mansion just sold for the rock-bottom price of $13 million…down from the original asking price of $50 million. What a deal!
[/hijack]
There is and never will be a current Bob Hope.
Bob Hope was one of the last great performers who came out of vaudeville. These guys worked every day of the week for years on end. They performed for peanuts sometimes and lived in fleabag hotels half the time. There is literally nobody today who has paid their dues the way these guys did.
One of my great disappointments in life is have watched the greatest generation of performers this country will ever produce drop dead one-by-one. And once the last one was gone there were no more coming down the pike.
Adele and Fred Astaire
Josephine Baker
The Barrymores
Count Basie
Jack Benny
Edgar Bergen
Milton Berle
Irving Berlin
Harry Blackstone, Sr.
Ray Bolger
Walter Brennan
Fanny Brice
Joe E. Brown
Burns and Allen
James Cagney
Eddie Cantor
Lon Chaney, Sr.
Charlie Chaplin
Sammy Davis, Jr.
Jimmy Durante
Buddy Ebsen
Nanette Fabray
Ella Fitzgerald
Henry Fonda
Judy Garland
George Gershwin
Cary Grant
Jack Haley
Oliver Hardy
Helen Hayes
Rita Hayworth
Woody Herman
Bob Hope
Edward Everett Horton
Walter Huston
Al Jolson
Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby
Stubby Kaye
Buster Keaton
Gene Kelly
Jerome Kern
Bert Lahr
Dorothy Lamour
Burt Lancaster
Stan Laurel
Moms Mabley
Fred MacMurray
Marx Brothers
Ethel Merman
Nicholas Brothers
Donald O’Connor
Eleanor Powell
George Raft
Martha Raye
Ritz Brothers
Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson
Ginger Rogers
Will Rogers
Mickey Rooney
Lillian Russell
Phil Silvers
Red Skelton
Kate Smith
Fats Waller
Ethel Waters
Ed Wynn
Who is the “new” any one of them?
Seconding Betty White. A few years ago you couldn’t get way from her even though she was 90. Kids don’t watch MTM or Hot in Cleveland. The Golden girls is still in rotation and hot with some groups but I don’t know if kids watch it.
They sure got a lot of her recently with her popping up in specials, roasts, guest spots, and a snickers ad.
Bill Murray might be up there but at least his movies are still funny. More than I can say about Bob Hope. I never understood the attraction, but by the time I was 12 we had cable and Eddie Murphy and other much better options (imo).