INTRODUCTION
“World’s Last Bob Hope Fan”: Onion, July 31, 2002, http://www.theonion.com/articles/worlds-last-bob-hope-fan-dies-of-old-age,3061/.
“To be paralyzingly”: Christopher Hitchens, “Hopeless,” Slate.com, August 1, 2003, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2003/08/hopeless.html.
“I grew up loving him”: Woody Allen, interview with author.
“Do you think anybody here knows”: Larry Gelbart, interview with author.
“the unabashed show-off”: Leo Rosten, “Bob Hope: Gags and Riches,” Look, February 24, 1953.
“Bob had no intellectual curiosity”: Katherine Green, interview with author.
“Everybody came to attention”: Sam McCullagh, interview with author.
“He was funnier than the monologues”: Gelbart, interview with author.
a starstruck stewardess fawned: Arthur Freeman, letter to the editor, Times of London, July 31, 2003.
The bishop who was to introduce Hope: Recounted by Nathaniel Lande, interview with author.
“Once you worked for Hope”: Hal Kanter, interview with author.
“What time can you get here?”: Frank Liberman, unpublished memoir.
“Now you’re talkin’ ”: Ibid.
“Bob, this gal comes from New York”: J. Anthony Lukas, “This Is Bob (Politician-Patriot-Publicist) Hope,” New York Times Magazine, October 4, 1970.
“the world’s only happy comedian”: Lupton A. Wilkinson, “Hope Springs Eternal,” Los Angeles Times, December 7, 1941.!
“Deep down inside”: “Fish Don’t Applaud,” Time, October 25, 1963.
every morning Bob Hope would get up: Elliott Kozak, interview with author.
“Playing the European theater”: Bob Hope, I Never Left Home (Simon & Schuster, 1944), 15.
“It is painfully obvious to us”: Richard Schickel, Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity (Doubleday, 1985), 217.
“I believe this operation can take place”: Letter from Howard Luck, October 1969, Hope archives, Library of Congress.
“This is just to thank you for the lemon pie”: Letter from Hope, July 10, 1974, Hope archives.
“She is in the hospital”: Letter from Donna Moore, October 8, 1967, Hope archives.
“Dear Kelly: Remember me?”: Letter from Hope, October 24, 1967, Hope archives.
CHAPTER 1: OPENING
“Lord Hope, 17th baronet”: Birmingham News Age-Herald, December 15, 1935, Hope archives.
“lured the aristocratic scion”: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, undated, Hope archives.
the family moved from Borth: The account of Avis’s early years comes largely from Jim Hope’s unpublished memoir, “Mother Had Hopes,” which is based primarily on the recollections of his mother. Some of it is corroborated in a report on Hope’s genealogy done for the Hope family by Research International in 1979 (Hope archives).
The records of the parish school: Alan Blackmore, interview with author. A grade school would presumably be more scrupulous in obtaining the correct birth date of its students.
suggests that Avis was most likely taken: Ibid.
By the time she appears: 1891 census records, administrative county of Glamorgan, Wales. Avis may also be listed in the 1881 census for Borth as well, but the entry is confusing. A nine-year-old girl whose name appears to be “Ivis Towis,” born in Middlesex, London, is recorded as a “boarder,” living with a woman named Jane Lewis and her son John. Intriguingly, a man named Abraham Lloyd Lewis and his family are living on the same street.
“Why, she’s just a baby”: J. Hope, “Mother Had Hopes,” 19.
“I have not seen a handsomer man”: Ibid., 50.
“You know you’re the only girl”: Ibid., 88.
“When he would be in the house”: Ibid., 134.
“I was defending my dogs”: Bob Hope, Have Tux, Will Travel (Simon & Schuster, 1954), 11.!
“Whose lovely little girl are you?”: J. Hope, “Mother Had Hopes,” 188.
“The very air in America”: Ibid., 192–94.
“We started planning and figuring”: Ibid., 195.
“Gone to Canada”: Alan Blackmore, interview with author.
“Everybody on the ship was in sympathy”: J. Hope, “Mother Had Hopes,” 200.
Leslie is the fifth of six: Ship manifest, USS Philadelphia, March 21, 1908.
“I’ll swear she looked”: J. Hope, “Mother Had Hopes,” 203.
Cleveland was not a bad place: William Ganson Rose, Cleveland: The Making of a City (World Publishing, 1990), 600–607, 679–88.
The bustling area . . . was becoming known: Charles Asa Post, Doan’s Corners and the City Four Miles West (Caxton, 1930).
“Euclid and Cedar had Brush arc lights”: Map of Doan’s Corners, circa 1900, Western Reserve Historical Society library, Cleveland, OH.
“not only an artist with the stone-cutting tools”: Hope, Have Tux, 14.
“I remember Dad saying”: Ibid., 19.
“For when he was sober”: J. Hope, “Mother Had Hopes,” 329.
“I have seen Harry in a great group”: Ibid., 266.
“She had the kind of skin”: Ibid., 209.
“unless we put our bare bottoms”: Ibid., 233.
“Ach! How many Hopes”: Ibid., 313.
“Looking back on my Cleveland boyhood”: Hope, Have Tux, 18.
“You sat in front of me”: Letter from Jessie Morris-Harman, September 9, 1971, Hope archives.
“He was a big show-off”: Timothy White, “The Road Not Taken,” Rolling Stone, March 20, 1980.
“If you want to be a success”: Hope tells the Rockefeller anecdote in Have Tux, 27, among other places.
“As his leisure increased”: Grace Goulder, John D. Rockefeller: The Cleveland Years (Western Reserve Historical Society, 1973), 233.
“We would hang around the corner”: Letter from Norman J. Freeman, January 18, 1973, Hope archives.
“Don’t worry about Leslie”: William Robert Faith, Bob Hope: A Life in Comedy (Da Capo Press, 2003), 11.
“you and ‘Whitey’ fattened me up”: Letter from Isabele M. Goss, April 7, 1964, Hope archives.
“My father had a Buick”: Letter from William Hoagland, February 3, 1967, Hope archives.
he was sent to reform school: Boys Industrial School, Inmate Case Record #20546, vol. 26, Ohio Historical Society.
“adjudged a delinquent”: May 17, 1918, Juvenile Court records, Cuyahoga County, OH.!
“I guess it’s no secret”: Typewritten jokes for Boys Club appearance, May 4, 1967, Hope archives.
readmitted to the school: Boys Industry School, Inmates Case Records. In the faded records, the last digit of the date of Hope’s final release is unclear; it is either 1920 or 1921.
Jack was trying to rescue a fellow soldier: J. Hope, “Mother Had Hopes,” 337.
“Leslie was a good worker”: Ibid., 343.
“It is not true my nose”: Hope, Have Tux, 10.
“Bob helped out weekends”: Maurice Condon, “They Remember Bob,” TV Guide, April 16, 1966.
“He was a good young fighter”: Ibid.
“I probably outweighed Hope”: “Two Recall Assists for Bob Hope,” Cleveland Press, April 20, 1960.
“In the first round I played cozy”: Hope, Have Tux, 8.
Les and Whitey were walking: Various accounts of the attack are given in Have Tux, Will Travel (9), “Mother Had Hopes” (317–20), and the Cleveland Press (undated, Hope archives).
“He’s not half as good as you”: Hope, Have Tux, 6.
“Lester Hope will teach you to dance”: Business card, Hope archives.
“Lester Hope . . . started a new contest”: “Council Takes No Action to Halt Dancing Contests,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 17, 1923.
“Mildred was tall, blonde”: Hope, Have Tux, 38.
“She worshipped Leslie”: J. Hope, “Mother Had Hopes,” 360–61.
“He would follow me home”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 13.
Mildred claimed that Les . . . kept all the money: Ibid., 14.
“ ‘This is a little dance’ ”: Hope, Have Tux, 39.
“When we came out to do”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 14.
“We wore brown derbies”: Hope, Have Tux, 40.
“The whole offering is built”: Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 28, 1923.
CHAPTER 2: VAUDEVILLE
In 1900 the United States had an estimated two thousand: The statistics and other details of vaudeville’s early years are drawn largely from Trav S.D., No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous (Faber and Faber, 2005).
“Tab shows were a special part”: Hope, Have Tux, 41.
“Frankly we had all thought Lefty Durbin”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 16.
“By the end of the week the towels”: Ibid., 17.
At a hotel in Bedford: Hope describes the affair and the hotel incident in Have Tux, 44.!
she broke off the relationship: “Hope’s Morgantown Saga Reviewed,” Morgantown Post, April 28, 1966, Hope archives.
Hope’s partner died: The description of Durbin’s death is drawn from Hope’s own brief account in Have Tux, 45; Faith, Life in Comedy, 18–19; and Jim Hope’s recollections in “Mother Had Hopes,” 359–60. Lawrence Quirk, in Bob Hope: The Road Well-Traveled (Applause Books, 2000), 26–27, gives the most uncharitable view of Hope’s actions.
“George was pink-cheeked”: Hope, Have Tux, 45.
dubbed “Dancers Supreme”: Advertisements for Jolly Follies, Hope archives.
“After that we told Maley”: Hope, Have Tux, 46.
The team added bits of comedy: Hope, Have Tux, 49.
“The most versatile couple”; “they stopped the show”; “For the premier honors”: Undated newspaper clips, Hope archives.
“I taught myself to play”: Hope, Have Tux, 49.
“Because it’ll go to his head”: Personal reminiscence of the reviewer of Hope’s book The Road to Hollywood, Daily Variety, July 26, 1977.
One of their models was . . . Duffy and Sweeney: Hope describes their act with much affection in Have Tux, 52–53.
“Our act opened with a soft-shoe”: Ibid., 55.
State Theater; Oriole Terrace; Stanley Theater: Contracts for Hope and Byrne’s Detroit and Pittsburgh appearances, Hope archives.
“the thinnest man in vaudeville”: Hope, Have Tux, 57; publicity shots of Hope and Byrne, Hope archives.
“If you’re only half as good”: Hope, Have Tux, 56.
“the greatest draw attraction”; “The finish is a wow”: Review reprinted in an advertisement for the show in Variety, March 18, 1925.
“They have some fast dances”: Unidentified newspaper review, Hope archives.
“At first it was a funny sensation”: Hope, Have Tux, 56.
By 1925, only a hundred all-live: Trav, No Applause, 250.
More than 260 shows . . . opened on Broadway: Larry Stempel, Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater (W. W. Norton, 2010), 207.
Getting cast in the show: Hope and Byrne’s abbreviated stint in Sidewalks of New York is recounted in Hope, Have Tux, 60–61; and Faith, Life in Comedy, 24.
“You ought to go West”: Hope, Have Tux, 65.
Hope called an agent in Cleveland: Hope describes his pivotal engagement in New Castle in Have Tux, 65–66, among other places.
a suave comedian named Frank Fay: Trav, No Applause, 183, 233. Glimpses of Fay’s work as a vaudeville emcee can be seen in the 1937 film Nothing Sacred and other movie roles from the 1930s.
“I think I’ll try it alone”: Hope, Have Tux, 66.!
“Without him I’m nothing”: Quirk, Road Well-Traveled, 38.
After the split, Byrne spent a few years: Byrne obituary, Variety, December 28, 1966.
“My mother told me”: Avis Hope Eckelberry, interview with author.
“If I don’t get any work by Saturday”: J. Hope, “Mother Had Hopes,” 386.
“I went out, bought a big red bow tie”: Hope, Have Tux, 67.
“Audiences knew that white performers”: Robert W. Snyder, Voice of the City: Vaudeville and Popular Culture in New York, 2nd ed. (Ivan R. Dee, 2000), 120.
“Don’t ever put that cork on”: Hope, Have Tux, 67.
“I couldn’t get in anybody’s door”: Ibid., 68.
“I used to dance on that corner”: Miranda Hope, interview with author.
“Late of Sidewalks of New York”: Advertisement in Chicago Tribune, June 25, 1928.
“I thought Bob had more”: Hope, Have Tux, 75.
billed him on the marquee as “Ben Hope”: John Lahr, “The C.E.O. of Comedy,” New Yorker, December 21, 1998. Hope repeated the anecdote many times, with varying responses from the theater manager.
“I had to tell you that you didn’t make it”: Letters from Harry A. Turrell, January 12, 1970, and October 24, 1975, Hope archives. Hope gives his own account of the Stratford engagement in Have Tux, 69–72.
signing a contract with the Stratford: Marcus Loew Western Booking Agency contract, Hope archives.
“I learned a lot about getting laughs”: Hope, Have Tux, 71.
“He was a bright package”: Lahr, “C.E.O. of Comedy.”
“a new twentieth-century aesthetic of shazz and pizzazz”: Trav, No Applause, 161.
He also had a new partner: Hope describes their act, though little about Troxell, in Have Tux, 72.
“When I walked out before my first Fort Worth audience”: Hope, Have Tux, 74.
As Hope recalled the events: Ibid., 77.
“I offered Lee Stewart $35”: Letter from Dolph Leffler, May 13, 1959, Hope archives.
“How’s the audience here?”: Hope, Have Tux, 77.
“No, lady, this is not John Gilbert”: Ibid., 78.
“Hope, assisted by an unbilled girl”: Variety, November 6, 1929.
The salary: a hefty $475 a week: Contract with Keith–Albee Vaudeville Exchange, Hope archives.
$100 a week, according to Hope: Hope, Have Tux, 80.
Hope crisscrossed the country: Map of Hope’s 1929–30 vaudeville tour, “Bob Hope and American Variety,” Library of Congress exhibit, available online at http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/bobhope/index.html.
“socked in heavy on the laugh register”: Billboard, November 23, 1929.
“This act flows”: Variety, June 11, 1930.
“Do us a favor, take it out”: Hope, Have Tux, 82.
“Girl with Bob Hope”: Mollie Gay, “Clothes and Clothes,” Variety, November 27, 1929.
he accompanied the offer with a marriage proposal: Rosequist gives her account of the incident in Faith, Life in Comedy, 41.
“She was quick and intelligent”: Hope, Have Tux, 72.
“He was a great joke mechanic”: Ibid., 85–86.
A typical Boasberg telegraphed pitch: “Bob Hope and American Variety,” Library of Congress exhibit.
“Bob Hope closing 28 minutes”: Variety, February 11, 1931.
Some of the old neighborhood gang: Variety, February 25, 1931.
“From the moment she took her seat”: J. Hope, “Mother Had Hopes,” 394–95.
went there on a rescue mission: Mike Gavin, interview with author.
“What’s going on behind the curtain?”: Hope describes their bits in Have Tux, 92–93.
“A part of my new idea”: Ibid., 92.
“I had to pound his eardrums”: Ibid., 98.
“He almost kissed me”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 49.
Hope later disowned it: Hope, Have Tux, 95.
“I was numb”: Ibid.
“They say that Bob Hope”: Quoted by Hope, ibid., 96.
Bob played a hotel desk clerk: Script for desk-clerk routine, “Bob Hope and American Variety,” Library of Congress exhibit.
“The sting of some of his gags”: Variety, November 6, 1929.
“Act needs a lot of watching”: Bureau of Sunday Censorship report, “Bob Hope and American Variety,” Library of Congress exhibit.
“I’d never seen anything so awful”: Hope, Have Tux, 87.
“Ups-a Daisy . . . Smiles”: The Internet Broadway Database, and contemporary reviews, clearly record Hope’s participation in both shows, making it especially odd that neither Hope nor any of his biographers have ever mentioned them.
CHAPTER 3: BROADWAY
New York City . . . was suffering: Edward Robb Ellis, The Epic of New York City: A Narrative History (Carroll & Graf, 1966), 531–34.!
“For most Americans, ‘café society’ ”: Neil Gabler, Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity (Knopf, 1994), 185.
until it began affecting his singing voice and he gave them up: Charles Thompson, Bob Hope: Portrait of a Superstar (Fontana/Collins, 1982), 234.
“Actually it was rather frightening”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 52.
Hope again had to vamp for time: Hope’s role in the show is described by Hope in Have Tux, 99–101; Faith, Life in Comedy, 52–54; and in a script excerpt in “Bob Hope and American Variety,” Library of Congress exhibit.
“An agreeable but far from brilliant”: Howard Barnes, New York Herald Tribune, September 7, 1932.
Commercial radio . . . was quickly reaching critical mass: Gerald Nachman, Raised on Radio (Pantheon, 1998), 16–25.
the Major appropriated most of the good jokes: Hope, Have Tux, 104–5.
“Here’s a picture of a girl”: Fleischmann Hour script, Hope archives.
“It all seemed so strange”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 54.
“Goofy, self-assured, ingratiating”: Variety, March 21, 1933.
“Son, I haven’t eaten”: The routine is quoted in the papers of Mort Lachman, Writers Guild of America archives.
Hope . . . chastised himself: Hope, Have Tux, 106.
“The gags weren’t very funny”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 56.
“One answer to what’s wrong”: Variety, November 21, 1933.
Hope and Richie Craig . . . devised a revenge scheme: Faith, Life in Comedy, 60–61.
Hope would always defend Berle: Elliott Kozak, interview with author.
Hope made the largest single contribution: Variety, January 23, 1934.
Max Gordon was casting a new Broadway musical: Gerald Boardman, Jerome Kern: His Life and Music (Oxford University Press, 1980), 334–41.
“Do whatever you can”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 59.
“An impossible, impossible man”: Quirk, Road Well-Traveled, 69.
“Extremely unimportant”: Quoted in Ethan Mordden, Sing for Your Supper: The Broadway Musical in the 1930s (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 53.
“The humors of Roberta”: Brooks Atkinson, New York Times, November 20, 1933.
longer than any other book musical: Mordden, Sing for Your Supper, 55.
“I’ve always said that Bob Hope”: Thompson, Portrait of a Superstar, 32.
“I had Marilyn Miller’s old dressing room”: Hope, Have Tux, 111.
“I hadn’t caught his name”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 62.
“Nana was the heart and soul”: Reminiscence by Mildred, Hope archives.
a columnist called her the female Crosby: Gary Giddins, Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams (Little, Brown, 2001), 561.
“I hadn’t seen that particular girl”: Hope, Have Tux, 112.!
Their marriage license . . . identifies the couple: Erie County Marriage License Bureau, Erie, Pennsylvania.
When the marriage license was unearthed: Arthur Marx, The Secret Life of Bob Hope: An Unauthorized Biography (Barricade Books, 1993), 71–72.
according to an Erie official: Associated Press, July 31, 2003.
“I was in a thick pink fog”: Hope, Have Tux, 112.
“Because I couldn’t wait”: Hope interview with Alan King, “Inside the Comedy Mind of Bob Hope,” 1992.
“announced their engagement yesterday”: New York Herald Tribune, August 4, 1934.
“guilty of extreme cruelty”: Divorce petition, September 4, 1934, Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas.
The judge found in Hope’s favor: November 19, 1934, Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas.
“It was in the early 1930s”: Letter from Henry B. Johnson, June 21, 1968, Hope archives.
“It was great hearing from you”: Letter from Hope, August 20, 1968, Hope archives.
Milton Berle, told Arthur Marx: Marx, Secret Life of Bob Hope, 81.
doing Dumb Dora routines with a new partner: Reviewing a vaudeville show in Brooklyn on July 24, 1935, Variety notes, “Joe May and Louise Troxell do their familiar flip comic and dumb gal routine, next to closing.”
“When Deb went away”: Letter from Louise Troxell, 1976, Hope archives.
“Dolores Hope—Godparent”: Death certificate for Deborah Halper, County of San Diego, CA, October 20, 1998.
Kirsten Flagstad, who sang: J. Hope, “Mother Had Hopes,” 412.
“It was murder”: Hope, Have Tux, 283.
“What he expected was perfection”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 67.
“Come right over”; “They gave her a little more production”: Hope, Have Tux, 114.
“A likely picture bet”: Variety, October 9, 1935.
“On song values she’s in the same category”: Variety, December 4, 1934.
turned down an offer . . . to costar: Described by Al Melnick, Shurr’s West Coast partner, in Marx, Secret Life of Bob Hope, 84.
“When they catch Dillinger”: Bob Hope and Bob Thomas, The Road to Hollywood: My Forty-Year Love Affair with the Movies (Bookthrift, 1979), 16.
“Sam’s ability to squeeze a buck”: Ibid., 17.
“I’m the star”: Hope, Have Tux, 116.
“If he’d had a good score”: Ibid.
“merriest laugh, song and girl show”: Quoted in Faith, Life in Comedy, 68.
“Mr. Hope, as usual, was amiably impudent”: Percy Hammond, New York Herald Tribune, November 9, 1934.!
“the guy responsible for my success”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 69.
“Hope is intermittently very funny”: Variety, January 15, 1934.
“thick, spoonbread Southern accent”: Hope, Have Tux, 118.
“Bob Hope is a likeable fellow”: New York Radio Guide, March 30, 1935.
she became a flamboyant: An obituary in the New York Times, August 20, 1995, recounts her colorful life. Many letters to Hope from Wilder are found in the Hope archives.
“It’s all right for the established comedians”: Unidentified newspaper article, Hope archives.
“He just doesn’t look like a comedian”: Radio Stars, September 1936, Hope archives.
“Before 1940, don’t be surprised”: Dick Templeton, Cincinnati Radio Dial, March 19, 1936, Hope archives.
Hope said he gave Arden the line: Hope, Have Tux, 119–20.
“A jovial and handsome”: Brooks Atkinson, New York Times, January 31, 1936.
“It was a kick”: Hope, Have Tux, 122.
During a performance in Philadelphia: Ibid., 121.
The show . . . had another rough voyage to Broadway: The problems of Red, Hot and Blue are recounted in Mordden, Sing for Your Supper, 246–48; and Faith, Life in Comedy, 77–80.
“Trow me da book”: Hope, Have Tux, 123.
“I’ve been with Bob a long time”: Ethel Merman, as told to Pete Martin, Who Could Ask for Anything More (Doubleday, 1955), 129.
“He lay down by the footlights”: Ibid., 135.
“I probably kidded around”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 80.
“he told me that he and Ethel”: Liberman, unpublished memoir.
“coyly engaging”: Time, November 9, 1936.
“generally cheering”: Brooks Atkinson, New York Times, October 30, 1936.
“urbane, sleek, and nimble”: Quoted in Faith, Life in Comedy, 80.
silent footage shot by a young theater enthusiast: Ray Knight collection, courtesy of Miles Krueger, Los Angeles.
“roly-poly Bob Hope”: Time, November 9, 1936.
“I was an entirely different fellow”: Brooks Riley, interview with Hope, Film Comment, May–June, 1979.
of the 125 major benefits: Faith, Life in Comedy, 81.
“Hollywood was for peasants”: Hope and Thomas, Road to Hollywood, 18.
Jack Benny, who turned it down: Mary Livingstone, Jack Benny (Doubleday, 1978), 94. Livingstone also says that Benny “didn’t think he could handle” the romantic ballad he was required to sing—“Thanks for the Memory.”
“Please advise Bob this is the great opportunity”; “Advise Bob Hope part Paramount has for him”: Telegrams from Louis Shurr, July 14 and 15, 1937, Hope archives.
“We’ve always hated the idea”: Quoted in Faith, Life in Comedy, 88.
CHAPTER 4: HOLLYWOOD
“The most obstinate, ornery”: David Chierichetti, Mitchell Leisen: Hollywood Director (Photoventures Press, 1995), 112.
“my most embarrassing moment”: Ibid., 110.
“It’s not easy to say, ‘I love you’ ”; “No, it’s not funny”: Roy Hemming, The Melody Lingers On: The Great Songwriters and Their Movie Musicals (Newmarket Press, 1999), 199, 200.
“I rehearsed Bob and Shirley”: Chierichetti, Mitchell Leisen, 111.
“everything comes through the eyes”: Hope, Have Tux, 133.
“We didn’t know we wrote”: Chierichetti, Mitchell Leisen, 111.
“When I saw the rushes”: Hope and Thomas, Road to Hollywood, 21.
“I don’t think it’s so much”: Hope, Have Tux, 132.
“Bob, your whole personality”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 93.
“log-size chip on my shoulder”: Hope, Have Tux, 131.
“It’s amazing that you can be a star in New York”: Robert Coleman, New York Daily Mirror, September 8, 1937.
greeted by a Paramount publicist: Faith, Life in Comedy, 91.
Paramount Pictures was a good place to land: Ethan Mordden, The Hollywood Studios: House Style in the Golden Age of the Movies (Fireside, 1989).
being eyed for a Damon Runyon story: Hollywood Reporter, July 29, 1937.
“Bob Hope, fine Broadway comic”: Ed Sullivan, New York Daily News, January 6, 1938.
“Hope, like Crosby, is just having”: Paramount press release, 1938, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) archives.
“I found him a shrewd boy”: Hope, Have Tux, 232.
“I had watched Hope at the Capitol”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 84.
“The monologue is now showing signs”: Samuel Kaufman, New York Sun, July 17, 1938.
“A comedian won’t be able to take the stage”: Coleman, New York Daily Mirror, September 8, 1937.
“He had never been able to understand”: Edgar Thompson, unidentified newspaper column, Hope archives.
“He took an old form”: Coleman, New York Daily Mirror, September 8, 1937.
the two would spend two or three late nights: Hope, Have Tux, 209.
“Hope appears too adaptable”: Variety, January 26, 1938.!
The head of Lucky Strike: Faith, Life in Comedy, 97.
“big hit tune of 1938”: Jolson radio performance, December 30, 1937, Michael Feinstein archives.
“All loose ends and tatters”: Frank Nugent, New York Times, March 10, 1938.
“You’ll rave over Bob Hope”: Ed Sullivan, New York Daily News, undated column, Hope archives.
“Bob is our American Noël Coward”: Hedda Hopper, undated column, Hope archives.
spent ten weeks on radio’s Your Hit Parade: Hemming, Melody Lingers On, 200.
“Our favorite gulp”: Damon Runyon syndicated column, March 13, 1938.
Hope on the differences . . . Hope’s guide to comedy slang: Paramount publicity material, AMPAS archives.
“Move over, boys”: quoted by Wilkie Mahoney in letter to Hope, August 28, 1958, Hope archives.
went to producer Lewis Gensler: Faith, Life in Comedy, 95.
“a pleasant comedian completely bested”: Howard Barnes, New York Herald Tribune, April 28, 1938.
an offer from Universal: Hope and Thomas, Road to Hollywood, 28.
“Paramount signed me”: Script for Paramount appearance, Hope archives.
“Everyone goes to bed”: Ibid.
only enough money for one pair of dress pants: Anecdote related by Liberman, unpublished memoir.
hopped in his 1937 Pontiac: Faith, Life in Comedy, 98.
had considered Milton Berle and Fred Allen: Charles Luckman, Twice in a Lifetime (W. W. Norton, 1988), 141.
“to prevent your being a smart aleck”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 100.
starting salary of $1,500 a week: Hope later recalled it as $2,500, but this is the figure cited by Luckman, Twice in a Lifetime, 141.
“No comic had ever tried . . . All these comedy minds”: Hope, with Melville Shavelson, Don’t Shoot, It’s Only Me (Putnam, 1990), 29, 33.
coming close to hiring Ozzie Nelson: Variety, August 9, 1938.
introducing him as a famous Italian tenor: Bob Colonna, “Greetings, Gate!”: The Story of Professor Jerry Colonna (BearManor Media, 2007), 42–43.
found out the rights would cost him $250: Faith, Life in Comedy, 104.
“That small speck”: Variety, October 5, 1938.
“My idea was to do”: Hope, Have Tux, 214.
“When you wrote for Hope”: Peter Kaplan, “On the Road with Bob Hope,” New Times, August 7, 1978.
“he seemed a little concerned”: Melville Shavelson, How to Succeed in Hollywood Without Really Trying (BearManor Media, 2007), 36.!
“He had no sense of time”: Sherwood Schwartz, interview with author.
“What took you so long?”: Ibid.
make paper airplanes out of the writers’ paychecks: A widely repeated anecdote, in Marx, Secret Life of Bob Hope, 122; and elsewhere.
“I’ll leave it in the mailbox”: Shavelson, How to Succeed, 37.
“We’d go to a hotel”: Schwartz, interview with author.
“What we didn’t realize . . . it was Bob’s excuse”: Lahr, “C.E.O. of Comedy.”
“It never occurred to us”: Shavelson, How to Succeed, 37.
“Two things: Sam Goldwyn and Bob Hope”: Maureen Solomon, Shavelson’s former assistant, interview with author.
“There was no separation”: Schwartz, interview with author.
“Hope is the ordinary actor type”: Melvin Frank, private journal.
“My father really loved Hope”: Elizabeth Frank, interview with author.
“He still had a tendency to go overboard”: Marx, Secret Life of Bob Hope, 125.
Hope exploded: Schwartz, interview with author.
A 1939 poll of radio critics: Nachman, Raised on Radio, 143.
“In previous pictures”: Frank S. Nugent, New York Times, December 8, 1938.
“Looks like Bette Davis’s garage”: Mason Wiley and Damien Bona, Inside Oscar (Ballantine Books, 1986), 89.
“Bob Hope didn’t get an Oscar”: George E. Phair, “Hollywood Hides Heart Under Hokum,” Daily Variety, February 24, 1939.
“I want you to know”: Hope and Thomas, Road to Hollywood, 32.
in Chicago, Hope’s show earned $44,500: Variety, July 12, 1939.
“A little pin money”: Letter from Kenneth Smith, Hope archives.
“start brushing four times a day”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 108.
got the Ohio clan together: Ibid., 108.
“As always, Hope isn’t inclined”: Variety, July 26, 1939.
“I’m used to this sort of thing”: Thomas M. Pryor, “Bob Hope and a Series of Interruptions,” New York Times, August 6, 1939.
“Crisp instructions were sent”: “Studios Call Stars Back from War-Menaced Europe,” Los Angeles Times, August 26, 1939.
Among the 2,331 passengers: “Queen Mary Brings 2,331 Here Safely,” New York Times, September 5, 1939.
“Many of the British people”: Hope, Have Tux, 167.
Hope did an impromptu show: Ibid., 167–68.
“We were getting along fine”: Ibid., 287.
“We took his own characteristics”: Lahr, “C.E.O. of Comedy.”
“the extreme wisdom of comedians”: Variety, October 4, 1939.
boosted him into tenth place: Variety, January 3, 1940.
The names of the winners . . . had prematurely been revealed: Wiley and Bona, Inside Oscar, 98.
“ten best actors of the year”: Hope’s lines reported in Daily Variety, March 1, 1940; and Wiley and Bona, Inside Oscar.
“Bob Hope . . . was his lifesaving self”: Hedda Hopper, Los Angeles Times, March 4, 1940.
Their chemistry so impressed: Hope and Thomas, Road to Hollywood, 33.
The idea took more than a year: The rather convoluted genesis of Road to Singapore is drawn from Paramount records at the AMPAS library; Faith, Life in Comedy, 116; and Giddins, Bing Crosby, 564–65.
“For a couple of days . . . tore freewheeling into a scene”: Bing Crosby, as told to Pete Martin, Call Me Lucky (Da Capo Press, 1953), 157.
“I kept waiting for a cue”: Dorothy Lamour, as told to Dick McInnes, My Side of the Road (Prentice-Hall, 1980), 88.
“If you recognize any of yours”: An oft-repeated anecdote, in Faith, Life in Comedy, 116; and elsewhere.
“I had a great staff”: Hope interview, Film Comment, May–June 1979.
“The Road pictures had the excitement”: Hope and Thomas, Road to Hollywood, 35.
“How fast was I going, Officer?”: Giddins, Bing Crosby, 580.
“That scene was like a piece of music”: Hope and Thomas, Road to Hollywood, 36.
By April, Paramount was already planning: Variety, April 10, 1940.
“Bing loved to hunt and fish”: Giddins, Bing Crosby, 561.
“Bing was a cold tomato”: Sherwood Schwartz, interview with author.
“What the hell are you doing that for”: Liberman, unpublished memoir.
“Bob wanted everything that Bing had”: Hal Kanter, interview with author.
“It was the only time I saw Bob”: Ibid.
On his first stop in Joliet . . . there were lines around the block: Hope with Shavelson, Don’t Shoot, 61–62.
With a guarantee of $12,500: Variety, May 15, 1940.
“Bob Hope is blazing Hot”: Variety, May 22, 1940.
“It was my first experience”: Hope with Shavelson, Don’t Shoot, 61–62.
“He had his job, and she had her job”: Tom Malatesta, interview with author.
“She longed for romance from this man”: Lahr, “C.E.O. of Comedy.”
When he saw that the boy had a ski nose: Hope, Have Tux, 289.
“I haven’t made a comedy”; “That’s all fine”: Ibid., 156–59.
“Its lightness and levity throughout”: Variety, June 12, 1940.
especially well with “the under-21 mob”: Variety, June 26, 1940.!
put the squeeze on Pepsodent: Variety, June 19, 1940.
“Everyone would write down”: Thompson, Portrait of a Superstar, 50.
“Who do you think you are—Harpo?”: Hope with Shavelson, Don’t Shoot, 64.
“I want to thank both political candidates”: Ibid., 65.
“The Democrats really put on”: Ibid., 67–68.
“We are getting many protests”: NBC memo, November 19, 1940, “Bob Hope and American Variety,” Library of Congress exhibit.
President Roosevelt . . . launched a massive war mobilization effort: Background on the home front in the years leading up to and during World War II is drawn largely from Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II (Simon & Schuster, 1994).
“did Selznick bring them back?”: Accounts of the ceremony in Wiley and Bona, Inside Oscar, and Daily Variety, February 28, 1941.
he entertained at a reported 562 benefits: “Hope for Humanity,” Time, September 20, 1943.
Lamour . . . tried to keep up: Lamour, My Side of the Road, 98–99.
seventy-two of them had to be removed: Paramount publicity material, AMPAS archives.
“some of the most uninhibited”: “The Groaner,” Time, April 7, 1941.
plans for a third in the series: “Road to Moscow New Crosby–Bob Hope Trek,” Los Angeles Times, March 24, 1941.
“I thought David was going to knife me”: Hope, Have Tux, 148.
“Why should we drag the whole show”: Hope with Shavelson, Don’t Shoot, 73.
“I got goose pimples myself”: Ibid., 74–75.
“It was our job to talk to the men”: Schwartz, interview with author.
Even the term GI: Hope with Shavelson, Don’t Shoot, 76.
Pepsodent printed 4 million copies: Daily Variety, September 29, 1941.
“I was such a beautiful baby . . . I remember my first appearance . . . Fan mail is like bread and butter”: Bob Hope, They Got Me Covered (Bob Hope, 1941), 10, 32, 66.
“You can say it’s about a quarter of a million”: Time, July 7, 1941.
“It’s not very often that I get mad”: Bing Crosby, letter to the editor, Time, August 4, 1941.
Paramount’s No. 1 star and ranked fourth: Variety, December 31, 1941.
“Other top-line funnymen”: Wilkinson, “Hope Springs Eternal.”
“We were all too shocked”: Hope with Shavelson, Don’t Shoot, 80.
CHAPTER 6: WAR
Hollywood was a changed place after Pearl Harbor: Otto Friedrich, City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s (Harper & Row, 1986), 101–3.!
“to ensure completion of films”: Variety, December 17, 1941.
“Sacrifices will have to be made”: Daily Variety, December 8, 1941.
car chases were banned . . . as was the filming of battle scenes: Louella Parsons, syndicated column, January 17, 1942.
Hedy Lamarr and Lana Turner sold bonds: Friedrich, City of Nets, 105–9.
Jack Benny . . . found the raucous crowds too disruptive: “Radio, Vaudeville & Camps,” Time, April 13, 1942.
“I find these audiences . . . like a tonic”: “Bob Hope Typical Soldier Entertainer,” Los Angeles Times, June 15, 1942.
“We are all soldiers now”: Daily Variety, January 20, 1942.
In Houston, the crowds packed the fairways: Unidentified Houston newspaper article, February 13, 1942, Hope archives.
“If anything it was Bob Hope’s Victory Caravan”: Daily Variety, May 1, 1942.
Hope came home physically exhausted: Daily Variety, June 23, 1942.
The war didn’t deter a record crowd: Wiley and Bona, Inside Oscar, 118–20.
Carroll . . . telephoned to thank Hope: Hope and Thomas, Road to Hollywood, 44.
some British military officers, who complained: Variety, April 15, 1942.
“Not only the funniest Bob Hope picture”: Richard Griffith, “My Favorite Blonde Shows Bob Hope at Comedy Peak,” Los Angeles Times, April 13, 1942.
It broke records . . . and outdrew Hope’s previous hits”: Variety, May 6, 1942.
one of Hope’s former movie stand-ins . . . suggested: Faith, Life in Comedy, 140.
The trip was almost scrubbed: Hope gives detailed accounts of the Alaska trip in I Never Left Home, 194–202; and Don’t Shoot, 90–93.
“It was a pretty scary night”: Bob Gates, interview with author.
“I wouldn’t trade this trip . . . Hollywood won’t see so much of Hope”: Variety, October 14, 1942.
“He was rejected every time”: Dorothy Kilgallen, undated newspaper column, Hope archives.
“The greatest good you can do”: Ed Sullivan, undated article in Photoplay, 1943.
No. 1 program in radio’s Hooper ratings: Variety, October 21, 1942.
The camel improvised the spit: Hope and Thomas, Road to Hollywood, 47–48.
“There were never less than three telephones”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 146.
Hope got a call from a Paramount wardrobe boy: Ibid., 146–47.
The evening began with privates Alan Ladd and Tyrone Power: Wiley and Bona, Inside Oscar, 128–29.
Hope even squeezed in some last-minute reshoots: Daily Variety, June 15, 1943.
“Take care of yourself”; “You know I will”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 147.!
“I couldn’t let this exciting world”: “How Mrs. Bob Hope Is Pitching on the Home Front,” Screenland, August 1943.
“there is no soap in the King’s bathroom”: Hope, I Never Left Home, 33.
“I was sorry I wasn’t able to tell him”: Ibid., 39–40.
“He finished out of the money”: Time correspondent files, August 1943, Time archives.
“We soon discovered you had to be pretty lousy”: Hope, I Never Left Home, 46.
In one ward Langford began to sing: Time correspondent files, August 1943.
The prime minister did a double take: Hope, I Never Left Home, 87.
“The most wonderful thing about England”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 149.
“When the time for recognition of service”: John Steinbeck, New York Herald Tribune, July 26, 1943.
an officer lent him: Hope, I Never Left Home, 99–100.
“Frances and I were standing”: Ibid., 130.
“I was bouncing like a rubber ball”: Sidney Carroll, “Where There’s Life,” Esquire, January 1944.
“He is what the psychologists call”: Ibid.
“It not only gives you a feeling of security”: Hope, I Never Left Home, 157.
“A very wonderful guy”: Time correspondent files, August 1943.
“I want you to tell the people”: Stanley Hirshson, General Patton: A Soldier’s Life (Harper, 2003), 399–400.
“Bob came on the grandstand”: Letter quoted in Hope, I Never Left Home, 205–7.
“After you’ve listened to a raid . . . the most frightening experience”: Ibid., 162.
“I was in two different cities with them”: Ernie Pyle, New York World-Telegram, September 16, 1943.
“Don’t you know there’s a war on?”: Hope, I Never Left Home, 170.
“He flattered us”; “We’re too strong for ’em”: Ibid., 178–79.
“When we were lost over Alaska”: Ibid., 182.
“From the ranks of show business have sprung heroes”: “Hope for Humanity,” Time, September 20, 1943.
The two worked together through the fall: Faith, Life in Comedy, 156–57.
“I saw your sons and your husbands”: Hope, I Never Left Home, vii.
“A zany, staccato but often touching account”: Tom O’Reilly, New York Times Book Review, June 18, 1944.
“I think I was suffering”: Hope with Shavelson, Don’t Shoot, 125.
drew an astonishing 40.9: NBC advertisement, Daily Variety, March 6, 1945.
“Have plane coming north tonight”: Hope, Have Tux, 248.
“In those days they were enormous”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 158–59.
“Some days I became almost as nonchalant”: Hope and Thomas, Road to Hollywood, 57.!
“The next day it was all patched up”: Lamour, My Side of the Road, 140.
“We had Barney along”: Bob Hope, “Now They Call Me Trader Corn,” syndicated newspaper column, November 12, 1944.
“Probably the biggest boost to our morale”: Eugene B. Sledge, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa (Presidio Press, 1990), 34–35.
“When did you get here?”: Hope with Shavelson, Don’t Shoot, 144.
“You had to be careful”: Patty Thomas, interview with author.
“Bob would tell people”: Ibid.
“Hey, Dad, I think we’re in trouble”: Ibid.
Barney Dean, who was petrified . . . some American cigarettes . . . local dance hall in gratitude: Hope with Shavelson, Don’t Shoot, 144–45.
“He’s so used to seeing Bob going away”: “Bob Hope and Troupe Return from Pacific,” Los Angeles Times, September 3, 1944.
“I don’t see how we can let you do that”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 162.
“Just now I’ve been to Toronto”: “Bob Hope ‘Suspends’ Studio—That’s His Version, Anyway,” Hollywood Citizen-News, November 9, 1944.
“I’m not underrating the importance”: “Hope Suspends Studio, Studio Suspends Hope!,” Los Angeles Times, November 12, 1944.
“Some of the servicemen are boys”: “An Open Letter to a Radio Star,” Catholic Pilot, November 17, 1944.
“I think if we came out with some publicity”: NBC memo, “Bob Hope and American Variety,” Library of Congress exhibit.
“I think it is only fair to me”: Unidentified wire story, Hope archives.
“most consistently violates”: “Unchristian Hope?,” Time, December 11, 1944.
“Risqué stories—phooey”: Undated letter to Hope, Hope archives.
“as unfair a charge”: Ivan Spear, Boxoffice, December 30, 1944.
had to take off five days for an eye operation: Daily Variety, May 9, 1944. Neither Hope nor any of his biographers mention the episode.
“showed that you have been under a terrific strain”: Letter from Dr. Hugh Strathearn, January 12, 1945, Hope archives.
Hope’s contract gave him 50 percent: Letter of agreement to Hope from King Features Syndicate, April 21, 1944, Hope archives.
Hope returned to host the Academy Awards: Quotes and anecdotes from the ceremony from Daily Variety, March 16, 1945; and Wiley and Bona, Inside Oscar, 146–47.
Hope signed a new seven-year contract: Daily Variety, May 7, 1945.
“When a star of Hope’s stature”: Quoted in Faith, Life in Comedy, 169.
he spotted Maurice Chevalier in the audience: Hope tells the Chevalier anecdote and offers a defense of Chevalier’s wartime activities in Don’t Shoot, 155–56.!
“Everything was different”: Hope, “It’s Great to Be Home,” unidentified magazine article, December 9, 1945, Hope archives.
“Those boys in the stadium rose twenty-five feet”: Hope, It Says Here column, August 15, 1945.
Hope’s official itinerary had him continuing: Bob Hope Itinerary, 1941–1951, Hope archives. It lists stops for Hope in Germany, France, and Austria through at least August 31. Yet Daily Variety reported on August 22, “Bob Hope arrived in New York yesterday after completing his USO tour of Europe and expects to leave for the coast immediately.” According to Daily Variety, he arrived back in Los Angeles on August 30, the day his official itinerary has him appearing at Stadt Stadium in Munich.
“It was a pleasure to hear from you”: Letter to Hope, December 8, 1944, Hope archives.
CHAPTER 7: PEACE
“Why isn’t Hope doing”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 172.
still dominated by the same prewar stars: George Rosen, “This Is Where They Came In,” Variety, December 19, 1945.
Hope said it would never get past: Hope and Thomas, Road to Hollywood, 59.
the largest contract for radio talent: Daily Variety reported the figures, January 17, 1945. Luckman, in Twice in a Lifetime (177), says the amount “to the best of our knowledge” was the largest ever to that point.
projected to reach $1.25 million: “Hope Springs Financial,” Newsweek, May 6, 1946.
Hope would typically arrive in town: Time correspondent files, July 1946.
“I can’t even remember what city”: St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 25, 1946.
grossing $500,000 in ticket sales: Variety, July 10, 1946.
He split his show-business endeavors: “Hope, Inc.,” Time, November 18, 1946.
“Wherever he goes, the whole board of directors”: Douglas Welch, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, quoted in Faith, Life in Comedy, 179.
“We made him remove the wig”: Time correspondent files, November 1946.
he would always take a drive and walk the property: Payson Wolfe, Hope attorney, tape-recorded interview with Richard Behar, 1983.
“If they would give me one spot”; “Mr. Hearst is very pleased”: Letters between Hope and Ward Greene, 1946, Hope archives.
“I used to climb over the fence”: “Hope Sets New High in Gate Crashing,” Los Angeles Times, June 23, 1946.
“We didn’t really do the Hollywood”: Linda Hope, interview with author.!
“She wasn’t easy”: Ibid.
“Dolores had a voice”: Rory Burke, interview with author.
“She was a mother of the period”: Robert Colonna, interview with author.
“My mother would say . . . sit up straight”: Linda Hope, interview with author.
“Mother was a pistol”: Tom Malatesta, interview with author.
“I’ve worn out four agents”: Jim Hope letter, May 15, 1946, Hope archives.
Marie . . . claimed she had been underpaid: Daily Variety, June 15, 1942.
Bob turned down the paper’s request . . . “It was a silly thing”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 180–81.
Producer Paul Jones didn’t like . . . the studio brought in Frank Tashlin: Hope and Thomas, Road to Hollywood, 60–61.
“He was a wonderful comic actor”: Woody Allen, interview with author.
he never worked for a major director: Tashlin probably came the closest, and Raoul Walsh (years before his great films) directed College Swing. But no Howard Hawks or Leo McCarey or Billy Wilder. Even Jack Benny did a film for Lubitsch.
“Monsieur Beaucaire, as now enacted”: Bosley Crowther, New York Times, September 5, 1946.
“That rumbling yesterday”: John L. Scott, Los Angeles Times, August 23, 1946.
“He used to say that he carried two watches”: Lamour, My Side of the Road, 152.
$72,000 under budget: Paramount production records, AMPAS library.
“The best picture Monsieur Robin”: Louella Parsons, undated newspaper column, Hope archives.
returning to Broadway: Daily Variety, March 11, 1947.
making a trip to Europe and North Africa: Daily Variety, January 6, 1947.
stayed at the palatial estate: Faith, Life in Comedy, 187.
Hope got so sunburned: Daily Variety, July 24, 1947, Time correspondent files, July 1947.
Jimmie Fidler . . . gave Hope an early warning: Letter from Fidler, November 29, 1946, Hope archives.
Hope was branded the most tasteless comedian: “The RAP,” Time, November 17, 1947.
an innuendo-laden free-for-all: Arthur Marx quotes extensively from it in Secret Life of Bob Hope, 224–27.
The network bleeped out Hope’s line: Daily Variety, April 23, 1947.
Hope told Sinatra . . . The line got bleeped: Variety, May 14, 1947.
“You could enjoy it”: Jack Gould, New York Times, September 29, 1946.
“ ‘sad saga of sameness’ ”: Variety, September 24, 1947.
“I can tell the seasons”: “Irium-Plated Alger,” Time, April 10, 1944.!
The travel issue came to a head: Daily Variety, November 6, 1947.
had to miss the first week’s broadcast: Daily Variety, November 11, 1947.
Fred Williams . . . keeled over drunk: Hope, Have Tux, 217.
Queen Elizabeth reportedly “laughed so hard”: Daily Variety, November 28, 1947.
“Look at him”: Hope recounts the dialogue in Have Tux, 224.
“The most important thing for us in America”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 192.
“The only sad thing about coming to Claremore”: Ibid., 188.
Paramount had initially vowed: Hedda Hopper, Los Angeles Times, October 5, 1946.
“Bing and I hardly left the set”: Hope and Thomas, Road to Hollywood, 63.
“They could have considered a four-way split”: Lamour, My Side of the Road, 160.
“Crosby’s attitude toward Dorothy Lamour”: Liberman, unpublished memoir.
“My friendship with Bob”: Marx, Secret Life of Bob Hope, 232.
“I never liked Bing”: Marcia Lewis Smith, interview with author.
the two at least temporarily patched up: Faith, Life in Comedy, 189.
“Bob is very much worried”: Letter from Hugh Davis, December 11, 1947, AMPAS archives.
Colonna . . . was ready to leave: Robert Colonna, Greetings, Gate!, 166; and interview with author.
“He is definitely out to remove”: Hollywood Citizen News, undated article, Hope archives.
“Unpack”: Hope, Have Tux, 251.
“He was trying something quite novel”: Gelbart, interview with author.
“there were product payoffs”: Si Rose, interview with author.
“He was demanding”: Gelbart, interview with author.
“Bob’s staff would circle around him”: A. E. Hotchner, Doris Day: Her Own Story (Morrow, 1976), 109.
“we’d always see a gal with him”; “Some of the guys are participating”: Rose, interview with author.
“they did one take”: Jane Russell, interview with author.
“Bob, you get back here”: Ibid.
“A triumphant travesty”: Howard Barnes, New York Herald Tribune, December 16, 1948.
had been planning to take Dolores: Faith, Life in Comedy, 196.
Dolores, who went to Christmas mass: Dorothy Reilly, wife of Air Force colonel Alvin Reilly, interview with author.
“It was an adventure”: Rose, interview with author.
“the greatest filibuster of all times”: Los Angeles Times, December 26, 1948.
Hope asked his driver to find the radio station: Faith, Life in Comedy, 197–98.!
“Here is a perfect example”: United Airlines advertisement, Daily Variety, April 18, 1949.
“We often flew through storms”: Hotchner, Doris Day, 106.
the two began a relationship: Payton’s affair with Hope is described in John O’Dowd, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story (BearManor Media, 2006), 65–68; and by Payton herself in “Have Tux, Will Travel . . . and That’s What Bob Hope Did with That Blonde,” Confidential, July 1956.
“You can’t make money like that”: John Crosby, New York Herald Tribune, March 1, 1949.
“The Hope success should inspire”: Hollywood Reporter, January 20, 1949.
a deal to lease seventeen hundred acres: Time correspondent files, August 1949; and Faith, Life in Comedy, 201.
NBC also stepped up: Faith, Life in Comedy, 200.
another fight with Luckman . . . over the taping: Daily Variety, June 6 and August 12, 1949.
“If your economy-minded production heads”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 202.
“lifts comedian Bob Hope”: Time, June 27, 1949.
the three combined to boost Hope: Phil Koury, “New Box-Office King,” New York Times, January 8, 1950.
Hope was hesitant: Hope, Have Tux, 200.
“We’ll move your pin”: Ibid., 201.
“Get me some soup”: Ibid., 203.
“The Bob Hope Christmas stint”: Daily Variety, December 29, 1949.
“His professional jaunts have astonished”: Koury, New York Times, January 8, 1950.
CHAPTER 8: TELEVISION
“I remember how my head jerked”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 207.
“Never trust a politician”: Ibid., 209.
“I started in this sort of racket”: Otis J. Guernsey Jr., “Bob Hope Takes Times Square by Storm,” New York Herald Tribune, March 5, 1950.
Hope set house records: Daily Variety, March 2, 1950.
“Where was Hope”: Advertisement in Variety, March 15, 1950.
“It was very intuitive and correct”: Tony Bennett, interview with author.
In May 1948 . . . only 325,000 TV sets in American homes: “The Infant Grows Up,” Time, May 24, 1948.
By the end of 1949, that number had grown: Radio Electronics Television Manufacturers Association figures, http://www.earlytelevision.org.
The radio audience was dropping: Jeff Greenfield, Television: The First 50 Years (Harry N. Abrams, 1977), 44.!
“The only radio comic”: Walt Taliaferro, Los Angeles Daily News, May 30, 1949.
“I want to take a little bet”: Letter from John Royal, June 29, 1949, “Bob Hope and American Variety,” Library of Congress exhibit.
“Berle can have that medium”: Letter from Hope, ibid.
Hugh Davis . . . came to visit Hope: Hope, Have Tux, 237.
more than had ever before been spent on a single hour: Time correspondent files, April 1950.
“I’m being underpaid”: Time correspondent files, April 1950.
“It was very difficult”: Mort Lachman, video interview, Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS) archives.
“His hand was soaking wet”: Carl Reiner, interview with author.
“seemed subdued and uncertain”: “The $1,500-a-Minute Program,” Life, April 24, 1950.
“petrified with fear”: John Lester, New York Journal-American, quoted in Faith, Life in Comedy, 213.
“I couldn’t believe how nervous”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 214.
“It was really caveman TV”: Gelbart, interview with author.
“I used to work very fast”: Hope, Have Tux, 238.
a deal that guaranteed Hope $3 million: Variety, May 17 and September 27, 1950, January 10, 1951.
Hope struck a new deal with Paramount: Variety, September 6, 1950.
MacArthur had requested . . . But Hope prevailed: Daily Variety, October 11, 1950.
“He held us spellbound”; “Most of them are so young”: Hope, It Says Here column, October 23, 1950.
“How long have you been here?”: Hope with Shavelson, Don’t Shoot, 181.
“The only thing we’re going in for”: “Bob Hope and Marilyn Maxwell in Wonsan Before Leathernecks,” Los Angeles Times, October 27, 1950.
“I always had the feeling”: Hope with Shavelson, Don’t Shoot, 183.
sued . . . for making jokes: New York Herald Tribune, June 29, 1950.
“Writers got $2,000 a week”: John Crosby, “Radio’s Seven Deadly Sins,” Life, November 6, 1950.
Hope sought $2 million: Daily Variety, November 17, 1950.
eventually dropped the suit: Variety, May 26, 1951.
“He was the worst egomaniac”: Quirk, Road Well-Traveled, 222.
“I have learned that there is absolutely no truth”: Quoted in Faith, Life in Comedy, 223.
“Our mission in life”: Liberman, unpublished memoir.
“The boss knew a number of people”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 223–24.
“I think he’s a great man”: Joan Barthel, “Bob Hope: The Road Gets Rougher,” Life, January 29, 1971.!
“If he’s had romances”: Betty Beale, “And Here’s a Lady Who Loves Him,” Washington Star, May 24, 1978.
“It never bothered me”: Lahr, “C.E.O. of Comedy.”
“I’m sure that my mother knew”: Linda Hope, interview with author.
“She had grace under fire”: Rory Burke, interview with author.
SLEEP IN A WIGWAM TONIGHT: Liberman, unpublished memoir.
called Maxwell the second most serious: Ibid.
ranked him as Britain’s No. 1 box-office star: Guardian, December 28, 1951.
“had lapses into feebleness”: Quoted in Time correspondent files, April 1951.
“If little that Hope gave us”: Guardian, April 25, 1951.
Hope impulsively promised: Faith, Life in Comedy, 224–25.
“Bob was really great to us kids”: Thompson, Portrait of a Superstar, 94.
“Hope never looked like a serious contender”: Variety, January 30 and 31, 1952.
“How hard can you hit”: Ibid.
got his rescue man, Frank Tashlin: Hope and Thomas, Road to Hollywood, 76–77.
“95 minutes of uninhibited mirth”: Variety, July 16, 1952.
Prompted the Catholic Legion of Decency: Variety, August 6, 1952.
Hope . . . said he was going to lay off television: Daily Variety, December 7, 1951.
“I didn’t think it fair”: Lamour, My Side of the Road, 190.
“I haven’t seen this much of Bob”: Kathryn Crosby, My Life with Bing (Collage, 1983), 197.
“Realizing how important it was”: Lamour, My Side of the Road, 198.
Starr had to threaten to sue: Ben Starr, interview with author.
“He still holds Hollywood like King Kong”: Carrie Rickey, interview with author.
“I think it’s Americanism” . . . Many in the audience booed: Undated wire-service story, Time archives.
the FCC at the last minute withheld: Variety, November 25, 1953.
Hope wanted the cards as big as possible: Barney McNulty, video interview, ATAS archives.
“It’s not only a challenge, but it gives Bob”: Variety, October 13, 1952.
“Hope at his old-time radio best”: Variety, November 12, 1952.
“Seldom has the immediacy”: Jack Gould, New York Times, March 23, 1953.
“socko almost all the way”: Variety, March 25, 1953.
“Why didn’t you play this well yesterday?”: Bob Hope, as told to Dwayne Netland, Confessions of a Hooker: My Lifelong Love Affair with Golf (Doubleday, 1987), 75.
didn’t attend a single meeting: Daily Variety, June 11, 1953.
the first monthly installment . . . sold 5.2 million copies: Army Archerd, Daily Variety, February 16, 1954.!
“That breezy Bob Hope”: Hope, Have Tux, v–vi.
“He told me he starts with his feet”: Arlene Dahl, interview with author.
“Bob was doing about twelve other things”: Thompson, Portrait of a Superstar, 107.
“misses as often as it clicks”: Daily Variety, March 1, 1954.
“Aside from a few scattered laughs”: Hollywood Reporter, March 1, 1954.
“only asking for good stories”: Hedda Hopper, Los Angeles Times, October 6, 1954.
“Let them sue me”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 253.
“In television in America”: Time correspondent files, November 1954.
“As an evening’s entertainment”: Daily Variety, December 8, 1954.
“Entertainment will continue to be”: Daily Variety, November 24, 1954.
saying he wanted to take a break: Daily Variety, February 1, 1955.
“It didn’t really affect me for three days”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 255.
“The gang at Lakeside will tell you”: Jack Hellman, Daily Variety, February 14, 1955.
Hope agreed to a new five-year contract: Daily Variety, June 9, 1955.
Mel Shavelson and Jack Rose . . . came to see him: Shavelson describes the scene in How to Succeed in Hollywood, 60.
Cagney took no salary: Ibid., 61.
“I think the way things are going”: Louella Parsons, Los Angeles Examiner, Pictorial Living, June 26, 1955.
“A commanding abandonment of the buffoon”: Daily Variety, May 26, 1955.
“Hope can now hold up his head”: New York Daily News, quoted in Faith, Life in Comedy, 253.
“The family changed in the 1950s”: Malatesta, interview with author.
“She looked at the report cards”: Kelly Hope, interview with author.
“This trashy magazine”: Linda Hope, interview with author.
CHAPTER 9: AMBASSADOR
Bob Hope applied for a visa: Daily Variety, November 15, 1955.
“greatest I’ve ever seen”: Daily Variety, May 7, 1956.
“I’ve seen many a curtain go up”: Daily Variety, November 15, 1955.
didn’t even return his phone calls: Hedda Hopper, Los Angeles Times, December 24, 1954.
drew a protest from the cameramen’s union: Daily Variety, January 7, 1955.
“In an era when even the best”: “Bob Hope and the 7 Year Itch,” Variety, March 6, 1957.
drew protests from both Canadian and British fans: “Canadians Irked by Bob Hope’s Royalty Jokes,” Los Angeles Times, November 17, 1955.!
When Hope looked at the books: Memo from Jimmy Saphier, March 14, 1957, Hope archives.
“I’m a hit but going broke”: “Bob Hope Going for Broke on TV,” Daily Variety, December 27, 1956.
Under the new deal, NBC would pay: Daily Variety, February 6, 1957.
“The land purchase was done directly”: Tom Sarnoff, interview with author.
“Bob was known to hang on to his real estate”: Art Linkletter, interview with author.
“He was very patient”; “Thank God I had grown up”: Eva Marie Saint, interview with author.
“Leave it to Bob Hope”: Variety, June 20, 1956.
“too much the type of entertainment”: “Has Video Staled Screen Quipping?,” Variety, August 1, 1956.
Hope merely suggested a few “hokey thoughts”: Hope and Thomas, Road to Hollywood, 85–86.
“I had been sold a false bill of goods”; “the biggest egomaniac”: A. Scott Berg, Kate Remembered (Berkley, 2004), 232.
“After only two days I realized”: Michael Freedland, Katharine Hepburn (W. H. Allen, 1984), 141.
Hepburn was “a gem”: Hope and Thomas, Road to Hollywood, 86.
“This is to notify you”; “I am most understanding”: “Ex-Partners,” Time, October 15, 1956.
“The notion of these two characters”: Bosley Crowther, New York Times, February 2, 1957.
Filming was scheduled to begin: Hope gives a long account of the Paris Holiday troubles in I Owe Russia $1200 (Doubleday, 1963), 81–107.
“Each time I pack my bags”: Hopper, Los Angeles Times, December 25, 1957.
He had renewed his application: Hope, I Owe Russia, 11–17; and Faith, Life in Comedy, 257–58.
“What does your Mr. Hope want to do”: Hope, I Owe Russia, 13.
“This was to prevent us”: Ibid., 216.
“I still don’t know who went through”: Ibid., 235.
“Can you believe it?”; “Congratulations”: Lachman, interview with author.
“What we are trying to do is to state”: Hope, I Owe Russia, 252.
“I wish there’d been a lot more Russia”: Cecil Smith, Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1958.
“Who would have thought”: Gould, New York Times, April 7, 1958.
Sitting next to Mrs. Khrushchev: Hope describes the encounter in Don’t Shoot, 231–34.
“Guys ask me all the time”: Weekend 7, no. 42 (1957), Hope archives.
Timex . . . dropped him after just one month: Daily Variety, October 21, 1957.!
“It’s getting out there in person”; “I sit in my office”: Pete Martin, “I Call on Bob Hope,” Saturday Evening Post, April 26, 1958.
Hope told Millar (without irony): Faith, Life in Comedy, 272.
“The walls of the room . . . started closing in”: Hope, I Owe Russia, 166.
“Stop lying to me”: Ibid., 186.
“Bob Hope to Fly East”: Beverly Hills Citizen, March 2, 1959.
Several people offered to donate: Get-well letters, Hope archives.
“If I had taken a day off”: Louella Parsons, “Faith, Hope and Charities,” Los Angeles Examiner, Pictorial Living, March 29, 1959.
Hope “seemed depressed”: Vernon Scott, UPI, March 2, 1959.
“He’s quieter now”; “Nobody moved as fast”: Vernon Scott, “Bob Hope—on the Road to Retirement?,” Los Angeles Examiner, May 10, 1959.
“I felt . . . people were always looking past me”: Timothy White, Rolling Stone, March 20, 1980.
Hope chewed out Bill Faith: Faith, Life in Comedy, 274.
“Bob Hope is the champ”: George Rosen, “Familiarity Breeds TV Fame,” Variety, February 10, 1960.
“Don’t you think this is a rather strange way”: Letter from Jimmy Saphier, August 5, 1959, Hope archives.
“It’s a little straight”: Hope and Thomas, Road to Hollywood, 88.
“I don’t want it to be the Road”: Ibid.
“Was I Lucy?”: Ibid., 89.
Hope wanted instead . . . Frank ended up using his own: Thompson, Portrait of a Superstar, 129–30.
“I entertained his father!”: Hope, I Owe Russia, 187.
a deal that Hope publicly complained about: Dan E. Moldea, Dark Victory: Ronald Reagan, MCA and the Mob (Viking, 1986), 142–43.
“Lenny, you’re for educational TV”: San Diego Union, April 6, 1978.
CHAPTER 10: KING
“It was scary”: Janis Paige, interview with author.
“Everybody hated Zsa Zsa”: Andy Williams, interview with author.
“He said, ‘Jan, she’s throwing hysterics’ ”: Paige, interview with author.
“Bob Hope is such a good American”: “Sinatra Suspects Had Earlier Plot,” New York Times, February 28, 1964.
“If there is anybody who has”: Daily Variety, March 6, 1962.
in Seattle, drawing crowds so big: Daily Variety, July 13, 1962.
who would take Hope . . . to Jack Ruby’s nightclub: Tony Zoppi, interview with author.
Hope did the show, unaware that Nichols: Many letters and clippings in the Hope archives chronicle this misconceived event, including a wrap-up by Tony Zoppi in the Dallas Morning News, July 2, 1962.
“Let’s face it, Bob”: Letter from Warren Leslie, July 5, 1962, Hope archives.
“I can’t wait till I get home”: Time correspondent files, June 8, 1962.
“He was just a doll”: Jack Shea, video interview, ATAS archives.
“This is one of the only bills”; “The president was a very gay”; “I feel very humble”: New York Times, September 12, 1963; and Time correspondent files, September 12, 1963.
“Hope is the closest anybody”: George Rosen, “Of Hope (Bob) and Fulfillment,” Variety, April 26, 1961.
“This is all the talent we have, fellas”: Time correspondent files, September 1963.
“When things go wrong”: Ibid.
Hope would call and bark: Mort Lachman, interview with author.
Bob would sometimes squeeze Mort’s arm: Time correspondent files, September 1963.
Lachman was miffed and quit . . . went back to Hope: Lachman’s break and reconciliation chronicled in Daily Variety stories, March 25, April 13 and 15, 1964.
around $350,000 per hour, plus another $50,000: Rosen, Variety, April 26, 1961.
too steep for Buick: Variety, March 22, 1961.
“He’s shallow in the sense”: Time correspondent files, September 1963.
“When he’s not quipping”: Ibid.
no whistling . . . or hats: Liberman, unpublished memoir.
“If it were Danny Thomas”: Time correspondent files, September 1963.
“Bob who?”: Art Schneider, video interview, ATAS archives.
“From now on, don’t argue”: Hal Kanter, interview with author.
“Are you telling these interviewers”: Liberman, unpublished memoir.
“There’s always some guy”: Time correspondent files, September 1963.
“I never put in another expense account”: Sid Smith, interview with author.
When Alberti arrived . . . Hope asked why: Bob Alberti, Up the Ladder and Over the Top (Bob Alberti, 2003), 136.
Even a family member . . . was startled to get a bill: Nathaniel Lande, interview with author.
“We were paying it off”: Dorothy Reilly, interview with author.
“Why did he care?”: Bob Mills, interview with author.
“Thanks a lot, kid”: Janis Paige, interview with author.
“Well, if they settle for anything less”: Time correspondent files, September 1963.
“Emotionally he’s still the vaudevillian”: Ibid.!
“Dad was always of the mind”: Linda Hope, interview with author.
“Even within the family”: Justine Carr, interview with author.
“He was an impersonal guy”: Malatesta, interview with author.
“We sat down for dinner”: John Guare, interview with author.
“You could imagine Theresa”: Ibid.
“It was not a house full of undercurrents”: Ibid.
“They obviously had a lot of money . . . The Hopes were very supportive . . . He was very kind to me”: Tony Coelho, interview with author.
“Your hospital needs a new wing?”: Dwight Whitney, “Bob Hope,” TV Guide, January 16, 1965.
“It was something that obviously called out”: Linda Hope, interview with author.
“Bob admitted to me that the great love”: Liberman, unpublished memoir.
Frankland died of a drug overdose: “Britain’s First Miss World Killed by Drug Overdose,” London Telegraph, December 18, 2000.
“Bob Hope lives in his own world”: Dana M. Reemes, Directed by Jack Arnold (McFarland, 2012), 152.
Hope proposed a gala premiere: Memos from Arthur Jacobs, January 1959, AMPAS archives.
“I explained to Bob that the magazines”: Ibid.
“The film industry needs a positive approach”: Variety, May 9, 1962.
“It’ll be Southern California’s answer”: Peter Bart, “Bob Hope to Build Own Disneyland,” New York Times, July 31, 1965.
The Bob Hope Desert Classic had its origins: The tournament’s history is recounted by Larry Bohannan in 50 Years of Hope (Pediment Publishing).
The mammoth field included: Bill Shirley, “Pros to Tee Off at Desert Today,” Los Angeles Times, January 22, 1965.
“He never came to a board meeting”: Ernie Dunlevie, interview with author.
“without doubt one of the best”: Eddie Gannon, interview with author.
“He could hit the ball farther”: Lachman, interview with author.
“He would do a benefit”: Linda Hope, interview with author.
“He was a fair golfer”: Arnold Palmer, interview with author.
“Palmer got the blue-collar guys”: Dunlevie, interview with author.
once on a course that filled the inside: Hope, Confessions of a Hooker, 8.
CHAPTER 11: PATRIOT
the Air Force limited Hope’s troupe: Variety, December 20, 1961.
“Hope did a valid service”: Dorothy Reilly, interview with author.
a marine who claimed he had “hitchhiked”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 284.
“Christmas without Bob Hope”: Variety, December 11, 1963.!
“one of the roughest we’ve ever had”: “Dick, Please Be Good, So I Can Bow,” TV Guide, April 11, 1964.
“Bob Hope is so established”: Jack Gould, New York Times, January 18, 1964.
“greater than that normally used”: UPI dispatch, New York Times, December 25, 1964.
for every five thousand men: Faith, Life in Comedy, 298.
they found a chaotic scene: The Brinks bombing was widely reported at the time. More complete accounts of it are in Bob Hope, Five Women I Love: Bob Hope’s Vietnam Story (Avon, 1966), 111–21; and Faith, Life in Comedy, 299–300.
“We had no electricity”: Mort Lachman papers, Writers Guild of America archives.
“tiny room, with one Coke bottle”: Janis Paige, interview with author.
“We supposedly had thirty thousand men”; “I started complaining”; “He was definitely not a hawk”: Jill St. John, interview with author.
“Shortly after the explosion”: AP, March 17, 1967.
The cue-card stand had collapsed: McNulty gives his version of the widely repeated story in a video interview, ATAS archives.
an “altogether asinine”: Howard Thompson, New York Times, August 12, 1965.
“Hello, Yankee dogs!”: Bob Thomas, AP, July 21, 1965.
It was a rough trip from the start: The 1965 Vietnam tour is recounted at length in Hope, Five Women; as well as in Faith, Life in Comedy, 306–8; and Lachman’s papers, Writers Guild archives.
“In case of an attack”: Jack Jones, interview with author.
“Tension became almost unbearable”: Hope, Five Women, 169.
“It was one of the most emotional”: Jones, interview with author.
“He was a happy, positive force”: Ibid.
Bing Crosby sent him a letter: AP, Los Angeles Times, December 31, 1965.
Jack Shea . . . reluctantly told Hope: Jack Shea, video interview, ATAS archives.
“On January first I would take a thirty-day leave”: Art Schneider, video interview, ATAS archives.
“Because of his continued and patriotic”: Congressional Record, January 27, 1966.
“frequent visitor to Vietnam”; “Camp Runamuck”; “It’s on the paper”: Variety, April 6, 1966.
He taped a half-hour TV program: Variety, February 16, 1966.
“Can you imagine returning”: Bob Hope, “An Open Letter About Our GI’s,” Family Weekly, June 12, 1966.
“One group is fighting”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 311.
“People seem to forget”: Peter Bart, “Cold War Alters a Hollywood Law,” New York Times, August 5, 1965.!
“They call you a comedian”: Jack Warner, letter to Hope, December 26, 1963, Hope archives.
More than 62 percent said yes: Faith, Life in Comedy, 312–13.
“a couple of the Washington boys”: Ibid., 312.
only 60 percent of the seats . . . at the Yale Bowl: Variety, July 27, 1966.
some stars turned him down: Tom Buckley, “Hope Says Some Performers Refused Vietnam Trip,” New York Times, December 22, 1966.
The new Miss World . . . nearly backed out: AP, “India’s Miss World Reconsiders Plan for Trip to South Vietnam,” New York Times, November 28, 1966.
“He played the straight man”: Phyllis Diller, interview with author.
Hope just missed . . . Lynda Bird Johnson: Bob Hope, as told to Pete Martin, The Last Christmas Show (Doubleday, 1974), 209.
give him small parts . . . and sent regular “royalty” checks: Robert Colonna, Greetings, Gate!, 217; and interview with author.
“She was charming and lovely”: Lachman papers, Writers Guild archives.
“The last thing those guys needed”: Sally and Ivor Davis, “Always Another Show to Play,” Chicago Tribune, April 2, 1978.
In Bangkok, Hope and his troupe: Accounts of the 1966 tour in Hope, Last Christmas Show, 209–27; and Lachman’s papers, Writers Guild archives.
“We saw the show site”: Lachman papers, Writers Guild archives.
“This is what has to win it”: Hope, Last Christmas Show, 223.
“Bob and Westy would sit up talking”: Lukas, “This Is Bob (Politician-Patriot-Publicist) Hope,” New York Times Magazine, October 4, 1970.
“Everybody I talked to there”: Hal Humphrey, Los Angeles Times, January 18, 1967.
“I’d rather be a hawk”: UPI, New York Times, December 31, 1966.
“When you get guys like Eisenhower”: Bob Hope interview, Playboy, December 1973.
“He was very supportive”: Coelho, interview with author.
“If Kennedy had lived”: John Johns, interview with Hope, California magazine, March 1977.
“It was difficult for him”: Linda Hope, interview with author.
Her father gave the blessing: Account of the wedding from Judith Richards Hope, interview with author.
“When you come onstage”: Raquel Welch, interview with author.
“He never got ruffled”; “I was over there to entertain”: Ibid.
“the land of rising commitment”: Hope, Last Christmas Show, 243.
“embarrassing”; “ungracious”: Gould, “Will Emmy Do Better Than Oscar and Tony?,” New York Times, April 28, 1968.
“It was difficult to be funny”: “Forty Is a Dangerous Age,” Time, April 19, 1968.
“I went with Bob because”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 318.!
“What a boon he is”: Variety, January 17, 1969.
“I wanted to get married under a tree”: Nathaniel Lande, interview with author.
“Texas wouldn’t rent us the Astrodome”; “Linda, Linda”: Army Archerd, Daily Variety, January 13, 1969.
“You’ll make a Republican”: Lande, interview with author.
CHAPTER 12: PARTISAN
“See what one dinner”: Lukas, “This Is Bob,” New York Times Magazine.
“The humorous ‘one-liners’ ”: Letter from Agnew, December 31, 1968, Hope archives.
“We hated writing for a repressive”: Lukas, “This Is Bob.”
“He took natural advantage”: Dwight Chapin, interview with author.
“Where There’s Death”: A letter to Hope from a University of Michigan student apologizing for the leaflets, Hope archives.
“Hell, I’m for peace”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 332.
“It’s those small minorities”: Ibid., 329.
“rigged clips”: Daily Variety, November 13, 1969.
“I have no doubt that Hope”: Daily Variety, November 14, 1969.
One of the Golddiggers . . . unfurled: Connie Stevens, interview with author—though Faith, describing what was apparently the same incident in Life in Comedy (333), attributed the disruption to one of the Golddiggers trying to get Nixon’s autograph.
Hope . . . was so late getting there: Faith, Life in Comedy, 334.
President Nixon . . . threatened to fire: H. R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House (Putnam, 1994), 111.
described it as only a “smattering”: Faith’s account of the incident is in Life in Comedy, 335.
“After about fifteen minutes”: Timothy White, Rolling Stone, March 20, 1980.
“I happened to be walking”: Connie Stevens, interview with author.
“They were severely wounded”: Ibid.
“A few kids, about five”: Barthel, “Bob Hope: The Road Gets Rougher,” Life.
“the coldest, most unresponsive”; “It had been a wipeout day”: Hope, Last Christmas Show, 290.
“Our response . . . came out of fear and loneliness”: White, Rolling Stone, March 20, 1980.
showed a loss of $274,000: J. L. Kubin, secretary for Hope Enterprises, relates these figures in a memo to NBC’s Tom Sarnoff, Hope archives.
For the 1969–70 season, his average rating soared: Variety, April 29, 1970.
“one of those curiously lackadaisical”: William Tusher, Hollywood Reporter, March 20, 1970.!
“everyone has hurriedly gotten together”: John Mahoney, Hollywood Reporter, April 13, 1970.
“They are so prejudiced”: Letter from Jimmy Saphier, April 15, 1970, Hope archives.
“This kind of bitchy, ill-tempered”: Letter from Charles Lee, Hope archives.
“This is one day we’re not trying”: Carol H. Falk, “Comic Bob Hope Calls His Rally Nonpartisan, but Some Are Dubious,” Wall Street Journal, July 3, 1970.
“designed to show a phony national consensus”: “Rennie Davis Scores Honor America Day,” New York Times, June 25, 1970.
Demonstrators . . . started early: John Herbers, “Thousands Voice Faith in America at Capital Rally,” New York Times, July 5, 1970.
Hope was driven: Faith, Life in Comedy, 345.
When it was over, demonstrators broke through: Faith, Life in Comedy, 346.
JOHN WAYNE IS A RACIST: Wiley and Bona, Inside Oscar, 437.
Shirley MacLaine yelled: “Mocking the Mockery,” Time, April 20, 1970.
old-timers such as Bob Hope were “unacceptable”: Variety, September 2, 1970.
“I have seen Bob Hope”: Colonel Edward M. Kirby, Variety, September 9, 1970.
“He just doesn’t understand”: Lukas, “This Is Bob.”
He talked to his attorney: Faith, Life in Comedy, 350.
“I just hated to get involved”: Leroy F. Aarons, “Bob Hope: A Gadfly to Hawk,” Washington Post, August 18, 1970.
“It’s not American students”: Timeri Murari, “The Great White Hope,” Guardian, November 21, 1970.
Hope . . . learned of the show in advance: Faith has a long account of Hope’s This Is Your Life segment in Life in Comedy, 351–68.
he was interrupted by a handful of women’s liberation activists: Accounts of the incident by Nicholas de Jongh, “Beauty O’ershadowed by the Women’s Lib,” Guardian, November 21, 1970; and Faith, Life in Comedy, 366–67.
“the worst theatrical experience”: Christopher Walker, “Miss World Was Not Amused,” Observer, November 22, 1970.
“You’ll notice about the women”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 367.
“I didn’t talk to the military brass”: Bob Thomas, AP, January 14, 1971.
“Hope is not only an entertainer”: Jack Gould, New York Times, January 31, 1971.
“I thought your closing remarks”: Letter from Richard Nixon, January 20, 1971, Hope archives.
“The growing unpopularity of the war”: Variety, January 20, 1971.
“out of touch with today’s soldier”: Variety, February 17, 1971.
not invited to . . . the Ohio State Fair: Variety, July 7, 1971.
“uncritical endorsement of the . . . Indochina war”: Grace Lichtenstein, “Church Council Bars Award to Bob Hope,” New York Times, March 18, 1971.!
“I couldn’t say anything against”: AP, March 19, 1971.
called the Vietnam War “a beautiful thing”: Barthel, “The Road Gets Rougher.”
claimed he had been misquoted: Kenneth J. Fanucchi, “Bob Hope Denies He Called War in Vietnam ‘Beautiful,’ ” Los Angeles Times, March 17, 1971.
Her tape recorder had actually run out: Joan Barthel, interview with author.
“Do you have a lunch date tomorrow?”: Barthel, “The Road Gets Rougher.”
“I learned it was better not to engage”: Lande, interview with author.
“That was the only time”: McCullagh, interview with author.
“If the people of Vietnam want”: Transcript of appearance at Southern Methodist University, January 29, 1971, Hope archives.
Shavelson told Hope they should drop: Davis, Chicago Tribune, April 2, 1978.
“Money insulates you”: Ibid.
“His attitude was we could finish it”: Ibid.
“Anyone . . . who dares to take a stand”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 371.
“He knew we were going to win”: Daily Variety, September 29, 1971.
“I thank you . . . for bringing a little happiness”: Letter from Linda Faulkner, January 1, 1970, Hope archives.
“The servicemen over there believe”: Hope form reply, Hope archives.
“These men must be completely desperate”: Letter from Mrs. James Stockdale, February 17, 1969, Hope archives.
The next day an Air Force plane: Accounts of the POW meeting in Hope, Last Christmas Show, 326–29; and Faith, Life in Comedy, 374–77.
“I’d known all along”: Hope, Last Christmas Show, 331–32.
“I know one thing”: Hope letter to Jimmy Saphier, March 3, 1972.
“It was . . . an awkward phone call”: Memo from Dwight Chapin to H. R. Haldeman, September 30, 1971, Richard Nixon Presidential Library.
“Sit down”: White House tapes, conversation 714–22, April 20, 1972, Nixon Library.
“You’re the war hero”: Ibid.
“Your friendship and support”: Letter from Nixon to Hope, October 26, 1972, Nixon Library.
By mid-1972 the USO had only three: Variety, April 26, 1972.
At least fifteen aircraft . . . were lost: Hope, Last Christmas Show, 344.
an uncharacteristic diplomatic lapse: Jack Foise, “Hope Forced to Explain His Jokes to Ruffled Thais,” Los Angeles Times, December 25, 1972.
“Back in the States, a negative press”: Ray Siller, e-mail to author.
Siller had to gin up a monologue: Ray Siller, interview with author.
Hope called . . . to wish Nixon a happy sixtieth birthday: White House tapes, conversation 35-108, January 9, 1973.
“You must be beaming all over!” White House tapes, conversation 43-109, February 15, 1973.
“What you did is something else”: White House tapes, conversation 872-19, March 8, 1973.
another film with Gleason: Daily Variety, June 17, 1969.
a comedy by writer-director David Swift: Variety, January 20, 1971.
Marx and Fisher protested: Marx, Secret Life of Bob Hope, 416–18.
The two were at odds; “We argued about everything”: Paul Bogart, interview with author.
“You are fucking impossible!”: Ibid.
just six hundred . . . seats were filled: Variety, October 18, 1972.
“you and Bing would simply overpower”: Letter from Neil Simon, January 24, 1973, Hope archives.
Art Linkletter . . . was impressed: Linkletter, interview with author.
First, Hope was late: The account of Hope’s troubles at the inauguration comes from Maxine Cheshire, “Backstage, Offstage, Onstage,” Washington Post, January 22, 1973; and a member of Hope’s entourage.
At a Weight Watchers rally . . . he was booed: Variety, July 18, 1973.
“I wish they’d flush the whole thing”: Variety, June 20, 1973.
“I think dragging this thing”: Interview in Playboy, December 1973.
“If the other guy got a laugh”: Jonathan Winters, interview with author.
“He was usually at dinner”: Avis Truska, interview with author.
Every fire truck and volunteer firefighter: “Showplace Home of Bob Hope Destroyed in Palm Springs Fire,” Los Angeles Times, July 25, 1973.
Construction was put on hold . . . recovered $430,000 in damages: Peter Aleshire, “But I Wanna Tell Ya About This House,” New West, September 11, 1978.
“Eddie Cantor haircut”: Don Marando, interview with author.
“Watching him throw on that pancake”: Ibid.
only if he got paid more than any other performer: Elliott Kozak, interview with author.
Rosemary Clooney . . . challenged the woman’s story: Anecdote related by Michael Feinstein, interview with author.
“The next time you talk to Bob”: Lande, interview with author.
“It was his way of saying”: Ben Starr, interview with author.
Waiting for him there: Marando, interview with author.
“I now know why you were captain”: Typewritten draft for telegram, March 15, 1974, Hope archives.!
“I would like the President to know”: Hope letter to Rose Mary Woods, May 31, 1974, Hope archives.
“It was so sad for that poor bastard”: Tom Donnelly, “Bob Hope: I’ve Enjoyed All of It,” Washington Post, February 14, 1975.
“I told him The Towering Inferno”: “Hope, Wayne Talk Politics,” UCLA Daily Bruin, April 14, 1975.
“I just think that Nixon got himself”: Johns, California, March 1977.
“Of all the Presidents”: Bob Hope, Dear Prez, I Wanna Tell Ya! (Hope Enterprises, 1996), 99.
The statement caused a stir; “Don’t you dare!”: Accounts of the Schneider brouhaha in Wiley and Bona, Inside Oscar, 504–7; and Daily Variety, April 10, 1975.
a “cheap, cheap shot”; “the Academy’s authorized representative”: Ibid.
“So he was screwed up”: Shirley MacLaine, interview with author.
“He was stingy to the end”: The eulogy is contained in Lachman’s papers in the Writers Guild archives, strongly implying that he wrote it.
she had to pester her former boss: Letters from Hughes to Hope, November 1974, Hope archives.
Texaco . . . agreed to pay $3.15 million: Faith, Life in Comedy, 392.
“It had to be done”: Ibid., 393.
“Bob caved in”: Kozak, interview with author.
“He was very sad”: Lachman, video interview, ATAS archives.
“I was shocked, disappointed and dismayed”: Letter from Felix De Cola, Los Angeles Times, July 15, 1976.
“much harder than writing”: Letters to the editor, Los Angeles Times, July 24, 1976.
“the Queen and Prince Philip enjoyed”; “to have such a great man as Bob Hope”: Ibid.
“The problem with Dad”: Linda Hope, interview with author.
“I was in England writing a show”: Lande, interview with author.
She was paid . . . only $600: White, Rolling Stone, March 20, 1980.
“My God, Kanter”: Hal Kanter, interview with author.
The production was beset with problems: Barney Rosenzweig, interview with author.
“He felt he failed”: Ibid.
“Bob and Dolores thought everyone”: Judith Richards Hope, interview with author.
“Bob called Tony a lot”: Ibid.
“It looks like you’ve been writing for me”: Gene Perret, interview with author.
“I’ve got six more weeks”: Bob Mills, interview with author.
“He liked people who worked fast”: Perret, interview with author.!
the audience was actually a group of chiropractors: Gene Perret and Martha Bolton, Talk About Hope (Jester Press, 1998), 26.
“How much time do you have?”: Mills, interview with author.
“I pay you with new money”: Perret and Bolton, Talk About Hope, 15.
“The other guys will be hot”: Perret, interview with author.
Hope said he was going to play golf: Robert L. Mills, The Laugh Makers: A Behind-the-Scenes Tribute to Bob Hope’s Incredible Gag Writers (Robert L. Mills, 2009), 16.
“Milton Berle liked to retake jokes”: Sid Smith, interview with author.
“She thinks I just got into this business”: Howard Albrecht, interview with author.
“What the fuck!” cried Hope: Dennis Klein, interview with author.
“It’s unlikely that I’ll be able”: Bing Crosby, letter to Hope, May 3, 1977, Hope archives.
“He had tears in his eyes”: Linda Hope, interview with author.
“The whole world loved Bing Crosby”: Daily Variety, October 17, 1977.
but not Dorothy Lamour: Lamour, My Side of the Road, 222.
Hope was unhappy that he had to use a teleprompter: Kaplan, New Times, August 7, 1978.
“So many guys can’t do that”: Marty Pasetta, interview with author.
“I can’t . . . tell the whole world I’m seventy-five”: Kozak, interview with author.
“It’s taken over a year”: Tom Shales, “Bob Hope Breakthrough,” Washington Post, May 24, 1978.
“I’m pretty sure I’m seventy-five”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 403.
“Can’t we change it to eleven?”: Ibid.
“that peculiarly square and predictable style”: Variety, May 31, 1978.
“Are you still working for me?”: Liberman, unpublished memoir.
“When he pays you a salary”: Kozak, interview with author.
“Oh, you don’t have time for me anymore?”: Ibid.
“he’s gotta come up with the fifty thousand”: Ibid.
“You don’t trust me”: Ibid.
Nixon put in a call: White House tapes, March 8, 1973, Nixon Library.
Hope called choreographer George Balanchine: James Lipton, Inside Inside (New American Library, 2008), 216–17.
When he and his entourage got off the plane: Accounts of the China trip in Lipton, Inside Inside; Mills, Laugh Makers; and interviews with Linda Hope and Marcia Lewis Smith.
“The Chinese were very, very difficult”: Marcia Lewis Smith, interview with author.
Linda Hope . . . had the cameras record all of it: Linda Hope, interview with author.!
“Dad was really aggravated”: Ibid.
An aide to President Carter worked with Tony Hope: Judith Richards Hope, interview with author.
“When my mother took me to see”: Film tribute to Hope, Film Society of Lincoln Center archives.
“Oh, go on, highbrows”: Kaplan, New Times, August 7, 1978.
“Age cannot wither”: Tom Dowling, Washington Star, May 26, 1978.
Fortune magazine put him on its list: Arthur M. Louis, “America’s Centimillionaires,” Fortune, May 1968.
“Mrs. Hope was kind of a frustrated architect”: Nancy Gordon Zaslove, interview with author.
“I love that little house”: Andy Williams, interview with author.
CHAPTER 14: LEGEND
“Bob Hope would go to the opening”: Quoted in Joan Collins, Second Act (St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 112.
“Hell, if I did”: Al Martinez, “Comedy in Motion,” TV Guide, October 25, 1980.
stewed fruit, decaffeinated coffee, and a B-complex multivitamin: Jolie Edmonson, “Where There’s Hope, There’s Life,” Saturday Evening Post, October 1981.
“Procrastination is the number one cause”: Ibid.
Hope made 174 personal appearances: Faith, Life in Comedy, 415.
“The thing that impressed me”: Rick Ludwin, interview with author.
“We had so many problems”: Fred Silverman, interview with author.
“I know that Nancy”: Letter from Bob Hope, October 22, 1981, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
“Please don’t concern yourself”: Reagan reply, October 27, 1981, Reagan Library.
“Do you want us to stick to policy on this?”: Memo from Dodie Livingston to Mike Deaver, April 10, 1981, Reagan Library.
“Randy, don’t overdo”; “Keep it short”: Various memos, Reagan Library.
“The thing I remember . . . is that he’d show up”: Stu Spencer, interview with author.
“I always felt your career”: Ann Jillian, interview with author.
“He was bigger than life”: Cathy Lee Crosby, interview with author.
Hope got embroiled: Guardian, December 20 and 21, 1983.
“When you’re bringing stars over”: Ibid.
“He was very demanding”: Linda Hope, interview with author.!
he asked if the dedication ceremony . . . was disappointed to find out that the building: Faith, Life in Comedy, 416–17.
Hope’s staff worked diligently: Ibid., 418.
Forbes magazine put him on its list: “The Forbes Four Hundred,” Forbes, September 13, 1982.
“I’ll kiss your ass”: Richard Behar, “How Rich Is Bob Hope?,” Forbes, October 1, 1984.
“When we’re proved wrong”: “On Trusting Bob Hope,” editors’ note, Forbes, October 1, 1984.
It was the first Cavett had heard of it: Dick Cavett, interview with author.
His writers drove around the neighborhood: Mills, interview with author.
“He supported the workingman”: Tom Dreesen, interview with author.
“Gene, that’s all of us”: Perret, interview with author.
“I’d come over to his house”: Brooke Shields, interview with author.
“Take the tape”: Dave Thomas, interview with author.
“Dave Thomas had a better handle”: Casey Keller, interview with author.
“I knew why they were doing it”: James Lipton, interview with author.
“It’s fake wood”: Mills, interview with author.
“The Statue of Liberty has AIDS”: Quirk, Road Well-Traveled, 305.
“Johnny admired Hope’s place”: Peter Lassally, interview with author.
“We’d get a request”: Ibid.
“We’d say, give us two minutes”: Jeff Sotzing, interview with author.
Hope asked during a commercial break: Anecdote related by Bob Dolan Smith, e-mail to author.
“There was nothing spontaneous”: Andrew Nicholls, interview with author.
Tartikoff even suggested that Hope try: Memo from Rick Ludwin, July 26, 1983, Hope archives.
“There might have been a time”: Margy Rochlin, “Funny Man,” Los Angeles Times Magazine, February 1, 1987.
“permitting his team of writers”: Variety, April 19, 1989.
“The whole show would cost him”: Kozak, interview with author.
“He just takes the check”: Ibid.
In the mid-1970s, the town of Hope: Memo from Frank Liberman, Hope archives.
“I live for the press”: Philip Shenon, “A Curtain Falls on Bob Hope’s Show,” New York Times, December 26, 1990.
“He was stronger than most”: Perret, interview with author.
Alberti had to kneel: Alberti, Up the Ladder, 135.
“Great job”; “Aw, come on”: Lipton, interview with author.
“Starting in the late eighties, it was affecting”: Ludwin, interview with author.!
“He got really mad”: Shields, interview with author.
“If I ever end up like that”: Andrew Nicholls and Darrel Vickers, interview with author.
The fading star was shunted; “We’ll do it later”: Perret, interview with author.
But what set off a firestorm: The dispute is chronicled in numerous Los Angeles Times articles in 1990 and 1991, as well as Tom Johnson, “Bob Hope’s Last Road Show,” Los Angeles magazine, November 1990.
“No one has a larger ownership”: Alan Citron, “Park Advocates Pressure Bob Hope for Land Gift,” Los Angeles Times, March 7, 1990.
HONK IF YOU THINK BOB HOPE: Johnson, “Hope’s Last Road Show.”
“Hope doesn’t owe anyone”: Stephen Padgett, letter to the editor, Los Angeles Times, March 16, 1990.
“I didn’t hold it for twenty-five years”: Johnson, “Hope’s Last Road Show.”
“Bob Hope is making a special gift”: “Hope Signs Deal to Turn His Acreage into Parkland,” Los Angeles Times, November 8, 1991.
“The knocks he’s taken”: Ron Russell, “Of Faith, Hope and a Little Charity Parks,” Los Angeles Times, November 14, 1991.
“just a lot of old stuff”: Santa Monica Daily Breeze, October 24, 1993.
“Her dream was to marry a shoe salesman”: Linda Hope, interview with author.
“I don’t think it really deeply affected him”: Ibid.
Johnny Carson agreed . . . on the assurance: Don Mischer, interview with author.
“I don’t know if I can do this”: Ibid.
“Bob Hope could have done”: Bill Zehme, “Heeeeeerrrre’s Dave,” Rolling Stone, February 18, 1993.
“I said, ‘Dad, you don’t want to keep on’ ”: Linda Hope, interview with author.
“I’m not doing that!”: Anecdote related by Dave Thomas, interview with author.
Hope puttered around; “Dammit,” Hope grumbled: Andrew Coffey, interview with author.
“I practically fell out of my chair”: Bill Clinton, interview with author.
“He could see the ball below his feet”: Ibid.
“Brandon Tartikoff regarded Bob Hope”: Ludwin, interview with author.
“We’re doing this one”: Related by Michael Thompson, the Hopes’ estate manager at the time, interview with author.
“devote our energies toward specials”: Los Angeles Times, November 30, 1995.
“There came a point where all the parties”: Ludwin, interview with author.
“I’ve decided to become a FREE AGENT”: Ad in Variety et al., October 23, 1996.
“It was sort of a mutual thing”: Linda Hope, interview with author.
“This TV entry?”: Daily Variety, November 20, 1996.
“Backstage he was not in good shape”: Feinstein, interview with author.!
“Her timbre was clear”: Stephen Holden, New York Times, May 23, 1997.
“Mrs. Hope joined Bob”: Bill Tush, e-mail to author.
Paulin would let him take the wheel: J. Paulin, interview with author.
AP actually reported his death by mistake: Bob Pool, “Yes, America, There Is Still Hope,” Los Angeles Times, June 6, 1998.
“He was in very critical condition”: Paulin, interview with author.
“His eyes light up”: Army Archerd, Daily Variety, May 28, 2003.
“I couldn’t be here in spirit”: Patricia Ward Biederman, “Friends Recall Hope with Tears, Laughter,” Los Angeles Times, August 28, 2003.
The New York Times’ obituary: Vincent Canby, “Bob Hope, Comedic Master and Entertainer of Troops, Dies at 100,” New York Times, July 28, 2003.
Time magazine gave the comedian: Richard Schickel, “Bob Hope: The Machine-Age Comic,” Time, August 11, 2003.
one unit of six hundred men . . . marched the ten miles: Time correspondent files, August 1943.
“Never make ’em think”: Kaplan, New Times, August 7, 1978.