THE MISS WORLD TITLE came with a diamond-studded tiara, a cash prize of five thousand pounds and a contract providing a range of opportunities and obligations throughout the year of my term. I would be based in London and Mecca would arrange appearances for me around the world, covering my expenses, and sharing the fees paid by my hosts. My first duty was the Bob Hope Christmas tour.
There was more to Bob Hope than he showed that night at the Miss World pageant. He had begun entertaining troops after the United States entered the Second World War in 1941 and continued through the Korean War, right through to Vietnam. He had a soft spot for the soldiers: “I looked at them, they laughed at me and it was love at first sight.”
US military bases in Vietnam were among our destinations in 1970. Also on the tour were the official Christmas Tour band; the talented Les Brown and His Band of Renown; the Swiss actress Ursula Andress, who had starred in the first James Bond movie, Dr. No, in 1962; Johnny Bench, the all-star catcher of baseball’s Cincinnati Reds; The Dingaling Sisters and the Golddiggers, two song-and-dance troupes known for their work on The Dean Martin Show; the Broadway dancer Lola Falana; and the popular singers Gloria Loring and Bobbi Martin.
It was, I confess, daunting to contemplate travelling and performing alongside such talent and experience. Here I was, Jennifer Hosten from Grenada, without either acting or singing experience, about to embark on a tour hosted by the legendary Bob Hope, one of the most famous names in the history of show business. I would be performing duets and gag routines with this extraordinary human being. I would have to learn to deliver my lines professionally enough to complement Bob’s precise comedic timing. And I would have to do this before thousands of American troops. I thanked my stars for broadcasting experience. It would serve me well throughout the year.
Back at the Britannia Hotel on the morning of December 12, having packed several suitcases in preparation for my departure from the US Air Force (USAF) Base in Lakenheath, Suffolk, I heard my telephone ring. It was the bell captain calling to inform me that my transport had arrived. My transportation turned out to be a beautiful white Rolls Royce limousine. As the last of my baggage was loaded into the Rolls, the smartly uniformed chauffeur held the back door open. I climbed in and settled into the soft leather seat. A nice way to start.
I would be spending three days and nights on the Lakenheath base at the special hotel run by the USAF, and used specifically to accommodate visiting personnel and their families. I was greeted there by smart, uniformed airmen, who saluted as I alighted from the car and escorted me into the hotel. As I entered, my eyes caught sight of an enormous and beautiful bouquet of flowers on a table near the window. There was a card attached that filled me with warmth:
Dear Jennifer,
Welcome to the Bob Hope Christmas tour. I hope you might be able to join me for dinner this evening. I’m looking forward to introducing you to the others. We’ll be meeting at the bar before dinner at 6 p.m.
Best wishes,
Bob
During the three days at Lakenheath, I met with Bob Hope and the entire Christmas celebrity entourage. We spent long hours going over routines, learning lines and generally getting to know one another. It was great fun. They were all informal and good company. There were no personality clashes, and I also managed to learn my routines, much to my relief.
One of my most vivid memories from Lakenheath was a press photo session, in which I was required to pose with Ursula Andress. I had seen her in films and had imagined her to be reasonably tall. I suppose all movie stars seem larger than life in their work. In fact, she was short and petite. So much so that before she allowed any shots to be taken next to me, she insisted on standing on a box. I liked Ursula, and we got along very well during the tour.
The Bob Hope Christmas tour began in Frankfurt. From there, we flew to Athens for another performance, and then to Crete, where we all boarded a large troop helicopter and headed out into the Aegean Sea, landing on the deck of an incredibly huge ship, the navy aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy. Home to more than three thousand officers and men, it was the length of three football fields and stood almost twenty stories high. I was given my own cabin, and I found all the personnel on board accommodating and friendly. They seemed to genuinely appreciate our presence, and their reception of our show was great. In fact, we were wonderfully received everywhere we travelled.
A couple of days later, we were on our way to Bangkok. This was the start of the most adventurous and perhaps dangerous part of the tour. From Bangkok, we flew to a different base in Vietnam each morning, gave our performance and returned in the evening. It was an unusual experience, and precautions were required. Hope’s schedule was never announced in advance. There had been a close call for the tour in Saigon in 1964, when a car bomb flattened the Brinks Hotel right next to where Hope was quartered. “A funny thing happened to me when I was driving through downtown Saigon to my hotel last night,” he said. “We met a hotel going the other way.”
Everywhere we went, it was evident that the men and women on these bases were having a severe and difficult time being there and doing their jobs. It added a weight to each performance, but the troops seemed genuinely to enjoy the show and to appreciate Bob Hope’s efforts. The circumstances made us all perform with a little more passion and energy.
I would be introduced at each performance and walk onstage in my famous gold gown, waving and blowing kisses to tens of thousands of soldiers, many of them younger than I. Bob and I would then engage in some light banter.
“Well, Jennifer,” he would ask, “what do you think of this reception?”
“It’s wonderful, but why are they whistling?”
“They’re not whistling—that’s steam escaping. They just came to a boil.”
He was generous enough to give me the punchline once in a while. “By the way,” he would say, “it was quite a wild night in London when you were crowned Miss World.”
“Yes, that angry women’s lib group screaming, throwing things, charging up onto the stage. I thought they were going to crown you.”
We would also sing a duet at each performance in Vietnam, the old Irving Berlin number from the musical Annie Get Your Gun:
“Anything you can do, I can do better. I can do anything better than you.”
“No, you can’t!”
“Yes, I can!”
“No, you can’t!”
And so on. It was fun to do.
Something unexpected happened in our very first performance in Vietnam. Bob was onstage, doing one of his routines when he introduced me quite suddenly: “I want you to meet the new Miss World 1970, folks. Her name is Jennifer Hosten, and she comes from a very tiny island in the West Indies called Grenada. Has anybody here ever visited this beautiful little island in paradise?”
There was a short pause, and then, suddenly, this little voice piped up somewhere near the back of an audience of seventy thousand: “I’m from Grenada too!”
Scanning the enormous human mass beneath me, I was barely able to make out a solitary dot, frantically waving an arm to attract attention. It filled my heart to see this distant figure, and Bob must have known how I felt because he immediately invited the soldier to meet us backstage after the show.
It was one thing for this man to be invited backstage but quite another for him to find his way there. At the end of the show, he proceeded to climb over seats, row after row, trying to get nearer the stage and ultimately to the backstage area. All he could hear as he climbed his way forward was “Hey, where do you think you’re going!” and “You can’t go there.” He refused to stop and did make it backstage, where he asked to see Jennifer Hosten and was told, “You can’t see her. She can’t be disturbed.”
Still refusing to give up, this soldier finally found a captain to whom he explained that Miss World was from the same tiny island that he called home and that he was an acquaintance and Bob Hope had invited him backstage. “Please help me get a message to her.” The captain believed him and relayed the message.
His name was Bill Marryshow, and he went by the curious nickname Smico Bill. He and my brother Robin had been school friends and occasional enemies during their time together at Grenada Boys Secondary School. I remembered one particular fight in which Smico’s shirt had torn. He had turned up at my home in Church Street to ask my father to replace the shirt. Smico Bill was quite thrilled, as I was, to meet so far from home. He told me that he had lived for several years in the United States and had been in Vietnam since the start of the war, working as a helicopter mechanic. He was very much looking forward to returning to family and friends in Grenada sometime in the near future.
Bob Hope met and spoke with Smico, and I introduced him to all of the entertainers. He was particularly happy to meet Lola Falana, the singer and dancer, who gave him her autograph. Smico was then invited to a little party after the show where he dined with us all. Meeting Smico in Vietnam was a miracle neither of us would ever forget. Years later, we spontaneously reunited and spoke of how it was a moment of real pride to both of us to find one another so far from home.
One day during our tour, it was suggested that I might like to visit a military hospital in Vietnam. I readily agreed, hoping that such a visit would serve as a morale booster for some of the sick and injured troops. The hospital facilities were basic, at best, with row upon row of beds under large tents. Many of the patients I visited had been badly injured. Some were missing limbs that had been destroyed by land mines. Others had suffered second- and third-degree burns or deep shrapnel wounds. It was a sad and depressing, to say the least, but I was glad to think I could offer them some cheer.
At one point, I proceeded without formality from one sick bay to another and was gently but firmly apprehended by an officer before reaching the entrance to the tent.
“You can’t go there, Miss. There are no American servicemen in there.”
I looked at the officer curiously. “Oh? Are they prisoners of war?”
“No. It’s a sick bay for the Vietnamese.”
“Vietnamese? You mean South Vietnamese allies?”
He nodded awkwardly, yes.
“Then why can I not visit with them? They are fighting for the same cause, surely.”
“Yes, Miss, that’s true. But you’re here to entertain US military personnel and not Vietnamese. I’m sorry, but I can’t allow you to enter that bay.”
I stared at him in absolute disbelief. Not wanting to cause a conflict—I could see it would get me nowhere—I turned abruptly and headed back to the main camp without a word. What an appalling situation it was that these sick and maimed people, directly involved in combat and wounded as a result of fighting alongside American soldiers in a ghastly war, were not considered deserving of some of the comfort we were there to bring.
After the hospital visit, our USAF Boeing 707 returned us safely to Bangkok, then to the grand Erawan Hotel where we were staying. Thailand escaped colonialism but nevertheless showed a strong influence of colonial architecture in some areas. The Erawan’s stately features and ambience were similar to those of the Raffles Hotel in Singapore. Within minutes of our arrival at the hotel, we were to learn the awful news that Saigon, from where we had taken off, had been heavily bombed in an attack that began twenty minutes after our departure.
We stayed just one week in Bangkok, getting up at five o’clock to reach the airport by eight, and returning to the hotel at about eight in the evening. From there, we travelled to Alaska, plunging from the tropics into an icy climate at the coldest time of year. I had never ventured so far north. I found it uniquely beautiful and inhabited by warm, hospitable people, but oh so cold. One of the highlights was riding through the streets of Anchorage on a sled pulled by a team of huskies.
I was sad not to share Christmas with my family but looked forward to joining them before long and seeing in the New Year. I felt worse for Ursula on Christmas Day. She was not herself. She had just ended a long-term relationship with the French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo. They had spent several wonderful Christmases together, and she was feeling lonely now: “Jennifer, I know it sounds silly, but I really miss him big time. I wouldn’t have joined the tour if we had got back together.”
On December 28, our USAF Boeing 707 finally touched down at Los Angeles Airport in California, marking the end of the 1970 Bob Hope Christmas tour. It was considered by all involved to have been a great success. From my point of view, it had been an incredible few weeks and a real honour to be associated with such wonderful people. More than anything, I enjoyed the privilege of singing songs with the legendary Bob Hope, one of the best-known show business personalities of all time and, without doubt, the world’s leading entertainer of troops. His material might have been somewhat dated, but he proved himself a true gentleman and, most importantly, a great human being whose kind and thoughtful nature pleased everyone we met along the way.
As we all went through customs and entered the arrivals lounge, it became apparent that there were many more people hanging around than there should normally have been, even for LAX. As it turned out, the media had publicized the return of the Bob Hope Christmas tour, and people had shown up out of curiosity and to get autographs. Dolores Hope had arrived with members of her family to meet her husband. It was a wonderful reunion for them. Bob was so delighted that he put on an impromptu performance for the media and bystanders.
I will always remember one special moment from the Bob Hope tour. It was on one of our daily flights from Bangkok to Vietnam aboard the USAF chopper. I had been watching Bob, for what seemed a long time, writing on cards, placing them into envelopes and addressing them. When I asked what he was doing, he said, “Well, you see, gal, I’ve met many special people over the years. They will always mean a lot to me even though they might be a long way away. This is my way of telling these people each year that they are never forgotten and that I value their friendship. I hope to keep in touch with you as well after this year, so you can expect to hear from me.”
True to his word, I received a New Year’s card from Bob and Dolores Hope for years to come. Almost two decades later, in the late 1980s, while I was residing in Ottawa, Canada, I was made aware that Bob was coming to the city to perform in a charity show at the Ottawa Civic Centre to commemorate a national holiday. I sent a note to the hotel where he was staying, letting him know that I was also in Ottawa. I welcomed him to the city and said that I would try to attend the show.
Sitting in the audience that evening, I suddenly heard Bob say, “If Jennifer’s in the audience, I’d like her to come down here onto the stage. Jennifer’s the gal who came with me to Vietnam back in 1970. Ladies and gentlemen, if she’s here tonight, I’d like to introduce you to the gal who thrilled thousands of our troops over there and brought a lot of pleasure to them. Come on down here, Jennifer Hosten, Miss World 1970!”
I was astounded by what I heard and was completely off guard as I stood and proceeded down the long steps to the stage to join Bob under the spotlight.