Bob Hope

Bob Hope from the trailer for the film The Ghost Breakers (1940)

Leslie Townes Hope, KBE, KC*SG, KSS (May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003), best known as Bob Hope, was a British-American entertainer, having appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, on radio and television, films and in army concerts.

Thanks to our brave allies: you gallant Russian bear, you British everywhere.

Quotes

• Thanks to our brave allies: you gallant Russian bear, you British everywhere.
  • Introduction to his World War II performances.
  • Obituary, The Economist, August 2, 2003

• I was on the way to my hotel, and I passed a hotel going in the opposite direction.
  • He arrived in Saigon on the day that Vietcong agents blew up an American officers' billet.
  • New York Times obituary, July 28, 2003

• I know I'm in England because this morning, my stomach got up two hours before I did and had a cup of tea! I've had so much tea, I slosh when I walk! You have to drink tea - I've tasted the coffee!
  • During a radio broadcast recorded in the UK. (During a broadcast in the Soviet Union, Bob re-used the first section, replacing 'England' with 'Russia' and 'cup of tea' with 'Bowl of Borscht')
  • Audio recording of radio broadcast.

Misattributed

• You mean like Democrats?
  • In the film The Ghost Breakers (1940), in reference to another character's description of zombies: "you see them sometimes walking around blindly with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring."
    [Misattributed: Actor not credited as writer.]

About Bob Hope

In alphabetical order by author or source.

• Bob Hope will go to the opening of a phone booth in a gas station in Anaheim, providing they have a camera there and three people. He'll go to the opening of a market to receive an award. He'd get an award from Thom McCan for wearing their shoes. It's pathetic. It's a bottomless pit. A barrel that has no floor. He must be a man who has an ever-crumbling estimation of himself. He's constantly filling himself up. He's like a junkie – an applause junkie. What happens to those people when they can't get up and do their shtick, God only knows. Bob Hope, Christ, instead of growing old gracefully or doing something with his money, be helpful, all he does is he has an anniversary with the President looking on. It's sad. He gets on an airplane every two minutes always going someplace. It didn't bother him at all to work the Vietnam War. Oh, he took that in his stride. He did his World War II and Korean War act. "Our boys" and all that. He’s a pathetic guy.
  • Marlon Brando, Playboy (January 1979); reproduced in The Playboy Interview (1981) edited by G. Barry Golson, p. 629

• For years, as I've said, Bob has worked hard for our family's sake to cut our traveling to a minimum. But there are some 300,000 miles he and I shared that we wouldn't take back for anything. I mean the world-famous Bob Hope Holiday Tours to the armed forces stationed in remote outposts overseas, made on behalf of the U.S.O. "Go with us one time, Anita, and it will get into your blood," Bob Hope suggested in 1960, the first year Bob and I were married. "You'll never play to a greater audience."
  • Anita Bryant, Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory (1970). Old Tappan: Fleming H. Revell Company, p. 98

• No doubt the funniest exploit I was involved in was dropping leaflets on the Bob Hope Christmas show at Cu Chi in 1969. Our company was assigned to provide perimeter security and air cover for the show, so none of our guys would get to see it. The night before, some enlisted men came to me with boxes of small white leaflets upon which they had written messages welcoming Bob Hope to Cu Chi. Three platoons had stayed up all night making these things, and they begged me to drop them on the show, since they knew I'd be up there. I told them it was closed airspace and you can't do that without getting into big trouble, but in a weak moment I let them talk me into it.
  Sure enough, in the middle of the show, I took a sharp turn, ignored the controller in my earphones, who wanted to know what I thought I was doing, and we dropped the leaflets. If you watch the videotape of that show, you can see Hope looking up as the leaflets came down. The next day, I was called in front of the CO, but he let me off when I explained why I had done it.
  In 1975, I was finishing my college degree at Saint Martin's in Olympia, Washington. Nobody could figure out who to get for a graduation speaker, so I suggested Bob Hope. Everyone said, "Great, you go get him." It took some time, working through his assistants, but I finally got him on the phone and explained that I was the guy who dropped the snow on his show at Cu Chi. "Why'd you do that?" he immediately asked. When I explained how I couldn't turn the troops down, he said, "Okay, I'll speak at your graduation." And he did. I was his escort the whole day, and he continued to pepper me with questions.
  • Joe Finch, Our Vietnam Wars: As Told By 100 Veterans Who Served (Self-published, 2018) by William F. Brown (editor and contributing author), p. 219

• In his prime, the young comic walked onto a stage with the confidence of a man who owned it, and by the time he walked off, he did.
  • [http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-3030403/Guest-Commentary-Hope-Everlasting-Press.html Obituary, Television Week (August 4, 2003).

External links

• Bob Hope on IMDb