I remember watching The Princess and the Pirate when I was 10 on the big
afternoon movie. The opening narration says "In the olden days, men were bold..." And
then Bob Hope's head iris-es onto the screen,
and he says "That's not me, folks! I come in later, I play a
coward!!" And then irises out....
Bob Hope was funny. But later in life he also got alot of mileage out of just being familiar.
(He first sang "Thanks for the Memories" 65 years ago...)
I think that explains
why alot of tributes are lukewarm. But he still worked his way into our
consciousness...
I had a roommate in college who swore that Bob Hope had never told a
funny joke. "Well, wait," he said. "One."
"'My flight in was so slow, it had
to pull over to let some geese pass!'"
Our class clown in high school
took the contrary position that Bob Hope was funny -- in his
earlier movies. His example? Bob Hope walks into a rough bar in the Yukon and
orders a glass of milk. Then quickly adds "In a dirty glass!"
It was a little eerie when our social studies teacher showed us a
black-and-white informational film about energy production -- and it
was narrated by "Bob 'For Texaco' Hope...." But I remember in 8th grade watching Bob Hope do a cameo on The Tonight
Show after the mini-series Roots had aired. "I heard Alex
Haley committed suicide," Hope said. "He found out he was adopted!" The next day
at school, one of the hip 9th graders tried to tell me that same joke...
After high school I got a job at a local radio station where they
periodically played public service announcements for "The
Voice of America." In one the announcer says "The freedom to laugh -- and not be
afraid to laugh. That's what makes America great." Then they played a clip
of Hope at a USO show.
"The sargeant goes around the barracks at night with a flash-light waking
up everyone with a smile on their face!"
The jokes kept coming. During the Reagan administration I watched a TV special where Bob Hope told jokes in communist China.
"You have a drink here called Saki that's
so strong -- I gave some to my Peking Duck, and it got up and flew
away!"
And the stalwart liberal blog Daily Kos recognizes Hope's other contribution.
"Bob Hope, for more years than people now remember, was a reminder that
America hadn't just sent these people off into a void. That someone
remembered they were serving their country."
"The Pentagon sent me," Hope told the boys at Bin Wa, "they thought
you'd like a change of enemy." That's from Ben Schwarz's 2000
appreciation from Suck.com. "[D]uring the war, everyone was afraid, and only Bob accepted it...
Even Gen. George S. Patton, four-star slapper of scaredy cat kid soldiers, liked Bob..."
Schwarz cites Hope's unashamed cowardice as the reason Hope became the #1 box office draw in 1949.
But he was funny and familiar.
His movie career included Paleface and Son of Paleface,
My Favorite Blonde and My Favorite Brunette,
The Road to Morocco, and The Road To... -- well, you get the idea.
He made a career out of being
familiar. There was Bob Hope
the comic book,
Bob Hope the action figure, --
and today everyone's got a story about him. Here's a good remembrance that sums up a lifetime spent telling jokes, from a hard-working comic book writer who lauds Hope's
all-American drive...
One of his first screen appearances was in a dreadful short comedy
called Going Spanish. Shortly after viewing it, Hope ran into [Walter]
Winchell who asked him how it was. "When they catch Dillinger, they're going to
make him sit through it twice," the legend-to-be replied.
Winchell
printed the remark in his column and the movie studio dropped Hope's
contract, proclaiming they had enough trouble selling his films without
him knocking them in the press. I said to Hope, "Well, that sure hurt
your career," and he grinned. He could grin because, I suspect, that was
the last mistake he ever made.