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The evolution of Bob Hope
More than anyone else in the history of 20th-century entertainment, Bob Hope created a new kind of humour, based on verbal wit, evolved from a personal style. Though he was a skillful song-and-dance man — watch him duelling with James Cagney in The Seven Little Foys — he was known as the man with a quip for all occasions.
Hope’s timing and his supply of topical one-liners made him a natural to emcee the annual Academy Awards broadcasts, which he did from 1939 to 1978 (the cover of a history of the awards show pictures him wrestling with Marlon Brando for an Oscar). No other host ever measured up to Hope in terms of longevity or ease or familiarity with Hollywood. And, of course, his failure to win an award (other than his “Special” Oscars) became a signature joke. (Hosting in 1968, he said, “Welcome to award night! In my house it’s known as Passover.”)
Later generations knew Hope for his Oscar broadcasts and for his tireless tours entertaining US troops overseas, from World War II to the Persian Gulf War. His love of golf and its tournaments also kept him in the public eye long after his movie and television career had faded.
In the ’40s, Bob Hope’s heyday, he delighted boys of Woody Allen’s generation. He had a reputation for taking risks, trying the mildly off-colour joke, and this made young fans all the more eager to tune in
In a way, it can be said that Hope invented the late-night talk show. His sharp-edged but amiable style paved the way for the likes of David Letterman and Jay Leno, and Johnny Carson before them. Unlike any of the comedians who have ruled the hours round midnight, Hope was a master of many aspects of show business, a genuine star who materialized in the era of the talking picture.
Before he came into the movies in The Big Broadcast of 1938, the prelude to the famed Road pictures with Bing Crosby, Hope had starred in Broadway musicals.
In the ‘40s, his heyday, he delighted boys of Woody Allen’s generation. He had a reputation for taking risks, trying the mildly off-colour joke, and this made his young fans all the more eager to tune in or to queue up for a matinee ticket. He also projected a vaguely subversive sense of humour that made kids adore him.
Hope tended to deprecate his looks, but he actually was more handsome in a way than Crosby, who played the cool guy in their Road pictures with the “sarong girl,” Dorothy Lamour. Hope’s slicked hair and sharp features — including the nose so loved by caricaturists — as well as his manly stature made him an excellent photographic subject.
You can watch a movie like The Paleface (1948) or the earlier The Ghost Breakers (1940) with great enjoyment. The Road pictures are formulaic, to be sure, but they still inspired imitations including the unfortunate Ishtar. For some reason, Hollywood cannot make the kinds of pictures that Paramount made with Bob Hope any more.
Yet Hope added up to far more than the sum of the films he made from the early ‘30s to the gradually diminishing efforts of the early ‘60s. Though the pictures are often enjoyable today, they are only shadows of the English-born American who ebulliently sought to send his love of the country where he was raised and nurtured out to the world.
The death of Hope — whose career included soda jerking, boxing and vaudeville as well as Broadway, movies, radio and television — truly marks the end of an era.—Dawn/The LAT/WP News Service
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