Bob Hope: PBS American Masters

[+ WilliamM]

Bob Hope died in 2003 at age 100. The publicity for this PBS American Masters special maintains Bob Hope was successful in every branch of show business. If true, why has he remembered only for his many Christmas USO tours?

 

Dick Cavett provides the best explanation: Bob Hope almost never talked about his family or personal life, except occasional kind jokes about his wife, Delores, who also lived a very long life.

 

Hope was a first-rate stand-up comic who appeared often in specials and hosted the Academy Awards for many years, appeared in dozens of films (often with Bing Crosby) and starred on Broadway with Ethel Merman.

 

Perhaps his USO tours during the Vietnam war did him in. Bob was a proud & relentless hawk on Vietnam. I was not the only one who refused to see him in Vietnam at Christmas 1968. Hope was performing only a few miles away and I could have easily driven there in my jeep.

(I am unsure if this post should have been posted in the political forum.)

[+ honcho]

Back in the very early 80's, the National Association of Broadcasters had its convention in San Francisco, and my Dad (who normally lived in another state and was a station manager) attended and got an extra ticket for me to attend the awards show, which was MC'd by Bob Hope ... who told FAG jokes in the newly named Moscone Center. For those of you who don't recall

the name, George Moscone was the Mayor of San Francisco, who was shot and killed by one of the supervisors along with Harvey Milk, only a couple of years before that convention. I seriously considered standing up and making a scene, but in deference to my Dad (who was sitting next to me) decided to keep my mouth shut.

Edited December 8, 2017 by honcho

[+ WilliamM]

Back in the very early 80's, the National Association of Broadcasters had its convention in San Francisco, and my Dad (who normally lived in another state and was a station manager) attended and got an extra ticket for me to attend the awards show, which was MC'd by Bob Hope ... who told FAG jokes in the newly named Moscone Center.

 

I am not surprised. After a while, the public facade fell apart partly because of too many TV appearances for too many years.

 

By the Hope died at age 100 he was a mere remembrance of old fashioned show business. The public may have known Lucille Ball was hurt when her last sit com failed. With Hope, we knew nothing about him.

[Chuckball]

My father saw Hope performing while in the army. We watched Bob Hope USO Christmas specials every year. As I matured I found the pro-war, anti-gay not so much offensive but dated and without merit. In the end he became irrelevant and I do not recall any degree of public upset on his passing.

[samhexum]

He was a known skirt-chaser. He and Bu-bu-bu-Bing were quite the role models for husbands.

Never found him the least bit funny. Rose Nylund could have done much better in picking out a fantasy biological father. Her actual biological father turned out to be better (Don Ameche).

 

He wasn't American, ya know. He died on Arod's (& my former roommate's) birthday.

[+ WilliamM]

Never found him the least bit funny

 

Bob Hope had dozens of joke writers during his long life. He was good as the long-time master of ceremony at the Academy Awards.

That was it.

 

Was he funny off-stage? Probably not