The Ultimate Entertainer: Bob Hope Dies at 100
Bob Hope, who kept Americans laughing through the best and the worst times of the 20th century, has died of pneumonia at age 100.
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"He was really remarkable and full of fun," daughter Linda Hope told reporters at the Television Academy on July 28, a day after the legendary comedian died, surrounded by family at his home in Los Angeles’ Toluca Lake district. "I think that fun and love for life is what the public saw, and what they loved about him."
"I’ve lost a personal friend and colleague, and the entertainment industry has lost perhaps the most unique personality that I have ever known in that industry," said Tom Sarnoff, chairman of the TV Academy Foundation. "The country has lost an ambassador to the rest of the world, and the world has lost someone who made it a happier and better place to be." Sarnoff knew Hope for about 50 years and worked closely with him at NBC.
Last year, the Hope family donated $1 million to the Foundation’s Archive of American Television. The gift made possible the new Archive Comedy Collection, a compilation of existing and future interviews with great television comedians.
"If you haven’t any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble," Hope once quipped. The king of the one-liners, Hope turned out to be wrong, however, with one of his more quoted jokes: "Dying is to be avoided because it can ruin your whole career."
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| Linda Hope |
No chance of that. Hope was recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the most honored entertainer in history, and his career amounted to an unabridged history of entertainment. He was a star in every medium, including vaudeville, Broadway musicals, radio, film, and television. He starred in 296 television specials, and played 56 starring roles in movies. Nearly sixty theaters, schools, performing arts centers and streets are named after him, as well as three species of plants and two military ships.
"Seventy years of ad-lib material, and I am speechless," the English-born Hope said on hearing that he had been knighted in 1998.
"Although Bob Hope gave television some of its highest ratings ever, it was the one-on-one intimacy he achieved with his audience that stands as his lasting tribute," said Academy Chairman Bryce Zabel. "Warm, personal and gently humorous, he became our national best friend and an inspiration for generations of comedians to follow. We will never forget him."
Hope, the fifth of seven sons, was born in 1903 to a London stonemason and a singer-pianist. The family immigrated to Ohio when Hope's father took a job constructing a church. At age eleven, Hope won a Cleveland talent contest with an impersonation of Charlie Chaplin and began his career in entertainment.
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| Press conference at the Academy |
The young performer made his professional vaudeville debut at 18, and soon jumped to Broadway with roles in Ziegfeld Follies and Red, Hot, and Blue. At New York's Capitol Theater, he ventured into radio, performing on Sunday morning broadcasts. There he found himself partnered with a singer named Bing Crosby; enthusiastic word of their act spread, and soon Paramount Pictures signed the duo to starring roles in the movie Road to Singapore. The movie pioneered the "buddy film" genre, and led to several sequels.
Although he had appeared in experimental broadcasts during the early development of television, Hope made his formal TV debut in a 1950 NBC special, Star Spangled Revue, which featured guest stars Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Beatrice Lillie, and Dinah Shore. The variety/special format became Hope's TV trademark, and the program began a long relationship between the performer and the network. Hope became an NBC headliner and delivered Nielsen ratings for the network year after year. His specials garnered over thirty Emmy nominations, and he collected a statuette himself for producing The Bob Hope Christmas Special in 1966.
Perhaps the most memorable part of his entertainment legacy was earned far from home, onstage before American military forces. From 1941 to 1948 he staged nearly 400 programs at military bases, and continued the tradition wherever he thought U.S. troops needed a lift. Although he told soldiers in Vietnam that his 1972 Christmas show would be his last, he found the allure of performing irresistible. He made additional trips to Beirut in 1983 and Saudi Arabia in 1991, performing for troops in Operation Desert Storm.
"I think the things that brought him the most joy were laughter and applause," said Linda Hope. "He was driven by that – he loved to make people laugh and make people happy, to make them forget what was going on in their lives for a little bit of time, and that brought him a lot of satisfaction."
Hope is also survived by his wife of 69 years, Dolores, sons Anthony and Kelly, daughter Nora Somers and four grandchildren.
Funeral plans were pending. The family asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Bob and Dolores Hope Charitable Foundation, Toluca Lake, CA 91602.