The Bob Hope Abecedarian

If you ever wanted to learn more about the most famous comedian in American history, here's your chance.  I've got Bob Hope covered, from A to Zanzibar and everything in between!

A

A is for abecedarian.  An abecedarian book is organized according to the alphabet--the word comes from "ABCD."  An abecedarian is also a beginning learner in any field, so let's get a move on and find out more about Bob Hope.

A is also for autobiography.  Hope may have the unofficial record for the most autobiographies ever written.  His first, They Got Me Covered, was published in 1941.  Remarkably, he manages to say very little about himself in these books, filling most of his pages with jokes and riffing about the highlights of his life.

B

B is for Bob, which wasn't his real name.  He was born Leslie Townes Hope, the fifth of seven children.

B is also for Britain, where Bob was from.  That's right, he was British!  The celebrated naturalized-American comedian lived his first few years in England, moving to Bristol before hopping the pond and settling in Cleveland, Ohio, at age four.  This boy got around!

B is also for Bob Hope Airport, the only way to fly in Burbank.

C

C is for Crosby, Bing.  The famous crooner (whose name wasn't Bing--it was Harry) and Hope were throwing witty jabs at each other since the moment they met early in the 1930s.  Throughout their careers in film and on the radio, Bob and Bing engaged in a fictional feud, always trying to one-up the other and get the last laugh.  In real life, these two were the best of friends.

C is also for cash.  Bob accused Bing of having a lot of it.  He did, but so did Bob.  They each had huge fortunes in excess of $100 million, partly amassed from producing their own films.

C is also for clothes.  Bing was colorblind and often wore garish, gaudy-colored clothes.  Bob never let him hear the end of it.

C is also for cheese.  Bob liked to joke about all the cheese Crosby's voice had sold.  For many years, Bing sang on the Kraft Music Hall on the radio, helping the company sell lots of macaroni and cheese.

D

D is for Dolores, Bob's wife, who married him in 1934 and never looked back.

D is also for Dottie.  Dorothy Lamour was Hope's costar in more than a dozen films, including his first feature, The Big Broadcast of 1938, and the "Road" movies.  She didn't quite have the comedic skill to handle Bob as well as some of his other leading ladies, particularly Martha Raye and Lucille Ball, but she looked great in her trademark sarong and could carry a tune too.

D is also for dancer, what Bob was before he gave his life up to comedy.  Although with his steps, the laughs began early.

E

E is for Eltham, the area of London, England, where Bob was born.  When the amateur Eltham Little Theatre was in financial straits in the 1970s, Hope donated the money to keep the organization afloat, and in 1982 Eltham Little was renamed The Bob Hope Theatre.

F

F is for Foy, Eddie, the character Hope played in his acclaimed dramatic role in The Seven Little Foys (1955).  Foy and his children were a famous vaudeville act, so you can tell this part was a big stretch for Bob.

G

G is for golf, Bob's favorite game.  He and Crosby also had a rivalry on the links.  They sponsored and appeared together in many golf tournaments around the country, never failing to attract a huge crowd.  One of Bob's most famous golfing moments came on The Mike Douglas Show in 1978 when he watched a two-year-old Tiger Woods sink a putt.

G is also for gorilla.  Bob tussles with a wild gorilla (an actor wearing a gorilla suit) in a cage fight when he and Bing are captured by cannibals in Road to Zanzibar.

H

H is for horses, Bing's racehorses.  Bob loved telling the world how slow they were.  In reality, Crosby's horses did quite well at the track; one of them, Ligaroti, raced neck-and-neck with the legendary Seabiscuit at Bing's Del Mar racetrack near San Diego, California.

H is also for the hilarious "H" names Bob's characters donned.  From Hubert  "Fearless" Frazier to Humphrey "Sorrowful" Jones and Humphrey the American actor pretending to be a British butler, Bob's "H" names always got a laugh.  The funniest of all:  Hot Lips Barton in Road to Rio.

I

I is for the Cleveland Indians.  Bob bought his hometown baseball club in the 1950s.  His part-ownership of the team spawned a classic episode of another I, I Love Lucy.  Hope did a guest spot when Lucy attends the Yankees-Indians game and tries to convince him to appear at Ricky's club.  She ends up posing as a hot dog hawker and spilling condiments all over Bob.

J

J is for jittery, what Bob was in The Cat and the Canary and The Ghost Breakers with Paulette Goddard.

K

K is for the kid, The Lemon Drop Kid, a.k.a. Hope as a two-bit gambler who owes a gangster a lot of dough.  With only a white Miami suit and the sweater he's stolen off the back of a lap dog, Bob seeks the help of old flame Marilyn Maxwell in freezing New York City.  He rounds up his cronies, including the irascible William Frawley, and dresses them as Santa Clauses to collect money for the poor, i.e., Hope.  This film, which introduced the song "Silver Bells," shows Bob Hope at his best.

L

L is for Louisiana Purchase, Hope's first color picture in which he delivers an outrageous filibuster that trumps the famous moment in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.  Don't worry, Bob got Jimmy Stewart's permission to do this scene.

M

M is for mustache, as in Colonna's big mustache.  Jerry Colonna, a mustachioed, trombone-playing comedian with huge round eyes and a distinctively annoying singing voice, was recruited by Hope to be his sidekick on the radio.  Colonna also appeared in several of Hope's pictures and travelled to Europe for USO shows with Bob.  He's an acquired taste.

M is also for My Favorite, as in My Favorite Blonde with Madeleine Carroll, My Favorite Brunette with Dottie Lamour, and My Favorite Spy with Hedy Lamarr, a trio of Bob's funniest films with a trio of lovely ladies.

M is also for my favorite Hope picture, Monsieur Beaucaire, in which Bob plays a barber in the French royal court who poses as a nobleman in Spain and finds himself at the center of international scandals and schemes.

N

N is for NBC, where Hope set records for his lengthy tenure.  Bob appeared on radio and television for the National Broadcasting Company and claimed that when he started working there, the peacock was still an egg.

N is also for nineteen-oh-three, the year Bob was born.  Hope and Crosby were both May babies in 1903, though Bing was born at the beginning of the month and Bob at the end.  Hope wouldn't let this small fact (which actually was obscured by Paramount's publicity department and Crosby family tradition for much of Bing's life) get in the way of constantly calling Bing old.

O

O is for one hundred years, Bob's age when he passed away in 2003.

O is also for Old Ski Nose, Hope's self-explanatory nickname.

O is also for Oscars.  Always the host and never the winner, Bob emceed the Academy Awards eighteen times.  Although he did receive five Honorary Awards, Bob didn't earn a single Oscar for his performances, but he always had a joke on hand about not being nominated.  Hosting the Oscars in 1968, Bob quipped that the Academy Awards were known at his house as "Passover," which brings us to P.

P

P is for Pepsodent, the sponsor of Bob's radio show for two decades.  Generations of radio listeners have sparkling teeth because of Bob.

P is also for Paramount, the studio where Bob and Bing spent the majority of their film careers.  One of Bob's better pictures at Paramount was The Pale Face, a western with him as easily frightened dentist "Painless" Peter Potter and Jane Russell as Calamity Jane.  In this film, Bob introduced the song, "Buttons and Bows," which starts with B, but that rhymes with P, and that stands for pool.  Bob probably had a pool at his Toluca Lake home, but our next P stands for...

Packey East, Bob's name as a prize fighter in the pugilistic days of his youth.  Thankfully, his career as a professional boxer didn't last long.  If it had, just imagine what his nose would have looked like!

P is also for proboscis.  Hope made a great recording of the song "The Boys with the Proboscis" with another famous schnoz, Jimmy Durante.

P is also for patty-cake.  In the "Road" movies, Bob and Bing overcome their enemies by playing patty-cake, ending the game with a big punch, but, in a great self-referential twist, the bad guys start to catch on after watching the movies.

P is also for "Put It There, Pal," one of the greatest buddy songs ever written.  Bing and Bob sang this in Road to Utopia and later recorded a different version for which they rewrote the lyrics to target each other's foibles.

Q

Q is for quick wit, which you had to have to share the stage, screen, or mic with Hope.  Bob was great at ad-libbing, as was Crosby, which is what made them a perfect pair.  Both Bob's and Bing's writers would compile an arsenal of fresh jokes for their man in the days leading up to a Hope-Crosby appearance.  When a gag failed to hit its mark, it was up to Bing and Bob to create their own extemporaneous line, which was often funnier than anything supplied by the writers.

R

R is for Robert, the name Bing often called Bob.  But if his name wasn't really Bob in the first place, then where did "Robert" come from?

R is also for the "Road" movies, a series of seven comedies starring Hope, Crosby, and Lamour.  Each film has a different exotic location which the characters may or may not ever reach.  Between 1940 and 1962, the funniest friends in film headed for Singapore, Zanzibar, Morocco, Utopia, Rio, Bali, and Hong Kong.

R is also for rapid-fire, the way Bob delivered his jokes.  He often talked so fast on the radio that you couldn't even tell what he was saying, but you knew it was hilarious. 

S

S is for shoehorn.  Bob quipped his nose made a good shoehorn.

S is also for Sylvester the Great, Bob's character in The Princess and the Pirate.  Sylvester is a travelling entertainer who is on the run from pirates with a beautiful princess who is escaping a betrothed marriage to wed the commoner she loves.  Just wait until you see who the "commoner" is!

T

T is for "Thanks for the Memory," Bob's theme song.  He sang it with Shirley Ross in The Big Broadcast of 1938.  That tune introduced him on every radio appearance, and he even wrote special situation-appropriate lyrics to perform for the military servicemen.

U

U is for USO.  Bob made about sixty tours with the United Service Organizations to entertain troops in four wars.  He was made an "Honorary Veteran" by an act of Congress passed in 1997.  Hope said this was the greatest honor he'd ever received.

U is also for Utopia, Bob and Bing's destination in the fourth "Road" picture.  Their physical destination is Alaska during the Gold Rush.  Road to Utopia is the only "Road" movie in which Bob gets Dottie for keeps, but their marriage comes with a twist:  their adopted son is a young Bing!

V

V is for vaudeville.  Bob is rumored to have killed it.  Maybe he did, but vaudeville is where Hope got his start as an entertainer and comedian.  The good thing about these years was that Bob never had to shop for vegetables--he got plenty of them on the stage.  From vaudeville, he graduated up to musical comedies on Broadway in the early '30s, and from there he eventually got his first radio show.

W

W is for wolf, the woman-hunting hound Hope's characters often pretend to be.  Don't be fooled by his growl, though.  Underneath that fur is a yellow streak, which is what makes Bob so funny.

W is also for Where There's Life, there's Bob Hope.  In this exciting comedy, Hope, the host of a radio show who is due to be married in a few days, finds himself surrounded by murder, intrigue, and a host of agents from the fictional country of Barovia who tell him he is actually the long-lost son of their king.  If all that isn't enough to deal with, the female general intent on taking  Bob safely to Barovia causes him to miss his own wedding, and when your future brother-in-law is cop William Bendix, look out!

X

X is for X-rays, one of the many health services available to members of the entertainment industry and their families at the Bob Hope Health Center in Los Angeles.

Y

Y is for Yehoodi.  Whenever something mysterious happened on Hope's radio show and nobody knew who did it, Yehoodi was to blame.  To discover Yehoodi's true identity, Hope sought the help of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce (a.k.a. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson), and they found out that Yehoodi, as Bob says in They Got Me Covered, is "the little fellow who pushes up the next piece of Kleenex."  Who knew?

Z

Z is for Z's, which you won't be catching while watching Bob's hilarious films.

Finally, Z is also for ze end, as in this is ze end of The Bob Hope Abecedarian.  Thanks for reading.  I hope you enjoyed it.

 

If you want to know more about the Hope-Crosby "Road" movies, click on the link to read my guide A Bob and Bing Road Map.  For more about the music and films of Bing Crosby, please click on the link for my guide It's a Bing Crosby World!  You can also check out my reviews of the following Bob Hope movies by clicking on the links:  The Big Broadcast of 1938 and College Swing, Louisiana Purchase and Never Say Die, Caught in the Draft and Give Me a Sailor, Sorrowful Jones and The Paleface, and The Princess and the Pirate.

Thanks again.  Hope you had fun.