Hope: Entertainer of the Century

by Richard Zoglin

  The marital misunderstandings are drawn out mainly to justify a reprise of the title song, inserted clumsily near the end and sung by the bickering couple from either side of a locked bedroom door. This time the lyrics are more bitter than ironic—

  Thanks for the memory

  Of quarts of gin and rye, how you’d alibi

  And how you swore the night you wore my mother’s Christmas tie

  —before some last-minute contortions to get the couple back together.

  The film’s real musical highlight, however, comes earlier, when Hope and Ross are still in their lovey-dovey stage. After a night of partying, they collapse on their balcony, share a cigarette, and sing Hoagy Carmichael and Frank Loesser’s wonderful “Two Sleepy People.” Though it lacks the emotional complexity of “Thanks for the Memory,” it is an even more affecting song, with its lovely, lulling melody and cozy, romantic lyrics:

  Here we are, out of cigarettes

  Holding hands and yawning, look how late it gets

  Hope and Ross recycle some of the same devices they used in their original version of “Thanks for the Memory”—bits of dialogue interspersed with the lyrics, a couple of jokes tossed in. But Hope is warmer and more relaxed than before—playful with some lyrics (“kaarazy in the head”), caressing others with real feeling, totally winning from start to finish.

  Thanks for the Memory was the first Hope film in which he’s the undisputed star, and the critics were pleased. “In previous pictures, in which he was smothered by poor scripts or Martha Raye, it has largely been a case of Hope deferred,” wrote Frank Nugent in the New York Times, “but in Thanks for the Memory, with a feather-brained story, an arsenal of effective gags at his disposal and no ‘Big Broadcast’ trappings to stumble over, Bob assumes his rightful stature as the most debonair and delightful of the screen’s romantic comedians.” Though not a very good film or a big hit, Thanks for the Memory seemed to steady Hope and promise better things.

  Hope’s rising profile in Hollywood was confirmed in February 1939, when he made his first appearance at the Academy Awards. The Oscars were just ten years old, and the annual awards dinner, held that year at the Biltmore Hotel, was still largely a closed industry event. Hope’s role was limited to handing out the awards for short subjects. But he was ushered in to the strains of “Thanks for the Memory”—which had won an Oscar for Best Original Song earlier in the evening—and he made a few jokes that went over well with the Hollywood insiders in the room: “Looks like Bette Davis’s garage,” he quipped when he saw the table full of Oscars, a reference to Davis’s two Best Actress wins in the past four years. “Bob Hope didn’t get an Oscar,” wrote Variety the next day, “but deserved one for a slick bit of nonsense that injected persiflage into the ceremony when it showed signs of lagging.”

  Hope’s own film career, however, was still struggling to get on track. Thanks for the Memory was followed in 1939 by two more negligible B-pictures: Never Say Die, with Hope as a rich hypochondriac at a Swiss spa who thinks he’s dying, and Some Like It Hot (later retitled Rhythm Romance, to distinguish it from the infinitely better 1959 Billy Wilder film), in which he costars once again with Shirley Ross and plays the fast-talking owner of a failing carnival. Both were duds at the box office, continuing Hope’s string of disappointments since The Big Broadcast. All six of his films to that point, moreover, seemed like throwbacks to an increasingly outdated film era: stylized romantic comedies with glamorous settings (an ocean liner, a Manhattan penthouse, a European spa), stock comedy characters, and an air of effete, Depression-era escapism. Hope glided easily through these films, but they gave him little chance to develop a distinctive personality or establish any real connection with the audience. He said the funny lines, sang the songs, kissed the girl at the end, and moved on to the next project.

  But in April 1939, he began shooting a new film that would change all that. It was an adaptation of John Willard’s Broadway play The Cat and the Canary, a haunted-house melodrama that had been filmed once before, as a silent thriller in 1927. Paramount decided to retool it as a comedy for Hope and Martha Raye, but the female lead wound up going instead to Paulette Goddard, a Paramount star who was waiting to shoot The Great Dictator with her husband, Charlie Chaplin. When Hope met Chaplin, his boyhood idol, during the filming, the great comedian told Hope that he had seen some of the rushes. “I want you to know that you are one of the best timers of comedy I’ve ever seen,” Chaplin said. Hope was thrilled, and Chaplin was right. The film would rejuvenate Hope’s movie career.

  But first he took a vacation. Hope had been working almost nonstop since arriving in Hollywood, shooting seven feature films and launching a new radio show in just twenty-one months. When The Pepsodent Show went on summer hiatus at the end of the 1938–39 season, he and Dolores decided to take a break with a trip to England—Hope’s first visit to the country of his birth since sailing for America with the family in 1908.

  Hope could never relax much on vacations, and he packed this one, typically, with plenty of work. On the way to New York, where they were scheduled to sail for England on August 2, Hope was booked for stage appearances in Minneapolis, Chicago, and Atlantic City. Joined onstage by Colonna and Dolores (and his brother Jack pitching in as a stooge), Hope drew big crowds, evidence of the growing popularity of his radio show. At the State Lake Theater in Chicago, Hope’s show earned $44,500 for the July 4th week—beating Jack Benny, who took in $35,000 a week later. In Chicago, Pepsodent’s top executives threw a dinner party for Hope aboard the company yacht on Lake Michigan. Along with an official renewal for a second season of The Pepsodent Show, they gave him a bon-voyage gift of two round-trip tickets to Europe and $25,000 in spending money once he got there. “A little pin money to keep you in cigars and cigarettes,” wrote Pepsodent president Kenneth Smith. “Dolores,” Hope told his wife, “start brushing four times a day.”

  After Chicago, Bob and Dolores made a stop in Cleveland to see the family. The Hope clan there had dwindled since Avis’s death in 1934. His father, seemingly lost since his wife’s death, outlasted her by only three years and died in 1937. Three Hope brothers (Jack, Jim, and George) were now living in California, leaving only Ivor and Fred holding the fort in Cleveland, with Sid raising a family on his farm 150 miles away in northwest Ohio. Bob and Dolores got the Ohio clan together for a family dinner at the Hotel Cleveland, before leaving for New York with one family member in tow: Bob’s Uncle Frank, Harry’s brother, who joined them on the trip to England.

  In New York, Hope was honored with “Bob Hope Day” at the New York World’s Fair, and then settled in for a two-week engagement at the Paramount Theater. “As always, Hope isn’t inclined to work too hard, but he has an ingratiating personality and an effective comedy style,” Variety wrote of his show. “He’s even better than before he went to the Coast—and that’s plenty good enough.” In an interview backstage with a New York Times reporter, Hope was the picture of relaxed self-confidence, talking about his fast-moving career in between sprints on and off the stage. “I’m used to this sort of thing,” said Hope, “I love it. Keeps a guy on his toes, you know. There’s nothing as pleasant as the sound of applause when you’re hitting on all six.” And he was.

  War clouds were gathering in Europe as the Hopes sailed for England aboard the French liner Normandie on August 2, 1939. The passenger list included such Hollywood stars as Norma Shearer, George Raft, Madeleine Carroll, Charles Boyer, and Edward G. Robinson, along with US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau. After docking in Southampton, the Hopes took a train to London, where they checked into the Berkeley Hotel. They went to the theater, played golf (Hope hit five different courses during his two weeks there), visited Bob’s hometown of Eltham, and took a trip up to Hitchin, in Hertfordshire, where his ninety-six-year-old grandfather, James, lived, still riding a bicycle every day. A crowd of relatives gathered in a local pub to see their famous American cousin, now the talk of Hollywood.

  After their stay in B
ritain, Bob and Dolores sailed across the Channel to Paris. They had barely checked in at the George V Hotel when they got disturbing news. Adolf Hitler’s army was threatening to invade Poland, and the Hollywood studios were suddenly nervous that so many of their traveling stars might be stranded in Europe if war broke out. “Studios Call Stars Back from War-Menaced Europe,” read the headline in the Los Angeles Times on August 26: “Crisp instructions were sent to traveling motion-picture notables, most of them in England and France. ‘Book passage on first available American-owned ship,’ were the cabled messages.”

  The Hopes cut short their Paris stay, returned to England, and secured one of the last cabins left aboard the Queen Mary, set to sail from Southampton on August 30. Among the 2,331 passengers who jammed into the ship (including 250 who slept on cots in the public areas) were financier J. P. Morgan Jr., Hollywood studio chief Harry Warner, and Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front.

  On September 1, two days after they set sail, German forces invaded Poland. Two days later, at around eight o’clock on Sunday morning, Dolores was at mass when she heard the news that Britain had declared war on Germany. She rushed back to their cabin to tell Bob. He got dressed, went out on deck, and later recalled the tense scene: “Many of the British people were in tears; women and men too. Nobody was saying anything. They just sat around thinking. I guess they knew that a lot of their people and their relatives were going to be killed before things were better again.” King George VI’s speech to the nation was broadcast aboard the ship around lunchtime. When it was over, the passengers stood and sang “God Save the King.” The captain announced that for the rest of the voyage the ship would sail without lights, for fear of German submarines.

  The captain asked Hope if he would do a show for the passengers that night. He tried to beg off, saying he didn’t think it was time for comedy, but Harry Warner convinced him that a little entertainment might boost morale. Hope did an impromptu show, ad-libbing a few jokes about their predicament. “My steward told me when I got on board, if anything happens, it’s women and children first,” he quipped, “but the captain said in your case you can have your choice.” He closed with “Thanks for the Memory,” with new lyrics he had penned himself that afternoon:

  Thanks for the memory

  Of this great ocean trip, on England’s finest ship

  Though they packed ’em to the rafters, they never made a slip . . .

  Thanks for the memory

  Some folks slept on the floor, some in the corridor;

  But I was more exclusive, my room had “Gentlemen” above the door

  Ah, thank you so much

  When the ship docked safely in New York on September 4, the captain gave every passenger a copy of Hope’s lyrics as a memento of the trip.

  • • •

  Back in New York, Bob and Dolores found a message waiting for them. They had a new baby.

  Dolores had grown increasingly frustrated at her inability to have a child. While they were still living in New York, according to a cousin, she even pleaded with her sister Mildred, who had one son and was pregnant again, not to go ahead with a planned abortion and to give her the baby instead. Mildred refused. Finally, Dolores began looking into adoption. At the suggestion of George Burns and Gracie Allen, she contacted the Cradle, a well-known adoption agency in Evanston, Illinois, founded in 1923 by Florence Walrath. During their stop in Chicago on the way to New York, she got Bob to go with her for a screening interview.

  “We were getting along fine and I wasn’t too keen on the idea,” Hope wrote, with unaccustomed candor, in his memoir. “I was content with a wife and show business and golf. But after five years of being nudged by Dolores, I was talked into visiting the Cradle.” While they were traveling in Europe, a baby girl was found for them, and they made a stop in Evanston on their way home to see her. They returned to Los Angeles while the legal arrangements were being completed, and Dolores came back later to pick up their new eight-week-old baby daughter, whom they named Linda Theresa.

  The family addition didn’t put much of a crimp in Hope’s peripatetic work schedule. Just days after his return to Los Angeles, he went to San Francisco to do a week of stage shows at the Golden Gate Theater, also making several appearances at the San Francisco World’s Fair and playing in a charity golf tournament. Then it was back to Los Angeles to start work on the new season of The Pepsodent Show.

  Some important additions were made to the show in its second season. Judy Garland, who had worked so well with Hope when she guested the previous season, was brought back as the regular singer. “My schoolteacher’s happy I’m on the program,” the seventeen-year-old star of The Wizard of Oz said brightly on the season opener. “She says I ought to be glad to take anything to get started.” Her rapport with Hope was obvious; she giggled girlishly at his jokes, and he playfully called her Jude or Judith. She often poked fun at his image as a wannabe Romeo. In one sketch he takes her to the high school prom in a broken-down jalopy. Judy: “This car is uncomfortable. What’s covering the springs?” Bob: “You.” It was sweet, funny, and blessedly free of any sexual innuendo. (She was too young for any serious moves—though Hope years later confided to a friend that Garland showed up one night at his hotel room door, and he had to turn her away.)

  Also joining the show in its second season were Elvia Allman and Blanche Stewart, who played two shrill-voiced, man-hungry society girls named Brenda and Cobina—a takeoff of two real-life debutantes, Brenda Frazier and Cobina Wright. They were the first incarnation of a favorite Hope comedy foil: the homely, sex-starved spinster, obsessed with landing a man. The sexist humor was redeemed by some slick gag writing:

  BRENDA, prepping Cobina for a big society party: “Ya gotta act like a lady. When they pass the food, say ya ain’t hungry. And when they pass the drinks, say ya ain’t thirsty.”

  COBINA: “All right, but if they pass the men, I’m gonna ad-lib.”

  In the second season, Jerry Colonna also came into his own as the show’s comedy spark plug. Hope began referring to him as “the professor” and played a perfect straight man to Colonna’s absurdist riffs. On one show, when cast members were trying to come up with names for expectant father Bill Goodwin’s baby, Colonna blurted out, “Yehudi”—presumably a reference to violinist Yehudi Menuhin. The question “Who’s Yehudi?” soon became a running gag on the show, and a national catchphrase. Sketches were built around it; Ennis and the singers even turned it into a novelty song.

  Hope, meanwhile, was sharpening his radio persona. In the first season he would often use generic setups and gags—“My girlfriend wore a pillbox hat. A fellow with heartburn followed us all day with a glass of water.” (No one was supposed to believe Hope actually had a girlfriend—he was just telling jokes.) He soon ditched those and began building jokes more organically from his real life, work, and daily activities—as well as the radio personality his writers were building for him, which was closer to reality than he probably liked to admit. “We took his own characteristics and exaggerated them,” said Mel Shavelson. “The woman chaser. The coward. The cheap guy. We just put them in. He thought he was playing a character. He was playing, really, the real Bob Hope.”

  Yet even as his comedy moved closer to home, Hope kept a distance, making it clear that he was, above all, a comedian—an entertainer trying to make an audience laugh. He frequently made jokes about his sponsor, the network, or his movie studio. He was the first comedian to openly acknowledge his writers, often tweaking them in his “savers” when jokes didn’t go over. Variety cited Hope as an example of “the extreme wisdom of comedians devoting a substantial amount of income for writers. The gag staff that Hope has surrounded himself with is one of the best.” And the audience was catching on. In its first season Hope’s show averaged a 16.2 Hooper rating, meaning that 16.2 percent of the nation’s households were tuning in. By the end of the second season its rating had soared to 25.0—the fourth most popular show on the air.r />
  Hope’s transformation from a generic radio wise guy to a fully developed radio personality was well under way. A similar transformation was taking place in his movie roles. But it would happen much more abruptly—with his seventh film, The Cat and the Canary.

  The movie, released in November 1939, was a step up in class for Hope. Directed by the capable Elliott Nugent (a sometime stage actor and playwright who had also directed Hope in Give Me a Sailor and Never Say Die), it’s a comedy-thriller with a mise-en-scène and a narrative coherence that sets it apart from any of Hope’s previous films. In the atmospheric opening, a group of family members are making their way in separate boats at night through a Louisiana bayou, heading to a lonely mansion where a wealthy relative’s will is about to be read. The will, they soon learn, has left the entire fortune to one family member, played by Paulette Goddard. A storm forces the group to stay overnight in the spooky house, amid dark warnings that one of the passed-over relatives might be out to kill her. Lights flicker on and off, eyes in portraits move, hands emerge from hidden panels, while a sinister housekeeper, Gale Sondergaard, watches over it all with an icy glare.

  The wild card in the family gathering is Hope. He plays Wally Campbell, a stage actor whose nervous wisecracks—“Even my goose pimples have goose pimples”—keep breaking the tension of the old-dark-house melodrama. “They do that when you don’t pay your bill,” he quips when the lights go out. “Don’t big, empty houses scare you?” one of the family members asks. “Not me,” says Hope. “I used to be in vaudeville.” Someone asks Wally whether he believes in reincarnation: “You know, dead people coming back?” Hope’s up-to-the-minute retort: “You mean like the Republicans?”

  With his double-breasted suit and slicked-back hair, Hope still has the look of a high-style 1930s romantic-comedy lead. But he has discovered the character that he would make his own: the brash coward, a nervous Nellie who uses jokes to ward off his fears, a braggart who talks big but melts when face-to-face with danger. “I always joke when I’m scared,” he says at one point. “I kind of kid myself into being brave.” But it’s more than just jokes; Hope creates a rich comic character, recognizable and relatable—a coward you can root for.