Hope: Entertainer of the Century

by Richard Zoglin

  What he couldn’t see, however, was the political and cultural shift that was taking place in the country: a new skepticism of the nation’s leaders and the military, a questioning of middle-class values and Cold War assumptions. Even more than most Hollywood stars, he lived in a rarefied world—enjoying the adulation of millions, with a direct pipeline to the people in power and a loyal entourage that shielded him from dissenting views. He was too far above the political turmoil roiling the country to realize that the ground was shifting beneath his feet.

  • • •

  In early December of 1967, Bob and Dolores celebrated their first family wedding. Their oldest son, Tony, a graduate of Georgetown University and Harvard Law School, had been engaged once before, to a nursing student he’d met at Georgetown, but the family didn’t like her and he soon broke it off. Now, after serving a stint in the Air Force, he was engaged to Judith Richards, a minister’s daughter from Ohio whom he had met in law school and who was now an attorney in Washington, DC.

  The wedding was the biggest thing ever to happen in the bride’s hometown of Defiance, Ohio. Her father gave the blessing at the ceremony, held in a Methodist church (though Dolores packed it with fourteen priests). The wedding party of nearly six hundred was too large for the town’s hotels, so most of the guests stayed in Toledo, an hour’s drive away. Bob and Dolores flew in from Los Angeles on a chartered plane (along with Kathryn Crosby and other Hollywood friends) and arrived an hour late for the ceremony. On the ride back to Toledo for the reception, their car was stopped and Bob was “arrested” by a local sheriff—a joke orchestrated by Judith’s father. Hope kept his sense of humor for the toast: “Isn’t it wonderful. Have you ever seen two lawyers kiss?” The couple skipped a honeymoon and after the wedding flew back to Los Angeles, where Judith relocated and Tony was working in the business affairs department at Twentieth Century–Fox.

  A few weeks later Hope was on his way back to Vietnam, for the fourth time in as many years. In a cast that included singer Barbara McNair, Phil Crosby (Bing’s son), and columnist Earl Wilson, the big attraction was Raquel Welch, the buxom star of such movies as One Million Years B.C. Welch was the quintessential piece of Hope cheesecake. He coached her on how to get a rise out of the men (“When you come onstage, take the long walk, because the guys want to see you”), and she was the perfect foil for his leering wisecracks:

  RAQUEL: “I’m most happy to be here and see all these boys.”

  BOB: “They were boys before you came out. Now they’re old men.”

  He taught her how to behave at the hospitals they visited—no tears, no pity, only good cheer—and impressed her with his dedication and work ethic. “He never got ruffled,” she said. “He was absolutely tireless. He was good with the boys—he knew their hometowns and would give them ball scores and talk guy talk. He didn’t phone it in. I had nothing but admiration for the man.” Like other performers who joined Hope in Vietnam, she ignored the political controversy and embraced the mission: “I was over there to entertain the guys, not to talk politics. This was something you could do for them.”

  They visited twenty-two bases in fifteen days, from Pleiku in the mountains to the aircraft carrier Coral Sea. Once again, the company set up base camp at the Erawan Hotel in Bangkok, making short hops to and from Vietnam—though Hope split off from the group to spend Christmas Eve in Saigon, where he had a private dinner with General Westmoreland. The next day Hope entertained his biggest crowd yet in Vietnam: twenty-five thousand troops at Long Binh, headquarters of the US Army in South Vietnam. All the top brass were in the audience: Westmoreland, US ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, and even South Vietnamese vice president Nguyen Cao Ky.

  The US military presence in Vietnam was nearing its peak of a half million troops. “Welcome to the land of rising commitment,” said the Army specialist who introduced the show. Hope joked again about the antiwar protests back home, though with a more derisive edge: “Can you imagine those peaceniks back home burning their draft cards? Why don’t they come over here and Charlie will burn ’em for them.” But in his closing remarks for the TV special, he sounded a more conciliatory, even hopeful note:

  Despite the millions of words that have been spoken and written, we know that there are no easy answers to this conflict. But an answer there must be. Somehow we must get through to Hanoi, in one way or another, that it’s all such a waste, that it’s better to build than to destroy. There are now some faint glimmers of hope, a few telltale signs that reason may yet prevail. We hope and pray that before too long the peace for which we’re all yearning will become a reality. With God’s help, this will be the year.

  But it wasn’t. On January 31, just two weeks after Hope’s Christmas show aired, the Communists launched the so-called Tet Offensive—a massive, coordinated series of attacks on cities, bases, and airfields throughout South Vietnam. Though taken by surprise, US and South Vietnamese forces retaliated strongly, and the offensive wound up being a military defeat for the Communists. But it was a turning point for the war effort back home, casting fresh doubts on the optimistic reports of the war’s progress and intensifying calls for the United States to get out of Vietnam. The next few months were the most traumatic of a turbulent decade: President Johnson, facing a strong primary challenge from antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy, announced he would not run for reelection; Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated; violent protests rocked college campuses from Columbia to Berkeley; and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago descended into chaos when police beat demonstrators on the streets outside the convention hall.

  Hope tried to stay out of the cross fire, but he couldn’t entirely. For the fourth year in a row he was back to emcee the Academy Awards ceremony, scheduled for Monday, April 8. King was assassinated just four days before, and since Monday was the day of his funeral, the show was postponed out of respect. Two days later, Academy president Gregory Peck opened the delayed ceremony on a reverential note, acknowledging, “This has been a fateful week in the history of our nation.” He noted that two of the five films nominated for Best Picture, In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, dealt with race relations and credited King’s work for helping bring about the “increasing awareness of all men that we must unite in compassion in order to survive.” Then he turned the evening over to Hope, “that amiable national monument who pricks the balloons of pomposity, evokes laughter even from the targets of his wit, and adroitly displays America’s sense of humor to the world.”

  But for once, the national monument misjudged the national mood. He opened with some quips about the two-day postponement: “It didn’t affect me, but it’s been tough on the nominees. How would you like to spend two days in a crouch?” Kodak, the show’s sponsor, was also upset at the delay, Hope said, “afraid it would hurt their image—a show that took three days to develop.” The wisecracks were innocent enough, but they offended many in the audience, who thought they made light of a national tragedy. Jack Gould, in the New York Times, called the show “embarrassing” and Hope’s quips “ungracious.” Time scolded, “It was difficult to be funny under the circumstances. . . . Judging by Hope’s monologue, it would have been better not to try.”

  The reaction was a sign of how frayed the nation’s nerves had become. And it obscured what was, paradoxically, one of the best performances of Hope’s Oscar-hosting career. He found plenty of material in the new wave of American films that were up for awards, such as Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate. (“They nominated a kid like Dustin Hoffman—he made a picture he can’t get in to see.”) He made a clever bank shot from his own Oscar deprivation to the upcoming Vietnam peace talks: “For thirty years I’ve been trying to get the Academy to sit down and talk. And they’ve always given me the same answer: they’ll negotiate if I stop bombing.” He was everywhere on the show: gabbing with the presenters, introducing the film clips, quipping when the evening dragged on, “I’ve never seen six hours whiz by so fast”—a
joke repeated, in some version or other, by practically every host who followed. His most memorable line, however, came at the beginning of the show. “Welcome to the Academy Awards,” Hope said. “Or as it’s known at my house, Passover.” He still got mileage out of the running gag, even though Hope by this time had received a record five honorary awards—the last one, in 1966, a gold medal for “distinguished service to our industry and the Academy.”

  By his 1968 Christmas tour, some Vietnam fatigue appeared to have set in, for the war seemed to be downplayed a bit. Vietnam was just one stop in an itinerary that also took him to Japan and South Korea—where tensions had risen following North Korea’s seizure of a Navy spy ship, the USS Pueblo. Hope again landed a top Hollywood glamour girl for the tour, song-and-dance star Ann-Margret, along with singer Linda Bennett and retired football star Roosevelt Grier. A former Robert Kennedy aide, Grier was a rare Hope traveling companion who openly opposed the war. “I went with Bob because I felt he was doing something I could relate to,” Grier explained to reporters. “I wanted to show the servicemen we cared about them.”

  Hope’s Christmas shows were by now well-oiled productions, a mix of news documentary, patriotic rally, and vaudeville show. There were Hope’s formula jokes playing off the exotic places he visited (“Os-San—that’s Korean for ‘take it and stuff it’ ”); his playfully suggestive patter with the new Miss World or Miss USA (inevitable question: “What are your measurements?”); his acknowledgment of the vast crowds, always pointing out the men perched on telephone poles or watching from distant hilltops (“Are you on our side?”). Hope would call up servicemen from the audience and read letters from home—and maybe plant a kiss on their forehead from Mom, or a girlfriend. He commiserated with their plight (“Twenty-one thousand men, all dedicated to one purpose—to get to Bangkok”), brought them news from home, and tugged at their heartstrings with the closing chorus of “Silent Night,” by now a Hope tradition. “What a boon he is,” wrote Variety, “to the sinking spirits of the men who defend our way of life.” His Christmas special of January 16, 1969, drew a mammoth 38.5 Nielsen rating, yet another Hope record.

  Back home, Dolores spent most of the Christmas holidays in 1968 preparing for the biggest party the Hopes had ever thrown: the wedding of their oldest daughter, Linda. After graduating from St. Louis University, Linda had worked as an English teacher, toyed with going back to school in psychology, and was now pursuing a career in filmmaking. The groom, Nathaniel Greenblatt Lande, the son of a prominent Georgia doctor, was a former Time Inc. executive who had helped launch Time-Life Films and now worked as a producer for Universal. He was Jewish, which meant that Dolores’s retinue of priests had to share the stage with a rabbi for the ceremony at St. Charles Borromeo Church on January 11, 1969. But it was the Cecil B. DeMille reception afterward that got everyone’s attention: a thousand guests under a billowing tent in the Hopes’ backyard, with a who’s who of celebrities on hand, including Governor Ronald Reagan and Vice President–elect Spiro Agnew.

  “I wanted to get married under a tree in Carmel. Dolores wanted a big show,” recalled Lande. “I can’t say I enjoyed it. But it was a grand affair, and beautifully done.” Hope presided with his usual aplomb, and a fusillade of gags. “We had the wedding reception at home because Texas wouldn’t rent us the Astrodome,” he joked. He serenaded the couple with a rewritten version of “Daisy, Daisy,” titled “Linda, Linda”: “You’ve just had a stylish marriage / But don’t expect a carriage / You must look sweet / Upon the seat / Of a Chrysler that’s built for two.” Hope left before the party was over, hopping a plane to Miami with Agnew, to see the Super Bowl game the next day.

  Richard Nixon couldn’t make the wedding, but he phoned before the ceremony with his congratulations. When Hope handed the telephone over to his new son-in-law, Lande joshed with the president-elect: “You’ll make a Republican of me yet.” Hope just glared at him. In the Hope family, some things were no longer funny.

  Chapter 12

  PARTISAN

  “Shut up, Bob Hope.”

  Richard M. Nixon’s election as president in November 1968 marked the start of a new, more strident phase in Hope’s tour of duty in the domestic war over Vietnam. He had gotten to know Nixon during the Eisenhower administration (“Ike’s caddy,” Hope jokingly called the vice president) and his unsuccessful 1962 run for governor of California, so they were already friends when Nixon entered the White House. Hope had struck up a more recent, even closer friendship with Spiro Agnew, Nixon’s surprise choice as vice president. Hope and Agnew first met in June 1968, at a Variety Clubs International dinner in Baltimore where Hope was honored and Agnew, then governor of Maryland, gave a speech. Two months later, after he was picked to be Nixon’s running mate, Hope sent Agnew a congratulatory telegram: “See what one dinner with me will do?”

  They talked frequently on the phone during the 1968 campaign, with Hope feeding jokes to the vice presidential candidate. “The humorous ‘one-liners’ which you sent me for spicing up my tedious speeches were most successful,” Agnew wrote to Hope after the election. “For a fellow who was having problems with the press, these efforts at light relief were most helpful.” Hope ordered his writers to continue supplying jokes for Agnew speeches after the inauguration—a task some of them resented. “We hated writing for a repressive reactionary like Agnew,” said one writer at the time. “But when you work for Hope these days, that’s part of the job.”

  Nixon, meanwhile, began using Hope, more aggressively than Johnson ever had, to help sell his Vietnam policies to the American public. “He took natural advantage of the friendship,” said Dwight Chapin, Nixon’s special assistant, who often acted as a liaison between the two. Shortly after taking office, the president stepped up the bombing of North Vietnam and announced a policy of “Vietnamization”—gradually withdrawing US troops while handing over most of the fighting to the South Vietnamese army. Protests against the war only intensified, climaxing on October 15, 1969, with the Moratorium to End the War, a coordinated series of nationwide protests and teach-ins. Two weeks later, on November 3, Nixon addressed the nation on TV, laying out his plan to end the war and appealing to the “silent majority” of Americans for support. The next day, at a White House dinner for Britain’s Prince Philip, Nixon asked Hope if he would serve as honorary chairman of National Unity Week, a series of rallies and patriotic displays across the country, intended to counter the next big antiwar demonstration, a march on Washington scheduled for November 15. Hope, who could never resist a presidential call to service, agreed.

  National Unity Week—cast as a nonpartisan event, but clearly orchestrated by the White House—was overshadowed by the November 15 peace march, which drew 250,000 people, the largest crowd ever to march in the nation’s capital. But Hope’s involvement in the White House–backed effort to blunt the protest seemed to be a tipping point. The comedian who wanted to be loved by everyone was now a symbol of a war many people hated.

  Suddenly, Hope found himself a target of protests. “Where There’s Death, There’s Hope,” read a leaflet handed out to students arriving for a Hope appearance at the University of Michigan. At the University of Washington in Seattle, seven hundred protesters staged a peace vigil outside the auditorium where Hope was appearing. “Hell, I’m for peace, but not at all costs,” Hope told a reporter afterward. “Why don’t they march against the North Vietnamese?” Some colleges canceled Hope appearances, for fear of the protests he might spark.

  Like his friend Agnew, Hope blamed the press for overplaying the antiwar protests. “It’s those small minorities on campus that make the headlines,” he said in response to a student reporter’s question at Clemson University. “The news media are guilty of blowing this kind of disturbance way out of proportion.” At a press conference for National Unity Week, he even lashed out at his own network, claiming that an NBC News report on unequal treatment of black soldiers in Vietnam used “rigged clips” and was “not honest.” (NBC News
president Reuven Frank sprang to the show’s defense: “I have no doubt that Hope spoke his criticism of our Vietnam coverage sincerely. But his comments are wrong.”)

  Family and health concerns distracted Hope for much of 1969. The hemorrhaging in his left eye returned, and he was hospitalized twice for treatment, in January and May. Then in June, while he was accepting an honorary degree at Bowling Green University in Ohio, he got word that his oldest brother, Ivor, seventy-seven, had died suddenly of a heart attack in Cleveland. Only a few days after the funeral, his youngest brother, George (still employed by Bob as a “production coordinator” on his specials), died of lung cancer, at age sixty. Shaken by the loss of two siblings in just a week, Hope cut short a four-day engagement at the Pikes Peak Festival in Colorado Springs, returned to Palm Springs, and took most of the next month off.

  In August the Hopes celebrated a happier family occasion, the wedding of their youngest daughter, Nora, to Sam McCullagh, an assistant dean of admissions at the University of San Francisco. Nora, who was a favorite of her father’s but whose relations with her mother were strained, had graduated from San Francisco College for Women and worked for a time in New York City, before returning to San Francisco to marry McCullagh, whom she had dated in college. Their wedding reception in the Hopes’ backyard was a more modest affair than the extravagant party for Linda seven months earlier. Still, Bob did his usual stand-up routine, Dolores sang “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever,” and the 250 guests included such notables as Stuart Symington and Phyllis Diller.