Jeff Abraham, one of the great students of old-time comedy, was an irreplaceable resource throughout, leading me to countless new finds, recordings, and sources. Stephen Silverman, of People magazine, provided me with insights into the Hope family and introductions to several relatives who became valuable sources. Dick Burgheim, the great Time Inc. editor, my former boss at TV-Cable Week and author of a 1967 Time cover story on Hope, was an inspiration and sounding board for me throughout. And Bill Faith, author of the most definitive Hope biography to date, was most generous in giving his time and help to a fellow biographer.
In addition to the people quoted in the book, many others were important in connecting me with sources, providing background, and helping me develop my ideas. Among them I would especially like to thank Mary Altman, Robert Bader, Gary Giddins, Gloria Greer, Joanne Kaufman, Dennis Klein, Kristiina Laakso, Robert Morton, Richard Niles, Robert Osbourne, Marvin Paige, Hermine Rhodes, Jeff Ross, Richard Schickel, Marion Solomon, Maureen Solomon, and Bill Zehme.
At Simon & Schuster, I am forever indebted to David Rosenthal, who commissioned this book and shared my conviction that a major biography of Hope was overdue, and to his successor, Jonathan Karp, who showed such enthusiasm for a project he inherited. I was incredibly lucky to have an editor, Priscilla Painton, who is also a great friend and a longtime colleague from Time. She was an astute and constructive critic of the book, a godsend during some of the tough times I endured during its writing, and an absolute pleasure to work with from beginning to end. Her assistants, Sydney Tanigawa and Sophia Jimenez, along with the entire production staff at Simon & Schuster, made the process as easy as I could imagine.
My agent, Kris Dahl, was, as always, a great rock of support and dedicated friend every step of the way. I will always be grateful for her advice and unshakable faith in me, both on this book and over the years.
Finally, I must thank the most important person in my life, my wife, Charla Krupp, who died of breast cancer during the writing of this book. We were married for nineteen years, and she was my greatest editor, adviser, cheerleader, and life inspiration. She read early drafts of the first few chapters of this book, and her tough criticism inspired me to keep striving to meet her high standards, even in her absence. I cannot express the sorrow I feel that she is not here with me to share what she helped produce. I only hope that it carries some of her spirit, as I do every moment of every day.
About the Author
© HOWARD SCHATZ
RICHARD ZOGLIN is a contributing editor and theater critic for Time magazine. His book Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-Up in the 1970s Changed America is considered the definitive history of that seminal era in stand-up comedy. Zoglin is a native of Kansas City, Missouri, and currently lives in New York City.
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Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-Up in the 1970s Changed America
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Notes
INTRODUCTION
“World’s Last Bob Hope Fan”: Onion, July 31, 2002, http://www.theonion.com/articles/worlds-last-bob-hope-fan-dies-of-old-age,3061/.
“To be paralyzingly”: Christopher Hitchens, “Hopeless,” Slate.com, August 1, 2003, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2003/08/hopeless.html.
“I grew up loving him”: Woody Allen, interview with author.
“Do you think anybody here knows”: Larry Gelbart, interview with author.
“the unabashed show-off”: Leo Rosten, “Bob Hope: Gags and Riches,” Look, February 24, 1953.
“Bob had no intellectual curiosity”: Katherine Green, interview with author.
“Everybody came to attention”: Sam McCullagh, interview with author.
“He was funnier than the monologues”: Gelbart, interview with author.
a starstruck stewardess fawned: Arthur Freeman, letter to the editor, Times of London, July 31, 2003.
The bishop who was to introduce Hope: Recounted by Nathaniel Lande, interview with author.
“Once you worked for Hope”: Hal Kanter, interview with author.
“What time can you get here?”: Frank Liberman, unpublished memoir.
“Now you’re talkin’ ”: Ibid.
“Bob, this gal comes from New York”: J. Anthony Lukas, “This Is Bob (Politician-Patriot-Publicist) Hope,” New York Times Magazine, October 4, 1970.
“the world’s only happy comedian”: Lupton A. Wilkinson, “Hope Springs Eternal,” Los Angeles Times, December 7, 1941.!
“Deep down inside”: “Fish Don’t Applaud,” Time, October 25, 1963.
every morning Bob Hope would get up: Elliott Kozak, interview with author.
“Playing the European theater”: Bob Hope, I Never Left Home (Simon & Schuster, 1944), 15.
“It is painfully obvious to us”: Richard Schickel, Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity (Doubleday, 1985), 217.
“I believe this operation can take place”: Letter from Howard Luck, October 1969, Hope archives, Library of Congress.
“This is just to thank you for the lemon pie”: Letter from Hope, July 10, 1974, Hope archives.
“She is in the hospital”: Letter from Donna Moore, October 8, 1967, Hope archives.
“Dear Kelly: Remember me?”: Letter from Hope, October 24, 1967, Hope archives.
CHAPTER 1: OPENING
“Lord Hope, 17th baronet”: Birmingham News Age-Herald, December 15, 1935, Hope archives.
“lured the aristocratic scion”: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, undated, Hope archives.
the family moved from Borth: The account of Avis’s early years comes largely from Jim Hope’s unpublished memoir, “Mother Had Hopes,” which is based primarily on the recollections of his mother. Some of it is corroborated in a report on Hope’s genealogy done for the Hope family by Research International in 1979 (Hope archives).
The records of the parish school: Alan Blackmore, interview with author. A grade school would presumably be more scrupulous in obtaining the correct birth date of its students.
suggests that Avis was most likely taken: Ibid.
By the time she appears: 1891 census records, administrative county of Glamorgan, Wales. Avis may also be listed in the 1881 census for Borth as well, but the entry is confusing. A nine-year-old girl whose name appears to be “Ivis Towis,” born in Middlesex, London, is recorded as a “boarder,” living with a woman named Jane Lewis and her son John. Intriguingly, a man named Abraham Lloyd Lewis and his family are living on the same street.
“Why, she’s just a baby”: J. Hope, “Mother Had Hopes,” 19.
“I have not seen a handsomer man”: Ibid., 50.
“You know you’re the only girl”: Ibid., 88.
“When he would be in the house”: Ibid., 134.
“I was defending my dogs”: Bob Hope, Have Tux, Will Travel (Simon & Schuster, 1954), 11.!
“Whose lovely little girl are you?”: J. Hope, “Mother Had Hopes,” 188.
“The very air in America”: Ibid., 192–94.
“We started planning and figuring”: Ibid., 195.
“Gone to Canada”: Alan Blackmore, interview with author.
“Everybody on the ship was in sympathy”: J. Hope, “Mother Had Hopes,” 200.
Leslie is the fifth of six: Ship manifest, USS Philadelphia, March 21, 1908.
“I’ll swear she looked”: J. Hope, “Mother Had Hopes,” 203.
Cleveland was not a bad place: William Ganson Rose, Cleveland: The Making of a City (World Publishing, 1990), 600–607, 679–88.
&nb
sp; The bustling area . . . was becoming known: Charles Asa Post, Doan’s Corners and the City Four Miles West (Caxton, 1930).
“Euclid and Cedar had Brush arc lights”: Map of Doan’s Corners, circa 1900, Western Reserve Historical Society library, Cleveland, OH.
“not only an artist with the stone-cutting tools”: Hope, Have Tux, 14.
“I remember Dad saying”: Ibid., 19.
“For when he was sober”: J. Hope, “Mother Had Hopes,” 329.
“I have seen Harry in a great group”: Ibid., 266.
“She had the kind of skin”: Ibid., 209.
“unless we put our bare bottoms”: Ibid., 233.
“Ach! How many Hopes”: Ibid., 313.
“Looking back on my Cleveland boyhood”: Hope, Have Tux, 18.
“You sat in front of me”: Letter from Jessie Morris-Harman, September 9, 1971, Hope archives.
“He was a big show-off”: Timothy White, “The Road Not Taken,” Rolling Stone, March 20, 1980.
“If you want to be a success”: Hope tells the Rockefeller anecdote in Have Tux, 27, among other places.
“As his leisure increased”: Grace Goulder, John D. Rockefeller: The Cleveland Years (Western Reserve Historical Society, 1973), 233.
“We would hang around the corner”: Letter from Norman J. Freeman, January 18, 1973, Hope archives.
“Don’t worry about Leslie”: William Robert Faith, Bob Hope: A Life in Comedy (Da Capo Press, 2003), 11.
“you and ‘Whitey’ fattened me up”: Letter from Isabele M. Goss, April 7, 1964, Hope archives.
“My father had a Buick”: Letter from William Hoagland, February 3, 1967, Hope archives.
he was sent to reform school: Boys Industrial School, Inmate Case Record #20546, vol. 26, Ohio Historical Society.
“adjudged a delinquent”: May 17, 1918, Juvenile Court records, Cuyahoga County, OH.!
“I guess it’s no secret”: Typewritten jokes for Boys Club appearance, May 4, 1967, Hope archives.
readmitted to the school: Boys Industry School, Inmates Case Records. In the faded records, the last digit of the date of Hope’s final release is unclear; it is either 1920 or 1921.
Jack was trying to rescue a fellow soldier: J. Hope, “Mother Had Hopes,” 337.
“Leslie was a good worker”: Ibid., 343.
“It is not true my nose”: Hope, Have Tux, 10.
“Bob helped out weekends”: Maurice Condon, “They Remember Bob,” TV Guide, April 16, 1966.
“He was a good young fighter”: Ibid.
“I probably outweighed Hope”: “Two Recall Assists for Bob Hope,” Cleveland Press, April 20, 1960.
“In the first round I played cozy”: Hope, Have Tux, 8.
Les and Whitey were walking: Various accounts of the attack are given in Have Tux, Will Travel (9), “Mother Had Hopes” (317–20), and the Cleveland Press (undated, Hope archives).
“He’s not half as good as you”: Hope, Have Tux, 6.
“Lester Hope will teach you to dance”: Business card, Hope archives.
“Lester Hope . . . started a new contest”: “Council Takes No Action to Halt Dancing Contests,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 17, 1923.
“Mildred was tall, blonde”: Hope, Have Tux, 38.
“She worshipped Leslie”: J. Hope, “Mother Had Hopes,” 360–61.
“He would follow me home”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 13.
Mildred claimed that Les . . . kept all the money: Ibid., 14.
“ ‘This is a little dance’ ”: Hope, Have Tux, 39.
“When we came out to do”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 14.
“We wore brown derbies”: Hope, Have Tux, 40.
“The whole offering is built”: Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 28, 1923.
CHAPTER 2: VAUDEVILLE
In 1900 the United States had an estimated two thousand: The statistics and other details of vaudeville’s early years are drawn largely from Trav S.D., No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous (Faber and Faber, 2005).
“Tab shows were a special part”: Hope, Have Tux, 41.
“Frankly we had all thought Lefty Durbin”: Faith, Life in Comedy, 16.
“By the end of the week the towels”: Ibid., 17.
At a hotel in Bedford: Hope describes the affair and the hotel incident in Have Tux, 44.!
she broke off the relationship: “Hope’s Morgantown Saga Reviewed,” Morgantown Post, April 28, 1966, Hope archives.
Hope’s partner died: The description of Durbin’s death is drawn from Hope’s own brief account in Have Tux, 45; Faith, Life in Comedy, 18–19; and Jim Hope’s recollections in “Mother Had Hopes,” 359–60. Lawrence Quirk, in Bob Hope: The Road Well-Traveled (Applause Books, 2000), 26–27, gives the most uncharitable view of Hope’s actions.
“George was pink-cheeked”: Hope, Have Tux, 45.
dubbed “Dancers Supreme”: Advertisements for Jolly Follies, Hope archives.
“After that we told Maley”: Hope, Have Tux, 46.
The team added bits of comedy: Hope, Have Tux, 49.
“The most versatile couple”; “they stopped the show”; “For the premier honors”: Undated newspaper clips, Hope archives.
“I taught myself to play”: Hope, Have Tux, 49.
“Because it’ll go to his head”: Personal reminiscence of the reviewer of Hope’s book The Road to Hollywood, Daily Variety, July 26, 1977.
One of their models was . . . Duffy and Sweeney: Hope describes their act with much affection in Have Tux, 52–53.
“Our act opened with a soft-shoe”: Ibid., 55.
State Theater; Oriole Terrace; Stanley Theater: Contracts for Hope and Byrne’s Detroit and Pittsburgh appearances, Hope archives.
“the thinnest man in vaudeville”: Hope, Have Tux, 57; publicity shots of Hope and Byrne, Hope archives.
“If you’re only half as good”: Hope, Have Tux, 56.
“the greatest draw attraction”; “The finish is a wow”: Review reprinted in an advertisement for the show in Variety, March 18, 1925.
“They have some fast dances”: Unidentified newspaper review, Hope archives.
“At first it was a funny sensation”: Hope, Have Tux, 56.
By 1925, only a hundred all-live: Trav, No Applause, 250.
More than 260 shows . . . opened on Broadway: Larry Stempel, Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater (W. W. Norton, 2010), 207.
Getting cast in the show: Hope and Byrne’s abbreviated stint in Sidewalks of New York is recounted in Hope, Have Tux, 60–61; and Faith, Life in Comedy, 24.
“You ought to go West”: Hope, Have Tux, 65.
Hope called an agent in Cleveland: Hope describes his pivotal engagement in New Castle in Have Tux, 65–66, among other places.
a suave comedian named Frank Fay: Trav, No Applause, 183, 233. Glimpses of Fay’s work as a vaudeville emcee can be seen in the 1937 film Nothing Sacred and other movie roles from the 1930s.
“I think I’ll try it alone”: Hope, Have Tux, 66.!
“Without him I’m nothing”: Quirk, Road Well-Traveled, 38.
After the split, Byrne spent a few years: Byrne obituary, Variety, December 28, 1966.
“My mother told me”: Avis Hope Eckelberry, interview with author.
“If I don’t get any work by Saturday”: J. Hope, “Mother Had Hopes,” 386.
“I went out, bought a big red bow tie”: Hope, Have Tux, 67.
“Audiences knew that white performers”: Robert W. Snyder, Voice of the City: Vaudeville and Popular Culture in New York, 2nd ed. (Ivan R. Dee, 2000), 120.
“Don’t ever put that cork on”: Hope, Have Tux, 67.
“I couldn’t get in anybody’s door”: Ibid., 68.
“I used to dance on that corner”: Miranda Hope, interview with author.
“Late of Sidewalks of New York”: Advertisement in Chicago Tribune, June 25, 1928.
“I thought Bob had more”: Hope, Have Tux, 75.
billed him on
the marquee as “Ben Hope”: John Lahr, “The C.E.O. of Comedy,” New Yorker, December 21, 1998. Hope repeated the anecdote many times, with varying responses from the theater manager.
“I had to tell you that you didn’t make it”: Letters from Harry A. Turrell, January 12, 1970, and October 24, 1975, Hope archives. Hope gives his own account of the Stratford engagement in Have Tux, 69–72.
signing a contract with the Stratford: Marcus Loew Western Booking Agency contract, Hope archives.
“I learned a lot about getting laughs”: Hope, Have Tux, 71.
“He was a bright package”: Lahr, “C.E.O. of Comedy.”
“a new twentieth-century aesthetic of shazz and pizzazz”: Trav, No Applause, 161.
He also had a new partner: Hope describes their act, though little about Troxell, in Have Tux, 72.
“When I walked out before my first Fort Worth audience”: Hope, Have Tux, 74.
As Hope recalled the events: Ibid., 77.
“I offered Lee Stewart $35”: Letter from Dolph Leffler, May 13, 1959, Hope archives.
“How’s the audience here?”: Hope, Have Tux, 77.
“No, lady, this is not John Gilbert”: Ibid., 78.
“Hope, assisted by an unbilled girl”: Variety, November 6, 1929.
The salary: a hefty $475 a week: Contract with Keith–Albee Vaudeville Exchange, Hope archives.
$100 a week, according to Hope: Hope, Have Tux, 80.
Hope crisscrossed the country: Map of Hope’s 1929–30 vaudeville tour, “Bob Hope and American Variety,” Library of Congress exhibit, available online at http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/bobhope/index.html.
“socked in heavy on the laugh register”: Billboard, November 23, 1929.
“This act flows”: Variety, June 11, 1930.
“Do us a favor, take it out”: Hope, Have Tux, 82.
“Girl with Bob Hope”: Mollie Gay, “Clothes and Clothes,” Variety, November 27, 1929.
he accompanied the offer with a marriage proposal: Rosequist gives her account of the incident in Faith, Life in Comedy, 41.
Hope: Entertainer of the Century Page 55