Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 11, 1993 TAG: 9305120053
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB THOMAS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Long
Bob Hope strolls down the long hall of his Toluca Lake mansion with a hint of the dancer's gait he used on thousands of stages dating back to vaudeville.
He shows some signs of his nearly 90 years now, but he remains the slick wisecracker who has conquered every entertainment medium.
He enters his "playroom," sunny, elegantly furnished quarters with a few mementos, including a Norman Rockwell portrait of the comedian, his eyes mischievous, lips pursed as if ready for a timely quip.
Hope's face today seems little changed. The skin is smooth and tanned from daily golf, the voice is strong and clear, the profile suggestive of the slopes at Aspen.
Hope turns 90 on May 29, and he'll celebrate the way he likes best - with a television special. This one will be a whopper, three hours on NBC (WSLS Channel 10) on May 14 with a multitude of stars and ex-presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush, as well as Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hope has entertained every White House occupant from Franklin D. Roosevelt on.
Did he ever meet a president he didn't like?
"I sure didn't. I liked them all. And if I didn't like them, I made believe I liked them. Because they're in a pretty good spot, you know."
Hope recalls meeting Clinton in Little Rock a few years ago. "He was governor then, and he took me to his house and introduced me to Hillary. That night when I was doing the show, he got up and gave a speech. So he was rehearsing even then."
Hope's generally good health could be attributed to exercise: nightly walks, golf every day at the nearby Toluca Lake course ("Golf keeps you young - if you win"). Genetics helps; his English grandfather lived to be 100.
One health problem has been Hope's eyes. "I've got a hemorrhage in the right eye now, and I used to have one in the left eye," he says. "I'm a walking hemorrhage."
"He takes his ailments beautifully," reports Dolores Reade Hope, his wife for 59 years. "He is a model of acceptance. The toughest thing for him to accept is the eye problem; he doesn't seem to understand it. Otherwise he's like a prizefighter [which he briefly was]. He rolls with the punches."
The years have also eroded his hearing; interviewers are well advised to shout.
"Dr. House says Bob is his only failure," says Dolores, referring to Dr. Howard House of the famed House Ear Clinic in Los Angeles. "Bob has a brand-new, $1,200 hearing device in his drawer, but he refuses to wear it."
She observes that her husband "seems to be automatically cutting down on his schedule, taking on less commitments." Yet he still undergoes travels that would be unthinkable for most 90-year-olds.
Linda Hope, his daughter who is a television producer, comments: "He doesn't seem to be on the same kind of merry-go-round. But sometimes you wonder. On May 13, he'll get his fourth star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On the next day, the day of the TV show, he'll be in Noblesville, Ind., for a show. On May 15 he'll be in Rome, Ga., then on to Texas."
Gene Perrett, a Hope joke writer since 1969, says his boss's mode of operation has changed in only one respect.
"God bless fax," the gagman remarks.
"Bob is anti-anything new; he likes his way of doing things. Then one day he was on the road and a hotel bellboy delivered jokes that had arrived by fax. Bob installed a fax at his home, and life has been simpler [for the writers] ever since."
Perrett has noticed Hope slowing down a little, "but he resists it. He never complains. Once we were in a meeting and he said, `Fellas, I gotta take a rest. I had a root canal this morning.'
"If I'd had a root canal, I'd have been home with two nurses in attendance."
Hope's history is part of the American legend: his birth as Leslie Townes Hope in Eltham, England, on May 29, 1903. The family's emigration to Cleveland, Ohio, when Bob was 4. Winning a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest at 10. His professional debut in a Fatty Arbuckle revue.
Hope got into vaudeville in a dancing act with a partner, George Byrne. They added a few comedy bits, and soon Hope realized he earned more applause with his jokes than his singing. He launched his single act and proved so successful that he was booked for a 1927 Broadway show, "Sidewalks of New York." The show folded. Back to vaudeville.
He remembers vaudeville with fondness: "It was fine, because you had an audience, and you could ad-lib and play around."
Hope returned to Broadway for "Ballyhoo of 1932" and followed with the hit "Roberta." In the 1936 "Ziegfeld Follies," he sang, "I Can't Get Started" to Eve Arden. "Red, Hot and Blue," with Jimmy Durante and Ethel Merman, produced another hit song, Cole Porter's "It's De-lovely."
The Broadway years ended when Paramount brought him to Hollywood for "The Big Broadcast of 1938," which starred W.C. Fields. The movie provided his theme song, "Thanks for the Memory," sung with Shirley Ross.
Hope had appeared on radio since 1932, but he had never scored a hit until "The Pepsodent Show" in 1938. "I was No. 1 in radio for several years, and that helped the pictures," he observes.
Hopes movie career soared after Paramount teamed him in 1940 with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour in "Road to Singapore."
He explained that Crosby organized a show every Friday night during the season at the Del Mar racetrack, which he and Pat O'Brien founded in the mid-1930s.
"Bing and I had worked together in New York at the old Capitol theater," Hope recalls. "We did four shows a day, and we wanted to change every day, so we ad-libbed new things. It was a helluva act. We did this show at Del Mar, and a producer went back to Paramount the next day and said, `We gotta put these guys together; they work great.' He didn't know we had rehearsed it for weeks and weeks.
"We ended up doing seven `Road' pictures."
In March of 1941, Hope took his radio show to March Field, Calif. The response from the servicemen was so overwhelming that he continued broadcasting almost exclusively from military bases until June 1948. His first long trip was to Alaska in 1942. The next year his troupe covered England, Africa, Sicily and Iceland. In 1944, he toured the South Pacific from Eniwetok to New Guinea. In 1945 he followed the victorious troops through France and Germany.
"Those audiences were sensational," he sighs. "We always took a little help with us, like two or three gorgeous gals. They never complained about that."
His travels continued over the years, to Korea, Berlin, Beirut, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, and every other trouble spot where Americans were stationed. Only during the Vietnam War did his reputation suffer. He supported the American troops he had entertained, arousing vitriolic attacks from anti-war activists.
The criticism stung and confounded Hope, who had never encountered negative publicity. "I've seen too many wars to say that war is beautiful," he says. "I've been in burn wards, and I've smelled burned flesh. I've walked through hospital wards where I had to grab the bed to keep my balance.
"I appreciate the Americans who have laid down their lives for our country. I got hooked on that thing, and if that stops me from getting awards, I'll have to live with it."
In the past two years Hope has been under fire from environmentalists who want him to donate 7,400 acres of land in the Santa Monica mountains for a national preserve. As the largest private landowner in the coastal range north of Los Angeles, he had optioned land to developers for a golf course and upscale homes. Under a publicity barrage, he has offered a compromise, but the matter has not been settled.
The inevitable question to a man at 90: Will he ever stop performing?
"I'm a kid," he jokes. "No, I won't quit as long as I feel good. I enjoy working and doing something. Playing to an audience gives you something to work on, something to do. I like it."
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB