Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,772

This is the grave of Bob Hope.

Born in 1903 in London, England, Leslie Townes Hope came from something of an artistic family. His father was a stonemason, but his mother had done some opera, though she was mostly a housecleaner when her kids were around. The family emigrated to the United States in 1908. Hope was a preforming kind of funny kid. The family was pretty poor so there wasn’t much incentive for him not to busk on the streets, doing songs and comedy and whatever else would get people’s attention. He fought a bit too as an amateur boxer. He nearly died in 1921. His older brother had gotten a job as a lineman for an electric company, so Leslie got a job too as his assistant. They were clearing trees when one didn’t fall the right way and fell right on Hope. He required reconstructive surgery on his face.

Hope didn’t go by Bob until 1929. By that time, he was at the lower rungs of show business. He and a buddy had a little comedy act that Fatty Arbuckle happened to see and he found them some more consistent work. A lot of this work was blackface and he had his buddy did a blackface Siamese twins act. Now that’s some comedy gold. Well, people told Hope he should just go solo and he did and he started getting some parts of Broadway, some screen tests for the movies, bigger roles. He started moving toward name recognition in 1933 when he was cast as the lead in the Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields Broadway musical Roberta. That led to a bunch more Broadway and then NBC hired him as a radio voice. The Pepsodent Show Starring Bob Hope starting in 1938. It soon became the most popular radio show in the country. Hope stayed on the radio consistently into the mid 50s, only leaving when everyone started buying TVs and the medium died as a source of mass entertainment.

Hope reached Hollywood in 1938, when he was cast in The Big Broadcast of 1938, starring W.C. Fields. Hope’s big piece in it was singing “Thanks for the Memories,” which later became his signature song when he was slinging patriotic nostalgia across America. He became one of the most solid comic performers of the 1940s and starred in around 50 films, appearing total in around 70. The most iconic of his films is the seven road films he did with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour. This began with Road to Singapore in 1940. Then came The Road to Zanzibar in 1941, Road to Morocco in 1942, Road to Utopia in 1946, Road to Rio in 1947, Road to Bali in 1952, and a last attempt to cash in with Road to Hong Kong in 1962. I haven’t seen any of these; I am sure the orientalism is astounding. The funny thing about these movies, other than said orientalism, is that Paramount execs were shocked at how good the chemistry was between Hope and Crosby, but they had no idea that the two had worked together in vaudeville. Hope and Lamour had great chemistry too and became very good friends over the years.

Hope became the host for anything where you needed the blandest middle America person possible, even if he was English himself. Thus, he hosted the Academy Awards 19 times. He also became the master of the variety show TV special. Christmas shows were especially popular. The biggest companies would sponsor his shows–Texaco, GM, Chrysler, etc. Bob Hope became America to a generation of whites like my grandparents, for whom the blandest entertainment possible was ideal. I mean, for my grandparents, Hope wasn’t Lawrence Welk–no one could top that master of entertainment for a couple from North Dakota and Nebraska–but Bob was right there behind him.

Hope became a rock-ribbed conservative and, of course, a gigantic supporter of the American military. He started doing tours for the USO in 1941 to visit soldiers overseas and he continued this for the next fifty years, his last being in 1991. Naturally enough, the USO program makes a lot of sense, though let’s be fair, by the 70s or so, Hope’s ability to make any kind of meaningful connection with young soldiers was pretty limited. But hey, you could tell your parents you saw Bob Hope! He brought his friends along on these tours too, particularly Dorothy Lamour.

Hope was a complete reactionary on politics and as the nation changed in the 1960s, Hope became an entertainment representative to those who hated all of that. Reagan did too, but no one really took Reagan that seriously as a performer, whereas Hope was more a national icon based in Hollywood. He hated all of it–hippies, women’s liberation, gays, drugs, civil rights. He loved killing commies in Vietnam. He and Nixon became friends; he and Reagan were always friends. He also became the kind of extremely reactionary Catholic that was a precursor to the modern Supreme Court controlled by Opus Dei nutcases. That didn’t happen until 1998 though. Like a lot of the modern far-right Catholic movement, he was a convert and those are the worst kind. Hope was always pretty into charity stuff and at the end of his life, he was giving away all his money to the Catholic Church, as you can see from his grave above. This wasn’t just an old man being cheated out of his money. Hope had his wits and his comedy with him to the end, once joking months before he died, “I’m so old, they’ve canceled my blood type,” which is a pretty good joke.

I am also somewhat fascinated by the Bob Hope house, designed in 1973 to look like a volcano.

I’d say more spaceship upon first glance, but sure, volcano works too.

Hope’s style–nerdy, self-deprecating–became a major influence on a lot of comedians. Among them is Conan O’Brien, who has openly stated his admiration for Hope. It’s worth remembering through all of the talk about Hope’s reactionary politics that the guy was actually pretty funny. We shouldn’t forget that.

Hope worked as long as he possibly could, which I completely respect. He only left public life entirely in 1999, when he was 96 years old. He died in 2003. He was 100 years old.

Bob Hope is buried with no small amount of subtlety in Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana, Mission Hills, California. His burial there is perfect in a sense that the other grave I’ve covered in this seires is the mass graves of all the indigenous people who died at the mission. Not sure ol’Bob really cared about that one.

If you would like this series to visit other comedians of the mid-century, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Bing Crosby is in Culver City, California and Groucho Marx is also in Mission Hills, California, but at a real cemetery. As it turns out, Lenny Bruce is in the same cemetery as Groucho. That sounds like a good destination to me. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.