Friday, Dec. 22, 1967

The Comedian as Hero

STARS

(See Cover)

They'd know that jaunty saunter 0anywhere. Bob Hope comes onstage with the cocky glide of a golfer who has just knocked off three birdies for a 68 and nailed Arnold Palmer to the clubhouse door. The crooked grin spreads wide, the clear brown eyes stay cool, and the audience roars its welcome; they can hardly wait for Hope to sock it to them. And so he does. Five, six gags a minute. Pertinent, impertinent, leering, perishing. And sometimes plopping, but only for an instant. When he misses, the famous scooped snoot shoots defiantly skyward, the prognathous jaw drops in mock anguish, or he goes into a stop-action freeze. Sometimes he just repeats the line until the audience gets it. They don't have to laugh of course --but if they don't, it's almost treason.

Probably nobody recalls the sprightly Hope ebullience and the Hope-engendered laughs so well as two generations of U.S. military men. For twelve Christmases straight, Hope has spent the holidays with the troops--in Alaska and Korea, in the Azores and North Africa, in Guadalcanal and London and Viet Nam. Last week, with a company that included Raquel Welch, Miss World (Madeleine Hartog-Bel), Singer Barbara McNair, Bing Crosby's son Phil and Bandleader Les Brown, Hope arrived in Bangkok for his fourth Viet Nam tour. No doubt there will be old soldiers who will tell him that they saw him in Bougainville in 1944 and youngsters who will say that their dads caught his act in Frankfurt. And no doubt Hope will quip that "I hope your grandfather didn't miss me at Appomattox--I was great!"

Tee Off. At 64, Hope is the Will Rogers of the age, a kind of updated, urbanized farmer's almanac of political and social currents. Rogers was the sly rustic, a humorist with a lariat; Hope is the self-caricaturing sophisticated comic with a paradiddle patter. Rogers was show business, and so is Hope, and they share the same understanding of what is unique in American humor: a healthy irreverence for pomp and position. And they both succeeded by pitching their personalities across the footlights to touch their listeners with something close to folk wisdom. Some of Hope's lines even sound like Will Rogers'. "I like to see politicians with religion," he says. "It keeps their hands out where we can see them."

More than Rogers, Hope has become the friend of politicians and statesmen, tycoons and sportsmen. These are the public figures at whom he tees off at a banquet or on television; yet they cannot wait to tee off with him on the links the next day. He kids the starch out of them, and they feel better for it; a needle from Hope becomes an emblem instead of a scar.

Hope laces his wit with good taste. He may sometimes play the ogling goof, but he is essentially a monologist who portrays no other character than Bob Hope. Jack Benny is a "character" comedian--stingy Jack. Such comics as Danny Kaye, Red Skelton and Jackie Gleason shine best in sketches. Many of today's young monologists, in the style of the late Lenny Bruce, specialize in acutely perceived, often bitter commentary, not to say four-letter words. Hope's comedy is broader, less original in viewpoint, but it is almost always clean, just as topical, more deftly timed, and tuned more to the sensibilities of his audiences.

How he manages to deliver a barb without offending is a matter of chemistry that he himself cannot define precisely. "I think it conies from experience," he says. "I know most of these people personally and I know when something will hurt them. I can get away with nuances and insinuations that will sting them a little." He is, says a friend, "lethally neutral." Every target --tycoon or President, Republican or Democrat, general or sergeant, victor or vanquished--gets equal time.

Dollars & Old Shoes. Last week, during his NBC Christmas TV special, Hope played a Santa Claus who gets arrested by Patrolman Phil Silvers for parking on a Los Angeles freeway--hardly a format for getting off cracks about public figures. He did it anyway, by exhibiting gifts from his bag: a special award from the Optimists Club for Harold Stassen; a book of one-syllable words for William F. Buckley Jr.; an electric blanket for Frank Sinatra; a surfboard for General de Gaulle, to be used as a tongue depressor.

He got off a few other good ones during his monologue. De Gaulle, said Hope, is very upset about the British devaluation of the pound. "He wired Presient Johnson, telling him, 'Lower your dollar,' and Lyndon wired back, 'Up your francs.' De Gaulle also attacked Israel. He's furious because they're occupying his birthplace--Bethlehem."

Closer to home, Hope noted recently at retirement ceremonies for Admiral David L. McDonald that "the admiral wants to introduce a new military concept--victory." Ronald Reagan, says Bob, "has a secret plan to win the war. He will release it just as soon as John Wayne finishes his picture." And how about that White House wedding? "Lynda Bird looked just marvelous, and I'm sure she and General Robb will be happy when they come back from their honeymoon." When the young couple left the White House, "L.B.J. threw a pair of old shoes at them. Unfortunately Hubert was still in them."

Fold & the General. The body of Hope's work is nothing less than an index to history, told in one-and two-liners. Back in the '40s, he reported that in their strategy talks, F.D.R. and Churchill wondered: "When and where will we attack the enemy and how will we keep Eleanor out of the crossfire?" F.D.R.'s Fala was "the only dog to be housebroken on the Chicago Tribune." In 1954, Hope had it "on good authority that Senator Joe McCarthy is going to disclose the names of 2,000,000 Communists. He just got his hands on a Moscow telephone book."

In those years, too, he noted that "the workers love Khrushchev very much. He hasn't got an enemy in the entire country. Quite a few under it." And Dwight Eisenhower was always "the pro from the White House. I knew him when he was a general--he had authority then." In the '60s, Hope declared that he had "played the South Pacific while Lieut. John Kennedy was there, and he was a very gay, carefree young man. Of course, all he had to worry about then was the enemy."

As a social commentator, Hope dares more than anyone else in show business to throw a pie in the industry's face. As emcee at the Oscar award ceremonies one year, he observed that "this is the night when war and politics are forgotten, and we find out who we really hate." For years he has kidded General David Sarnoff, who takes both his brigadier's star and position as RCA board chairman with great seriousness. But even Sarnoff chuckles when Hope whips out with: "When I started with the NBC network, he was using the enlisted-men's washroom." And he has certainly had the last say on the progress of television. After Newton Mi-now's 1961 complaint that TV was a "vast wasteland," Hope measured television's subsequent progress and concluded: "Mr. Newton Minow is a man of high ideals, whose needling, prodding and constructive suggestions have led our great industry up the path to The Beverly Hillbillies."

Good News. Nor does he spare the troops. In Viet Nam last Christmas, Hope told them that "it's such a thrill to see the Huntley-Brinkley show performed live. But you better get on the ball. If you don't get better ratings, this whole war may be canceled." Hope also had "good news" for the boys: "The country is behind you--50%."

Between shows, he spins through the hospitals, where he makes it a point to give the wounded everything but sympathy. "That's the last thing they want," he says. So he deliberately throws open the door of a ward and yells: "Okay, fellas, don't get up!" To a G.I. who has lost an arm: "You'll do anything to avoid the draft, won't you?" To another: "Did you see the show this evening, or were you already sick?" In the hospitals or in the field, it is not the cheers or the applause that affects Hope most, but "when one of those thick-necked kids come up to you, touches your sleeve and says Thanks,' that's gotta break you up."

The Ambassador. Serves him right. Hope has been breaking up audiences for nearly 50 years. Even his fellow showfolk, notoriously envious of talent, get practically blubbery about him. "You spell Bob Hope C-L-A-S-S," says Lucille Ball. Adds Joey Bishop: "I'd like to get the applause at the end of my show that he gets before he opens his mouth." Woody Allen, himself a gag writer as well as performer, says: "He has been a terrific influence on every standup, one-line monologist. The thing which makes him great just can't be stolen or imitated." Jack Benny, Hope's warmest admirer, says: "It's not enough just to get laughs. The audience has to love you, and Bob gets love as well as laughs from his audiences."

Watching Hope among. people, says Artist Marion Pike, a family friend, is "a most moving experience." As he ambles through a crowd, eyes light and smiles turn on in swift progression, like a series of lamps brightening up a corridor. What the crowds, large or small, recognize is not only a man who has made them laugh but one who, without sentimentality, ostentation or ballyhoo, has become a national hero. The trophy room in Hope's North Hollywood home is filled like an overendowed museum with awards, honorary degrees and gifts that would be the envy of a Nobel prizewinner. One of them is the gold medal, voted by Congress and presented to him by President Kennedy in 1963, honoring him as ''America's most prized Ambassador of Good Will." It gave Hope "one sobering thought. I received this for going outside the country. I think they are trying to tell me something."

John D. What they are trying to tell him, says a friend, is that "Bob wasn't born--he was woven by Betsy Ross." Actually, she only adopted him. Bob was born Leslie Townes Hope in a London suburb in 1903. Hope's own statement notwithstanding, his great-grandfather was not "a lookout for Lady Chatterley." His father, though, was a stonemason who took his family to Cleveland when Leslie was four.

For a time, it looked as if the kid was headed for trouble. He and his pals raised quite a bit of hell, hanging around pool parlors (where Bob became a pretty good hustler), swiping things from the local stores. He straightened out soon enough, and for a while sold newspapers on a street corner. John D. Rockefeller used to come by in his chauffeured car every day to pick up his 20 paper. One rainy afternoon the old millionaire handed Bob a dime. Hope had no change, so he offered to trust Rockefeller for the money. "He wouldn't hear of it," recalls Bob, "and so I had to run about 50 yards through the rain to a grocery store to break the dime. When I gave him his change, he thanked me and said, 'Always deal in cash, son,' and drove off."

Thigh-Slappers. Hope gave up journalism for a succession of other careers. As a soda jerk he was just a squirt. He laid an egg as a chicken plucker. As for boxing--well, as he says, "that's where I learned to waltz."

Perhaps that's what made him try show biz. He had won money in the Charlie Chaplin impersonation contests that were the craze at local vaudeville houses. Midway in his junior year at East High School, he dropped out to become a dancer at Cleveland's Bandbox Theater. His partners in subsequent years included a pair of Siamese twins and a neighborhood girl, Mildred Rosenquist. Years later, Hope said that "we would make seven or eight bucks, and I would split it with her." Mildred, now a California housewife, challenges that claim to this day. "Bob told me that we were playing for charity," she says. "He kept the money." The two were engaged for a few years, but Mildred broke it off. Her mother had said: "Don't marry him; he'll never amount to anything."

And who could dispute it? Hoofer Hope seemed to be going nowhere. At one desperate point, he took an ad in Variety: LES HOPE AVAILABLE. SONGS,

PATTER AND ECCENTRIC DANCING. Little by little he began to work comedy into his act. Straight man: "Where do the bugs go in the wintertime?" Hope: "Search me." Such thigh-slappers somehow emboldened him to try it as a single, and soon he turned up as a blackface emcee. Before he was 30, Bob (a name he thought sounded more "hiya fellas" than Les) was playing the Palace. Later, he was billed with another vaudeville hopeful, Bing Crosby. In his first Broadway show, Roberta, in 1933 (with Fred MacMurray and George Murphy), Hope played a Joe College-type bandleader. His best line was pure Hope: "Long dresses don't bother me; I've got a good memory." It was also in that year that Murphy took Hope around to a nightclub to hear New York City-born Singer Dolores Reade. They dated, and were married in 1934. Says Bob today: "George Murphy introduced me to my wife, but I voted for him anyway."

Gold Rush. A few years later, Paramount cast Bob in The Big Broadcast of 1938. Hope remembers it as "the first major picture that didn't win me an Oscar--and they say history repeats itself." About all that anyone else remembers is the song that he introduced in it, Thanks for the Memory. In 1939, Hope, Crosby and Dorothy Lamour were signed for The Road to Singapore (two other comedy teams--Burns and Allen, and Fred MacMurray and Jack Oakie--refused to touch it).

As late-show fans of the Road cycle know, gags took precedence over plot, locale and plausibility. Lamour would pop up in snowy Alaska during the Klondike gold rush wearing a sarong. The main goal of Hope and Crosby seemed to be to step on each other's lines, and the script was a dead letter. Once, when the writer happened onto the set, Hope called: "If you hear any of your own dialogue, yell bingo." A typical exchange, from Road to Utopia --Lamour: "You're facetious." Hope: "Keep politics out of this." Yet by 1962, when the great chase and all the hokey detours finally ended with The Road to Hong Kong, the seven Road shows had grossed over $50 million.

Row, Row, Row. At the same time, Hope was concentrating on mastering radio. He had misfired on his first guest shots in the mid-'30s. "I tried to do a relaxed, slow format like Jack Benny," he says, "but it wasn't right for me." Slowly, he evolved the technique of the trip-hammer monologue that was to propel him to the top of the Hoo-peratings. On his premiere in 1938, he opened: "How do you do, ladies and gentlemen. This is Bob Hope." That was followed by a single laugh from a stooge in the studio. "Not yet, Charlie," said Bob, "but don't leave!" Later, he started like a string of Chinese firecrackers: "Hello, folks, this is Bob Pepsodent Hope." Pow, pow, pow--joke, joke, joke. And a lot of them were dogs, dogs, dogs. Some friends "had a very exclusive wedding," went one. "They threw a Chinaman with every grain of rice." Or: "I want to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that we're broadcasting from NBC's new Hollywood studios ... a big beautiful building. They tell me it cost more than Mrs. Roosevelt's annual train fee." And the one about the excessive gadgetry in the new cars: "I pushed one button and opened a WPA bridge in Salt Lake City."

Much later, during the Truman Administration, Bob told his radio audience: "I loved the April Fools' gag a fellow pulled in Washington. He walked into the White House and said he was from Missouri, and before he could holler 'April fool!' he was a Cabinet member." By that time, Hope and his sidekicks--popeyed, siren-throated Jerry Colonna, Brenda and Cobina, and Bandleader Skinnay Ennis--had turned Tuesday into Bob Hope night in the U.S. Every Wednesday morning in those days, the Dow-Jones stock ticker used to carry the best of his jokes. During his ten years as toothpaste salesman, he claims, Pepsodent leapfrogged from No. 6 in sales to No. 1.

Benefits & Bundles. The day the draft began in 1940, Hope stepped up to the front lines of G.I. audiences. Beginning in March 1941, his weekly broadcasts originated from military bases. By the time of Pearl Harbor, he had won his first special Oscar (for good works), had already been honored with citations from the Greek War Relief Committee, Bundles for Britain, the Canadian Victory Loan Drive and President Roosevelt. During World War II, he traveled more than a million miles to deliver his smiles.-

The armies he entertained became his postwar army of fans. Hope's early memoir, I Never Left. Home, sold 1,600,000 copies, royalties for which he turned over to the National War Fund. By 1949, his movies--Monsieur Beaucaire, The Paleface, Sorrowful Jones, My Favorite Brunette--had established him as Hollywood's top box-office draw. The next year, he decided to get into TV "before Milton Berle uses up all my material." NBC paid him $40,000 for his first special. That same year, he won a Peabody Award for The Quick and the Dead, a four-part radio documentary on atomic energy, produced by Fred Friendly.

College Rounds. Nowadays, Hope has given up radio, but has increased his TV specials to nine a year, in addition to guest shots. Just a few weeks ago, busy as he was putting together his Viet Nam touring company, he taped a Hollywood Palace show with Crosby for ABC as well as his own NBC Christmas show. He also cranks out a movie a year, the last few of which have been excessively cornball--an embarrassment to his old fans. The Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell, which he just wrapped up this month with Phyllis Diller, is likely to be more of the same.

It may be that Hope gets more kicks from working live than on film. "You do a movie," he says, "and you have to wait to find out if it's any good. But personal appearances, that's instant satisfaction." He likes to perform in public for young people, and lately has been making the college rounds. A recent opener at U.C.L.A.: "Before it's too late, I want to make one thing clear--the only thing I'm recruiting here tonight is laughs."

And he'll go to remarkable lengths to get them, too. Once, Hope's plane circled for hours over a camp in Alaska before it was finally guided to a safe landing by a searchlight from a nearby mountain. After the performance ("Brace up, you're God's frozen people!"), Hope asked about the searchlight crew, pushed up to the outpost and performed a second show--for two lonely, grateful men. In 1963, just before his annual Christmas tour, Hope suffered a blood clot in his left eye. Doctors saved his sight with laser-beam surgery. While he was recuperating, his U.S.O. company went on without him to Ankara. Hope flew to Germany where an Air Force plane picked him up and ferried him to Turkey. "He looked like a sick man," says one of his assistants, "but when he walked on the stage, the roar that went up from those people was probably the world's greatest therapy. From that moment on you could physically see the change He was his old self, rarin to go."

Writers Squad. To the show-business professionals who have watched him work, Hope's old self is a remarkable study in technique--the powerful pause, the swift switch in subject matter, bridged by "And I wanna tell you --. " or "And how about ..." Although he is an extraordinarily witty man offstage, his schedule requires the support of a squad of writers who whack out jokes literally by the thousands. They earn in the thousands, too; his writers' payroll runs to about $500,-' 000 a year. Of his seven current gagmen, one, Norman Sullivan, has been with Hope for 30 years. Sullivan and the others work in teams. For this week's Viet Nam trip, the writers huddled for four' days and then brought their work to the boss. At the first read-through, Hope wrote an X beside the jokes that sounded most viable. Then he read again, placing a second X beside the better lines. On a third run-through, he circled the best of the lot. Of the thousand he started with, he will use only about 25 or 30 per show.

The remainder could fuel a whole career for a lesser comic, but Hope never sells his jokes or throws them away.

They are filed, by subject matter, in a vault in his home, but he never forgets them. His writers marvel that Hope can flip through dozens of gags as the occasion arises, and let loose like a slot machine gone ape.

NAFT, Fellas. His writers are always expected to be on hand for work. Bob once telephoned a gagman who was on his honeymoon. "I trust," said Hope slyly, "that I'm not interrupting any thing." The writers have their own word for Hope's emergency calls: NAFT--meaning Need A Few Things, fellas. Last month, when Hope was in London playing the Royal Variety show he put in a NAFT call to Writer Mort Lachman in Hollywood. "How about a few gags about me and four other guys sharing a dressing room?" Within an hour, the boys phoned back with five quickies ("The committee gave me a dressing room with four guys and Tanya the Elephant. After 15 minutes, the elephant got up and opened the window.")

On a military tour with his writers, Hope noticed that his airplane was go ing to land on grass. "Quick," he said, "gimme a coupla grass-runway jokes!" As soon as he landed, he quipped: "I want to thank the fellas who mowed the runway." Still, none of his friends doubt that Bob can write his own. Once when he arrived at a golf course in England, where he was to play a charity match, he discovered that his caddy would be an elderly Scotsman. Hope asked the old man about his experience. The Scotsman explained that he had been there for 45 years and knew every roll of the green. Then Hope asked: "How are you at finding balls?" "Very good," replied the caddy. "Then find one," said Hope, "and we'll start."

Pretty Sneaky. Next to performing, golf rules Hope's life. On his eight-acre estate in an otherwise middle-class neighborhood, the prized outdoor possession is not the swimming pool but a well-trimmed one-hole golf course. Soon Hope will build a large house in Palm Springs, Calif., that will cost close to a million dollars; there he will have

a chip-and-putt pad. He is a member

of 18 country clubs. If he cannot find

time to play 18 holes every day, he at

least manages to hit a bucket of balls

it a driving range. At times, he often

drifts over to his putting green at night in his pajamas.

He may toss off a few fast gags on the golf course, but his opponents take him seriously. He shoots steadily in the 70s and low 80s; his handicap has gone up from four to nine. Says Pal Bing Crosby: "I'd rather have him as a partner than as an opponent." That's because Hope can be pretty sneaky. "He'll get out there on the first tee," says Crosby, "and try to make a match. The first thing he does is talk his opponents out of their handicaps."

Without claiming his handicap, Hope has beaten Ben Hogan over nine holes, has tied Arnold Palmer. Once, he took $1,800 from Sportsman-Builder Del Webb, who now says, belatedly: "When you play with Hope, keep your hand on your wallet." Dolores Hope, a 13-handicap golfer herself, says she won't play with Bob again until he pays her the dollar she won in their last game; Bob just grumps. Jackie Gleason says that "Bob's only departure from sanity is his insistence that he can beat me."

Gleason and Hope once played a charity match in Florida. Hope dumped three shots in the water on the ninth hole.

"He kept expecting me to say something," says Gleason, "but I just sat there serenely puffing on a cigarette. When he finally got over the water, I just said, 'Nice shot.' It killed him."

It kills Hope to concede a putt, too. Most players will do so if the distance between ball and cup is "within the leather"--the length measured from the bottom of the handgrip to the club head. Not Bob; he always insists on measuring with whatever club has the longest grip.

A Nose for Land. After golf, Hope's favorite game is Monopoly--played with real money. He's got a nose for real estate properties as well as jokes. With Crosby, years ago, he got into a Texas oil deal that later brought him about $3,000,000. His business firm, Bob Hope Enterprises, owns 8,000 acres in Palm Springs, $35 million in property in Thousand Oaks near Los Angeles, 4,000-5,000 acres near Phoenix, more than 7,500 acres in the San Fernando Valley, 1,500 acres in Malibu, scattered properties in Burbank and the rest of Southern California and in Puer to Rico, and interests in the Cleveland Indians baseball team, a race track and a variety of broadcasting properties. These holdings, added to his homes in North Hollywood and Palm Springs, contribute to a net worth approaching $500 million.

Though he has a staff of managers and other aides, Hope himself is the key to the whole enterprise. More than one corporation boss has suggested that Bob is supremely capable of running any kind of major business. RCA Board Chairman David Sarnoff says that he is even slicker at the negotiating table than on the air. Richard Berg, who produced Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater for TV, says he "has a very crisp approach and a totally organized mind. He's not an easy man to please; you know he's measuring, testing you all the time."

Soft Shoe. Hope could have retired years ago, but it was not only his enjoyment of show business that prevented it. Too many people are dependent on him; besides, he says, "I've got a government to support." His gifts to charity are calculated in their entirety only by Hope, but unquestionably they run into the millions of dollars. He recently donated $802,000 to S.M.U. for a theater, $125,000 to the Los Angeles Music

Center. He gave 80 acres of land worth $500,000 in Palm Springs for an Eisenhower Medical Center, helped build a Catholic church in Formosa, was U.S. chairman of the Cerebral Palsy Foundation and the National Conference of Christians and Jews. He is a patsy for just about any call for a benefit performance or public function--a dinner for an old friend, a White House invitation, a sports-award shindig. Sometimes, when a benefit fails to raise its quota, Bob will write a personal check for the difference. Though he gets $20,000 to $25,000 for a college date, he always turns the check back to the college scholarship fund.

He has a legendary loyalty to his old vaudeville cronies, his brothers,- distant kin, in-laws of distant kin, acquaintances, agents and NBC ("30 unbroken years, and I've enjoyed every dollar of the relationship"). His wardrobe girl is an invalid who works from a wheelchair. He has seen to it that his old sidekick, Jerry Colonna, semipar-alyzed by a stroke, gets plenty of work.

He supports the widow of his longtime pressagent who died several years ago.

"If I quit," says Hope, "I'd fall apart." He tends to get sick on vacations, though he does go fishing about once a year. It's hardly any fun, he complains, "the fish don't applaud." His stamina comes from golf, a lot of walking and a lot of working. He'll launch into an old soft-shoe step while on the phone, sleeps irregularly but can cork off for a few seconds any old time. Wherever he goes, he takes his masseur, Fred Miron, who gives Hope a 45-minute rub every day. He loves practical jokes and mechanical toys; one favorite is a battery-driven Frankenstein monster that moves its arms and head in grisly fashion for about 30 seconds, then drops its pants and blushes.

Map Pins. On his travels, he loves to send postcards to friends. He is a lapsed Presbyterian, while Dolores takes her Catholicism very seriously. Once, on a trip to South America with Dolores, Bob sent a postcard to a pal. On one side was a photograph of Rio's Christ the Redeemer statue. On the other side, he wrote: "Look who met us at the pier. Was Dolores thrilled!"

In a business where marriages are made and dropped like options, the Hopes are an exceptional family. Despite Bob's peripatetic life, they have managed to raise a fine family of four adopted youngsters. Linda is a bright, smashing 28-year-old blonde who is working at becoming a documentary film maker. Tony, 27, recently got married, is a Harvard Law graduate working at 20th Century-Fox. Nora, 21, is a lively chick who is a secretary at Manhattan's Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. Kelly, 21, is a Navy seaman, freshly graduated from the Underwater Warfare School in San Diego.

Linda, shamelessly swiping two of her dad's oldest gags, reports that "he is out of town so much it's a full-time job for us to keep moving the pins on the map. I was twelve before I learned that he wasn't an airline pilot." Nevertheless, Hope has never missed a crucial or ceremonial family occasion--except for Christmas, which the Hopes save for New Year's Day. And besides, what the children and Dolores share with Bob they refuse to measure in geographical distances.

Not long ago, Hope and Jack Benny were sitting in a studio while a young rock group was rehearsing. The two old gagmen observed and listened to the zippy youthfulness of the kids with some bemusement. At length, Hope turned to Benny and asked, "Jack, do you realize how fortunate we are that the audiences still want us?" Dolores puts it another way. "What Bob means to America," she says, "is simply what his name means--hope." Or perhaps it's just as Kelly and Nora Hope concluded many years ago when they were little kids. Kelly was overheard asking Nora: "Is everybody in the world Catholic?" "Yes," replied Nora, "everybody but Daddy. He's a comedian."

-And made TIME'S cover (Sept 20 1943). -James and George help manage some of Bob's business properties. Fred runs Ohio's biggest meat-distributing firm, and Ivor heads a metal-sales company there.

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