I am a huge fan of Bob Hope, was fortunate enough to interview his daughter Linda a few times, and I got to work with the Hope Estate on a handful of projects (sidebar – it’s really weird not to be working on Bing Crosby Christmas Radio this year).
When I speak about Hope I remind folks not to judge him by some very-late period NBC special but to watch film of Bob doing the old radio show. I love that 70 years later I can laugh at a joke about the Governor of Ohio, or the local military base commander because Bob would make it so relatable.
The article linked below is really good, and I am reading the Zoglin book on-and-off as time allows. One thing that grabbed me about the article is the below, a point I had never made on my own.
It got to a point, as early as the 1970s, where even the savers were more than Hope was willing to go through with. “His delivery…was growing more rigid and imperial,” writes Zoglin: “the joke, the stare, the laugh, the next setup. No more ‘savers’ when he stumbled on a line, or when a joke fell flat – or much acknowledgement of the audience at all.”
via Hope-Less: How Different Would Standup Be Without Bob Hope? | Splitsider.
And yeah, that was going on in the later specials. Rat-a-tat-tat, take a beat, repeat. Still quite funny, but didn’t have the duck and roll that he had in his youth, and he didn’t use his facial expressions quite as much.
You can almost hear Bob doing a 2014 Christmas special and riffing “hey did you see that Sony Pictures pulled the movie The Interview? Yeah it turns out (whatever the punch line to this joke is.)” And what’s amazing is if you do those lines in Bob’s voice in your head, it’s somehow funny even though I didn’t write a punch.
Good stuff. Might have to break out the Hope DVDs later.