Linda Hope recalls dad at Mount Pony event

Nearly 90 years after getting his start on the vaudeville stage in Cleveland, legendary entertainer Bob Hope (1903-2003) still draws a crowd.

More than 200 people filled to capacity the Library of Congress Packard Campus Theater Wednesday night to hear firsthand memories of his home life and career from daughter Linda Hope, a longtime producer who serves as president of the Bob Hope Legacy in California.

“I never thought I’d be in Culpeper, Va., but I’m awfully happy that I am here,” she said to enthusiastic applause.

“It’s been wonderful,” Ms. Hope said prior to taking the stage for a 30-minute Q&A, after dining downtown at It’s About Thyme. “It’s such a charming town.”

Visiting the East Coast for the June 11 opening of “Hope for America,” a new exhibit in the Bob Hope Gallery in the Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., she agreed to stop by the Culpeper campus for Audio Visual Conservation, where many of her father’s film, radio and TV recordings are stored.

During her tour of the vast facility on Mount Pony, Ms. Hope viewed the camera negative for the first Bob Hope movie ever made — “Paree, Paree” from 1934.

“I’ve been in the television business a long time, and so to see some of the old equipment and how it’s been modernized in order to preserve the items they have here has been wonderful,” she said. “That whole process and the campus here is just very, very exciting.”

As part of the special event, a last-minute screening of “My Favorite Blonde” was arranged, and the local welcome was certainly hearty, with reservations for the 200-seat theater filling up fast.

Before the show, attendees browsed large photo-covered kiosks in the lobby detailing the 10 decades of life experienced by Linda’s mother, Dolores Hope, who turned 101 last month and was married to Bob for nearly 70 years.

Linda Hope took questions from members of the full house before the 1942 black and white comedy classic played on the big screen, starring her father, Madeleine Carroll and a penguin in pajamas.

Bob Hope the father
Ms. Hope spoke with great recall and anecdotal humor about her dad’s long career, sharing stories about his childhood, USO tours, relationship with Bing Crosby and what it was like to have Bob Hope for a father, a question she gets all the time.

“I wish I had some witty answer for it, but fact of the matter is he was the only dad I knew and he was my dad,” Ms. Hope said. “He just happened to be Bob Hope.”

Growing up, Linda said he was away a lot, but they also had their family moments, often breakfasting together as they readied to go to school and he to the studio.

“As he was leaving, he’d go out the glass door and do a little soft shoe and shuffle off to Paramount,” she said.

And though he missed a lot of Christmases, Linda said she never minded because when he got home, usually before New Year’s, they’d have a second Christmas with dad.

Day to day, dad was just plain old fun, she said, noting it was “a free for all” when they would sit down for dinner, in spite of mother’s efforts to instill manners in their children.

“All of a sudden, we’d be sitting there trying to cut our meat properly and a napkin would come flying down from dad’s end of the table. And my mother would go, ‘Bob,’” said Linda, speaking sternly.

Early years
Hope was the fifth of seventh sons, born in England to a stonemason father and a mother who loved to sing. He emigrated to America with his family as a boy, passing through Ellis Island.

“His mother really kept the family together — she was the one who encouraged him and really felt he had some talent,” Linda Hope said, noting of her dad, “He was pretty much a schemer — always working an angle somehow.

“His mother used to take him to the movies, and he saw Charlie Chaplin and he used to do a Chaplin imitation with a little stick in front of the fire department. The firemen would all come out and watch him and give him a nickel or dime or pennies.”

Bob Hope worked any number of odd jobs growing up, his daughter said, selling newspapers, performing in amateur variety shows, teaching dance — even boxing.

“He used to say he was the Rembrandt of the boxing profession,” she said, “because he spent most of his time on the canvas.”

At age 18 or 19, Linda Hope said, her father started dancing in vaudeville, telling jokes in between to earn extra money. The rest, she said, is history.

During his unparalleled career, Hope did radio, starred in 50 feature films and did cameos in another 15, spent decades on TV with NBC and traveled around the world entertaining the troops — from the 1940s all the way through the 1990s — not to mention the numerous honorary degrees he earned and the 11 U.S. presidents he entertained.

“He never lost sight of where he came from,” Linda said.

USO legacy
Asked by an audience member if her dad ever spoke about a memorable USO stop, Linda Hope said he was not an emotional guy.

“I think in order to do the kind of stuff he did — going into military hospitals to entertain some of the wounded soldiers — he had to keep a little bit of a distance,” she said. “He would go into a ward where fellows were pinned together or burned and he’d say, ‘OK, everybody up!’ or ‘Don’t get up for me’ — things to lighten the feeling.”

Linda Hope said he always told his USO co-performers — ladies like Frances Langford or Phyllis Diller — to remember their audience.

“He said to them, ‘There’s no time to feel what you’re feeling. These people don’t want that. They don’t want pity. They want to have relief from what they’re going through.’”

Bing and Bob
Of his relationship with Bing Crosby — the two starred in various films together — Linda Hope said it was very special.

“They went way back and respected each other’s talent,” she said, “But you couldn’t find two guys more different that those two were.”

Bob Hope was always joking and playing jokes on Crosby, while Crosby was very serious and competitive, especially at golf, Linda Hope said, launching into a story about how the two would always connive for time away on the green while filming.

“They used to drive the directors crazy,” she said, noting they would skip off to a golfing area Paramount had created for them at the studio or over to practice tee at a nearby course.

“They’d check with the lighting guys, find out how long it was going to take to light the next scene, and they’d say, ‘Oh, 45 minutes or so.’ And then dad would say, ‘See you in an hour and a half.’”

Those were the days
At home, Bob Hope had his serious moments, but he certainly knew the value of a good joke, his daughter told the audience in Culpeper.

“He always felt a well-crafted joke was worth its weight in gold,” Linda Hope said. “He loved what he called smart jokes — jokes that would make you think, jokes that had one kind of laugh and then you had another laugh when you realized what the joke was.”

She said she felt he was disappointed at some of the young comedians who depended on four letter words for a laugh.

“He always appreciated great wit.”

Her time on stage at an end, the crowd offered extended applause, causing Linda Hope to remark, “I was just going to say — I’m surprised he didn’t play Culpeper!”

“My Favorite Blonde” began after 8 p.m., and Bob Hope had the crowd rolling, offering his usual clever quips, like this exchange with a most forward leading lady: “I’ve given up kissing strange women,” he said.

“What made you stop?” she asked.

“Strange women,” Hope replied.

Mike Mashon, chief of the moving image section on the Packard Campus, said the LOC would be celebrating Bob Hope all summer long, screening more of his movies — for free — in the theater on Mount Pony.

“We’ve had a wonderful relationship with the Hope family going on 10 years now and are just so pleased Linda Hope was able to take time to drop down in here to visit us at the Packard Campus,” he said.
The next chapter in preserving and presenting her father’s legacy, Linda Hope said, will be the Sept. 21 dedication of the Bob Hope Library at Ellis Island.