We hardly knew ya

By Erik Pepple
210 west Pop Culture Editor [send email]

The news of Bob Hope’s death is not shocking. Nor is it tragic. At 100 years old it’s almost expected. That, however, doesn’t take the sting out of hearing the news about the passing of one of America’s greatest icons.

For most people my age their memories of Bob Hope are limited to his NBC specials from the 80’s. They were occasions for rimshot worthy one-liners, college football stars and mid-level celebrities like Dom DeLuise to come out of the woodwork. With the foundation of our collective memory rooted in watching these specials with our parents or grandparents it’s easy to see how many folks have underestimated Hope’s gifts and influence in these last two decades.

The NBC specials were never meant to be innovative or ground-breaking. They were professional examples of a career comedian who had become an institution. And most people turn to institutions for a sense of comfort, to be reassured that some things never change. As a kid it was difficult to find better comfort food in televised form than the Bob Hope specials. They were events that would find the entire family in the living room, with everyone finding something at which to laugh. It is perhaps the greatest testament to Hope’s extraordinary talent that through all the bad one-liners and entendres, his delivery, his nasally snark and bourbon smooth phrasing, that even the worst of jokes sounded good. Hope was a consummate craftsman who, when he’d put all his chutzpah behind what he knew and what we knew were bad jokes, he’d still manage to knock it out of the park by sheer force of will.

It is a deep shame, then, that most folks in my generation will only remember those Saturday night specials and overlook arguably the most influential career in contemporary comedy. In many ways Hope (along with Groucho Marx) is ground zero of contemporary comedy.

Born out of a vaudeville sensibility, Hope’s only drive in life was to entertain. He was one of the first comedians to introduce a conversational style to the art of stand-up. When he took the stage he turned it into a dialogue between audience and performer. He was there for them and once said that he viewed an audience as his best friends and who doesn’t love to have a conversation with their best friends? Parts of that conversation were glib, self-deprecating one-liners (Hope, like Marx, seemingly had an endless supply) coupled with a sarcastic edge that poked fun at his foibles, making him easily loved by the audience. He could make an audience feel like they were sharing a joke, and that is the gift of the greatest of comedians: to turn the art of comedy into a purely communal experience.

Hope parlayed his stage skill into a film career that peaked with his “Road” pictures with Bing Crosby. Hope & Crosby were experts at playing the schnook, and the “Road” films were the best illustration of this gift. It is interesting to note that in these movies Hope perfected a persona that would find itself at home in everyone from Woody Allen to Conan O’Brien (O’Brien’s lascivious growl at sexy female guests is a direct steal from Hope). The persona of the cuckolded nebbish, the flibbertigibbet who only wanted the girl or the laugh, but was constantly knocked down by their own nerves and insecurity, is one of Hope’s greatest creations. Beyond that Hope was one of the first comedians to break the fourth wall, to turn away from the action onscreen to comment to the audience about the ridiculousness of it all. Take a look at “The Road to Morocco” and you can see the stirrings of modern comedy’s reliance on irony and sarcasm being injected into the consciousness. For Christ’s sakes at one point in “Morocco” a camel starts talking for no discernable reason, it’s the kind of intelligent absurdity that has become part of the DNA of Albert Brooks through David Letterman up to and including The Simpsons (on which he had a memorable cameo as Bob “What the hell am I doing in Springfield” Hope).

While Hope’s skills earned him success in every medium he came in contact with, it was his work as an entertainer for the USO that has forever earned him a place in popular culture’s history.

Famously rejected for military service, because the Army felt he would be more valuable to the military as an entertainer, Hope became a towering example of the kind of good will many entertainers aren’t exactly known for. Performing for troops across the globe, Hope devoted so much time to the USO that he once said that when he finally sees his kids they think he’s booked a personal appearance. His work in this field was not motivated by politics, and even when he came to disagree with the Vietnam debacle he still performed for the troops. Hope was there to make them happy and entertained if only for an hour. It is a generosity of spirit and good will and speaks to his nobility that Hope was there for them, he wasn’t there because he was behind any cause or because he particularly cared for who was president at the time (although rumor has it every president he met, regardless of political stripe, loved him, and it’s not hard to see why). His USO performances speak to the greatest power a comedian, no matter what their disposition, can have. When a performance is cooking it becomes about something greater than both performer and crowd, it becomes an experience to be shared.

Bob Hope knew that the greatest gift a comedian can give is themselves. It is an idea that the finest of comedians from Groucho Marx to Lenny Bruce to Richard Pryor to Jerry Seinfeld innately realized, and no one did it better or more professionally than Bob Hope.