Bob Hope Is Dead

http://simpsons.metropoliglobal.com/famosos/9F02BobHope.jpg

The ability to make people laugh is a wonderful thing. RIP Bob.

On a more serious note, RIP Bob.

"Bob. Hope. IS. Dead."

NER-NER-NERNER

Saw a few of his specials and scratched my head but bits of the Paleface movies I saw seemed alright (if astoundingly unPC). Funniest bit of anti-Hope criticism I saw was in Bloom County when, having conquered a bunch of penguins, the US Army got in an offpanel Hope to deliver entertainment to the boys in uniform. After various bad jokes, the penguins started begging for the sweet release of death.

RIP, Bob. I thought you were going to outlive me.

I suppose I could have just said 'state o' the art nosebleed techno riff circa 1991.'

This is a BAD thing?!?!?

How does one transcribe such riffs, actually?

Isn't that an Aphex Twin song?

This was 15 years ago.

Surely, they meant it in the best way. I'm wondering how they feel now. "Oh my god, our record gave him 15 more years!"

former president gerald ford ain't no spring chicken either ... he's 90!

NER-NER-NERNER

Sounds like a job for Lance Lockarm...

Err...well...I think the Village Voice ran a story some years back about how Hope was still doing truly cringeworthy anti-Asian jokes in his non-TV stage shows as late as the '90's.

But that's another thread.

This has been rumored for a while.

Actually, although it doesn't surprise me that he had horrible outdated prejudices, I liked a lot of his really old films. The Paleface ones, The Cat And The Canary and even the Road films, when in the right mood, so I am a little sorry.

Bob Hope is boxed!

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2010/05/omfg-its-a-bob-hope-box-set-featuring-the-longunseen-1939-the-cat-and-the-canary.html

In praise of Bob

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/my-favorite-spy/1814

suzy's opening shot here is some kinda self-defining masterpiece

not really, sincve she obv never saw his good stuff.

i feel like kurt russell is hollywood's spiritual heir to bob hope

that's a great review btw

aw thanks, TH. I wonder how many 70-year-old fans have considered Bob's priapic gusto.

Frank Rich on the recent bio, and the conundrum of Hope being irrelevant long before Woodstock:

Zoglin gleans what little he can. Clearly the straitened circumstances of Hope’s childhood left him with a zeal for financial success and security, which he achieved with hard work, his tough show business deal-making, and shrewd investments in oil and California real estate. Hope’s other principal compulsion was his addiction to adulation from strangers, whether the throngs he entertained on the road, his studio audiences (who were kept unusually close to the stage in a Hope-designed configuration of stacked rows), or the interchangeable sexual partners that he procured into his eighties.

But there’s no evidence that he enjoyed emotional intimacy with anyone. He was as much an absentee father to his four adopted children as he was an absentee husband. He and Crosby were not close; Hope’s writers were regularly demeaned and cashiered. Despite their shared Hollywood history and conservative Republicanism, Hope was not, as one might assume, a pal of the Reagans.

“Even to intimates and people who worked with him for years, he remained largely a cipher,” Zoglin writes. “He never read books or went to art museums, unless he was dedicating the building.”

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/mar/19/how-bob-hope-captured-america/

I would argue FR's assertion that Hope never worked with a 'major' film director, but I count Frank Tashlin as major.

Thinking back on Bob Hope, one thing I notice from having watched so many hours of his television specials, guest appearances, and on-the-road movies, is that his comic persona in films was a smartass who was also a coward, while his later stand-up persona was just a smartass. He knew how to make that material work for him.

The stand up smartass never exuded any kind of warmth. His bond with his audience was entirely based on taking pot shots at various bigwigs the audience would like to see taken down a peg. After each zing he'd stand there smugly and bask in their laughter. His earlier film persona was more complex and physical. He'd alternately strut and crow, then flinch and cringe, his face dropping from exultation into fear, his backbone from solid to liquid. He had that character down pat and it was funny.

As a human being, everything I know about him is unattractive. In the last couple of decades of his active career the whole shtick became progressively more sour and he acted like a lord among his vassals, even onstage. His work on film in the late 30s and the 1940s is about all he left behind that has any real value at all.

I've seen some TV sketches from the mid-late '50s where he's still fast and doing physical stuff. But yeah obv he was just lazy, in an aesthetic sense, from late middle age on.

his TV appearances in the '50s often have few very bright spots amidst a general sense of listlessness. although that listlessness seemed to be an essential part of his persona by that point.

I would argue FR's assertion that Hope never worked with a 'major' film director, but I count Frank Tashlin as major.

true, but tashlin hardly did his best work with hope.

it astonished me to remember he died just about a decade ago. he had been an anachronism as long as i'd been alive.

Seeking the approval of as many strangers as possible, but disinterested in connecting with people one-on-one?

Dude was ahead of his time.

Johnny Carson syndrome

Son of Paleface is maybe my fave Tashlin-directed film, a couple of the Jerrys and Rock Hunter its only competition.

had never seen this one before Sunday... peak zaniness, BH impersonating Victor McLaglen. Funnier than Johnny Depp anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJC1GHX9e6U

also at one point toothless Walter Brennan is awarded Bob for sexual purposes

Gilbert Gottfried did a bit about the awfulness of the Bob Hope Specials (and the rest of his Specials-era career) on a recent podcast episode which sounded compelling enough for me to do some YouTube sampling of some of the specials (bad, but no worse than his laugh-free appearance on The Golden Girls that was my introduction to him as a kid) and Cancel My Reservation (Cannonball Run-grade smugness and laziness, complete with phoned-in celeb cameos, but about what one would expect from a Bob Hope movie from the early 70s). But, this...my god:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZu-B_R5Ues

terrifying

So apparently Hope did a 1976 special called Joys, a spoof of Jaws in which a bunch of over-the-hill comedians (Don Adams, Milton Berle...) keep getting eaten by a great white? Disappointingly, only this one (shark-free) Phil Silvers clip seems to be around on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDomhndfCTc

I tried to watch Road to Singapore last night (never seen any of the Road movies) and was bummed at the lack of laffs. ah well. some comedy doesn't age well I suppose.

"Morocco" and "Utopia" are funnier

"Singapore" was the first and they didn't have the formula down yet. There's too much plot in it.

yeah I guess I was expecting something a bit more hijinks-heavy, more schtick and less "oh how will these rascals avoid getting married"

expected to see this thread revived with something like "today Hope died again"

Oh my god, I didn't even know he'd come back to life. Rest in peace again, Bob, however briefly.

He would have had some awesome quips today

road to morocco is def my fav

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/50155000/jpg/_50155460_12bobhope.jpg

Bob Hope was the wealthiest man in Hollywood, a deep-dyed Republican fat cat and a close pal of Richard Nixon. I'm pretty sure Hope's awesome quips would let Trump off easy and punch down at protestors.

morocco's okay, i like my favorite brunette, this vapid prick shoulda died in the war (celluloid, cigarette)

Nixon didn't have any "close pals"

xp

the best bob hope movie is love and death

He'd have worked this in somehow

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/08/47/bc/0847bc37d16b42a29469fe1f7aa9fd2a.jpg

acc to last year's biography, Hope didn't have any "close pals"

also, Russia-bashing was p bipartisan back in the day

https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/bobhope/images/vc173.jpg

Forgive my sloppy phasing. I should have said they acted like they were close pals.

I don't know if Hope met Dubya (or could tell him apart from Poppy by his late 90s), but if so i'm pretty sure he kibitzed with every prez from FDR thru Trump now, except for Obama

http://i.imgur.com/TALuERW.jpg

He didn't kibitz much with Carter because he was a rare non-golfing president

What's stayed with me from reading that recent bio is that Hope had no real interests other than golf

also shtupping

yep

I'd forgotten Viz had something of an obsession with Bob Hope dying.

https://img.fireden.net/co/image/1534/88/1534887345060.jpg

Son of Paleface is still an all-time live-action cartoon thanks to Frank Tashlin.

also the movies with Crosby are relentlessly queer right on the surface

No Jobs, no Hope, no Cash...

Somebody (not me) got a Bob Hope DVD for Xmas.

I think we’ve had enough of this badinage, Robert.

Bob just kissed what I can only assume are six of Josefa’s favorite ladies.

His death not mourned as fervently as Betty White's because he actually made it to 100.

And he was an enormous asshole, while she was a nice person.

So it would seem.

He was an asshole that made a living off of the troops. Plus he got plenty of ass doing it. A miserable human being. Not from me. I was Miss Palm Springs here and just turned 17. https://t.co/ljbp7EolEv pic.twitter.com/dJnqEqm0wb

— Mamie Van Doren (@Mamievandoren) March 30, 2023