Hope: Entertainer of the Century (75 page)

“Do us a favor, take it out”
: Hope,
Have Tux
, 82.

“Girl with Bob Hope”
: Mollie Gay, “Clothes and Clothes,”
Variety
, November 27, 1929.

he accompanied the offer with a marriage proposal
: Rosequist gives her account of the incident in Faith,
Life in Comedy
, 41.

“She was quick and intelligent”
: Hope,
Have Tux
, 72.

“He was a great joke mechanic”
: Ibid., 85–86.

A typical Boasberg telegraphed pitch
: “Bob Hope and American Variety,” Library of Congress exhibit.

“Bob Hope closing 28 minutes”
:
Variety
, February 11, 1931.

Some of the old neighborhood gang
:
Variety
, February 25, 1931.

“From the moment she took her seat”
: J. Hope, “Mother Had Hopes,” 394–95.

went there on a rescue mission
: Mike Gavin, interview with author.

“What’s going on behind the curtain?”
: Hope describes their bits in
Have Tux
, 92–93.

“A part of my new idea”
: Ibid., 92.

“I had to pound his eardrums”
: Ibid., 98.

“He almost kissed me”
: Faith,
Life in Comedy
, 49.

Hope later disowned it
: Hope,
Have Tux
, 95.

“I was numb”
: Ibid.

“They say that Bob Hope”
: Quoted by Hope, ibid., 96.

Bob played a hotel desk clerk
: Script for desk-clerk routine, “Bob Hope and American Variety,” Library of Congress exhibit.

“The sting of some of his gags”
:
Variety
, November 6, 1929.

“Act needs a lot of watching”
: Bureau of Sunday Censorship report, “Bob Hope and American Variety,” Library of Congress exhibit.

“I’d never seen anything so awful”
: Hope,
Have Tux
, 87.

“Ups-a Daisy . . . Smiles”
: The Internet Broadway Database, and contemporary reviews, clearly record Hope’s participation in both shows, making it especially odd that neither Hope nor any of his biographers have ever mentioned them.

CHAPTER 3: BROADWAY

New York City . . . was suffering
: Edward Robb Ellis,
The Epic of New York City: A Narrative History
(Carroll & Graf, 1966), 531–34.!

“For most Americans, ‘café society’ ”
: Neil Gabler,
Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity
(Knopf, 1994), 185.

until it began affecting his singing voice and he gave them up
: Charles Thompson,
Bob Hope: Portrait of a Superstar
(Fontana/Collins, 1982), 234.

“Actually it was rather frightening”
: Faith,
Life in Comedy
, 52.

Hope again had to vamp for time
: Hope’s role in the show is described by Hope in
Have Tux
, 99–101; Faith,
Life in Comedy
, 52–54; and in a script excerpt in “Bob Hope and American Variety,” Library of Congress exhibit.

“An agreeable but far from brilliant”
: Howard Barnes,
New York Herald Tribune
, September 7, 1932.

Commercial radio . . . was quickly reaching critical mass
: Gerald Nachman,
Raised on Radio
(Pantheon, 1998), 16–25.

the Major appropriated most of the good jokes
: Hope,
Have Tux
, 104–5.

“Here’s a picture of a girl”
:
Fleischmann Hour
script, Hope archives.

“It all seemed so strange”
: Faith,
Life in Comedy
, 54.

“Goofy, self-assured, ingratiating”
:
Variety
, March 21, 1933.

“Son, I haven’t eaten”
: The routine is quoted in the papers of Mort Lachman, Writers Guild of America archives.

Hope . . . chastised himself
: Hope,
Have Tux
, 106.

“The gags weren’t very funny”
: Faith,
Life in Comedy
, 56.

“One answer to what’s wrong”
:
Variety
, November 21, 1933.

Hope and Richie Craig . . . devised a revenge scheme
: Faith,
Life in Comedy
, 60–61.

Hope would always defend Berle
: Elliott Kozak, interview with author.

Hope made the largest single contribution
:
Variety
, January 23, 1934.

Max Gordon was casting a new Broadway musical
: Gerald Boardman,
Jerome Kern: His Life and Music
(Oxford University Press, 1980), 334–41.

“Do whatever you can”
: Faith,
Life in Comedy
, 59.

“An impossible, impossible man”
: Quirk,
Road Well-Traveled
, 69.

“Extremely unimportant”
: Quoted in Ethan Mordden,
Sing for Your Supper: The Broadway Musical in the 1930s
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 53.

“The humors of
Roberta
”
: Brooks Atkinson,
New York Times
, November 20, 1933.

longer than any other book musical
: Mordden,
Sing for Your Supper
, 55.

“I’ve always said that Bob Hope”
: Thompson,
Portrait of a Superstar
, 32.

“I had Marilyn Miller’s old dressing room”
: Hope,
Have Tux
, 111.

“I hadn’t caught his name”
: Faith,
Life in Comedy
, 62.

“Nana was the heart and soul”
: Reminiscence by Mildred, Hope archives.

a columnist called her the female Crosby
: Gary Giddins,
Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams
(Little, Brown, 2001), 561.

“I hadn’t seen that particular girl”
: Hope,
Have Tux
, 112.!

Their marriage license . . . identifies the couple
: Erie County Marriage License Bureau, Erie, Pennsylvania.

When the marriage license was unearthed
: Arthur Marx,
The Secret Life of Bob Hope: An Unauthorized Biography
(Barricade Books, 1993), 71–72.

according to an Erie official
: Associated Press, July 31, 2003.

“I was in a thick pink fog”
: Hope,
Have Tux
, 112.

“Because I couldn’t wait”
: Hope interview with Alan King, “Inside the Comedy Mind of Bob Hope,” 1992.

“announced their engagement yesterday”
:
New York Herald Tribune
, August 4, 1934.

“guilty of extreme cruelty”
: Divorce petition, September 4, 1934, Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas.

The judge found in Hope’s favor
: November 19, 1934, Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas.

“It was in the early 1930s”
: Letter from Henry B. Johnson, June 21, 1968, Hope archives.

“It was great hearing from you”
: Letter from Hope, August 20, 1968, Hope archives.

Milton Berle, told Arthur Marx
: Marx,
Secret Life of Bob Hope
, 81.

doing Dumb Dora routines with a new partner
: Reviewing a vaudeville show in Brooklyn on July 24, 1935,
Variety
notes, “Joe May and Louise Troxell do their familiar flip comic and dumb gal routine, next to closing.”

“When Deb went away”
: Letter from Louise Troxell, 1976, Hope archives.

“Dolores Hope—Godparent”
: Death certificate for Deborah Halper, County of San Diego, CA, October 20, 1998.

Kirsten Flagstad, who sang
: J. Hope, “Mother Had Hopes,” 412.

“It was murder”
: Hope,
Have Tux
, 283.

“What he expected was perfection”
: Faith,
Life in Comedy
, 67.

“Come right over”; “They gave her a little more production”
: Hope,
Have Tux
, 114.

“A likely picture bet”
:
Variety
, October 9, 1935.

“On song values she’s in the same category”
:
Variety
, December 4, 1934.

turned down an offer . . . to costar
: Described by Al Melnick, Shurr’s West Coast partner, in Marx,
Secret Life of Bob Hope
, 84.

“When they catch Dillinger”
: Bob Hope and Bob Thomas,
The Road to Hollywood: My Forty-Year Love Affair with the Movies
(Bookthrift, 1979), 16.

“Sam’s ability to squeeze a buck”
: Ibid., 17.

“I’m the star”
: Hope,
Have Tux
, 116.

“If he’d had a good score”
: Ibid.

“merriest laugh, song and girl show”
: Quoted in Faith,
Life in Comedy
, 68.

“Mr. Hope, as usual, was amiably impudent”
: Percy Hammond,
New York Herald Tribune
, November 9, 1934.!

“the guy responsible for my success”
: Faith,
Life in Comedy
, 69.

“Hope is intermittently very funny”
:
Variety
, January 15, 1934.

“thick, spoonbread Southern accent”
: Hope,
Have Tux
, 118.

“Bob Hope is a likeable fellow”
:
New York Radio Guide
, March 30, 1935.

she became a flamboyant
: An obituary in the
New York Times
, August 20, 1995, recounts her colorful life. Many letters to Hope from Wilder are found in the Hope archives.

“It’s all right for the established comedians”
: Unidentified newspaper article, Hope archives.

“He just doesn’t look like a comedian”
:
Radio Stars
, September 1936, Hope archives.

“Before 1940, don’t be surprised”
: Dick Templeton,
Cincinnati Radio Dial
, March 19, 1936, Hope archives.

Hope said he gave Arden the line
: Hope,
Have Tux
, 119–20.

“A jovial and handsome”
: Brooks Atkinson,
New York Times
, January 31, 1936.

“It was a kick”
: Hope,
Have Tux
, 122.

During a performance in Philadelphia
: Ibid., 121.

The show . . . had another rough voyage to Broadway
: The problems of
Red, Hot and Blue
are recounted in Mordden,
Sing for Your Supper
, 246–48; and Faith,
Life in Comedy
, 77–80.

“Trow me da book”
: Hope,
Have Tux
, 123.

“I’ve been with Bob a long time”
: Ethel Merman, as told to Pete Martin,
Who Could Ask for Anything More
(Doubleday, 1955), 129.

“He lay down by the footlights”
: Ibid., 135.

“I probably kidded around”
: Faith,
Life in Comedy
, 80.

“he told me that he and Ethel”
: Liberman, unpublished memoir.

“coyly engaging”
:
Time
, November 9, 1936.

“generally cheering”
: Brooks Atkinson,
New York Times
, October 30, 1936.

“urbane, sleek, and nimble”
: Quoted in Faith,
Life in Comedy
, 80.

silent footage shot by a young theater enthusiast
: Ray Knight collection, courtesy of Miles Krueger, Los Angeles.

“roly-poly Bob Hope”
:
Time
, November 9, 1936.

“I was an entirely different fellow”
: Brooks Riley, interview with Hope,
Film Comment
, May–June, 1979.

of the 125 major benefits
: Faith,
Life in Comedy
, 81.

“Hollywood was for peasants”
: Hope and Thomas,
Road to Hollywood
, 18.

Jack Benny, who turned it down
: Mary Livingstone,
Jack Benny
(Doubleday, 1978), 94. Livingstone also says that Benny “didn’t think he could handle” the romantic ballad he was required to sing—“Thanks for the Memory.”

“Please advise Bob this is the great opportunity”; “Advise Bob Hope part
Paramount has for him
”
: Telegrams from Louis Shurr, July 14 and 15, 1937, Hope archives.

“We’ve always hated the idea”
: Quoted in Faith,
Life in Comedy
, 88.

CHAPTER 4: HOLLYWOOD

“The most obstinate, ornery”
: David Chierichetti,
Mitchell Leisen: Hollywood Director
(Photoventures Press, 1995), 112.

“my most embarrassing moment”
: Ibid., 110.