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MUU HERE I
Guitarist Romano, Hope
and Frances Langford
warming up at Cordova
WHEN we dipped out of the clouds, up there in Alaska and the Aleutians, and those kids rushed towards us and cheered us, I was never so close to tears in my life. And I don't cry easy.
I've played a lot of camps in the States. A few months ago, I walked into Soldiers Field in Chicago where 100,000 people or more were inside and 50,000 or more outside. And it was great. Last year, at the Academy Award dinner, I got goose pimples when they awarded me a plaque for Humanitarian Effort. That was great, too. But I never got such a reaction as I did up there in those outpost theaters of the war.
You just got to be there to understand the feeling. For it's something different.
Those kids, up there in Alaska, in the Aleutians, in that Umnak, for instance — get that, Umnak — well, the feeling is different. Because the need is so great. The need for diversion. The need to laugh. They're so far away from home, from mail. Their radio reception is none too good, lot of those places. They certainly can't go to canteens and dance with Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Dottie Lamour and The Girls. Naturally there isn't a movie. So naturally they're starved for entertainment. "Hunger not of the belly kind," as that poet of the North, Robert W. Service, once wrote.
So I found that to feed the starving anything, even a few gags in
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— and Alaska will never be the same! Neither will you, after you've finished this saga of red-hot Hope
exchange for a few laughs, was the biggest wallop I ever got in my life. Why, they were so starved for entertainment they'd sit out in the rain on the damp ground when there wasn't a hall or a barracks where we could put on our show. And we'd do our shows out in the open, too, mounted on those knolls, or on a
Running the gauntlet
of a crowd of cheering,
cheered-up Americans
truck or the rear end of a tank. "I used to play tank towns," I told them, "now I play off tanks. I can't get away from those tanks!" From the enthusiasm of that audience you'd think they were sitting in loge seats in the Shrine Auditorium here at home.
One kid, fellow by the name of Lester Bentley, from Sidney, Nebraska, wrote a letter to his mother after he'd seen our show. His mother sent it to me. It was written in pencil. It began "Dear Mom." It's with me for keeps. I quote it, in spots, because he says things I can't, and remain graceful.
"Dear Mom: Our mail has not been coming through at all. However, just received our first big thrill since leaving the States — just five months ago to the day. I was standing by the fire in my tent, lamenting the fact that one day was just like another, when a fellow pokes his head in and says 'Bob Hope, in person, is at the lake.' It was five or six miles away, but we lost no time running for trucks. Believe I can say we made record speed for the Army. A horrible-looking crowd we must have been — mud on our clothes, whiskers. But they must have been used to it. They looked pretty tired themselves — they looked very tired and travelworn. Wished all the time that you were there and could have been as close to them as I was — in the front row. I could have reached out and touched them. I wanted to shake his hand. Know that I speak for the Army when I say that Bob Hope is the Army's Number 1 entertainer."
To give a kid up there, doing the job he's doing, his "first big thrill"; to get a bouquet like that — gee, thanks. Les!
About the most thrilling time is (Continued on page 75)
Parkas, plus Hope and
Jerry Colonna, plus
picture of a fox hole photoplay combined icith movie mirror