Modern Screen (Dec 1949 - Nov 1950)

There isn't another entertainer in America who, acting in his right mind, would bite off a schedule of work like his. (In a few weeks he'll start The Lemon Drop Kids, then he'll tour 60 cities, then he'll begin his fall radio series.) It doesn't seem possible that even Bob Hope can sustain the pace much longer. Somewhere along the line either the man or the schedule has got to run out. The question is: How does he do it — and why? If you want to study Hope you have to do it at a dead run. Or, better still, talk to someone who knows him well — his brother Jack, for instance. Jack Hope has been Bob's manager since he first became a star. He has a staff of five people, an office next door to Bob's home, and he acts as advance man on Bob's tours. Jack gets tired just watching his brother work. "Still," says Jack, "he'd be absolutely miserable if he had any less to do. He likes being busy every minute; he'll go out of his way to give people a laugh. He thinks that's why he was put on earth, and he lives accordingly. "Take last Christmas as an illustration. Just five days before, Bob and Dolores were sitting home talking about how this year they'd stay right in the living room on Christmas Day. The phone rang; it was General Symington in Washington, asking Bob if he could leave the next morning for Alaska to entertain the troops up there. Bob immediately said yes, and then meekly went in to talk to Dolores. n his youth, Bob shared the spotlight with his iged 13, is in the lower right corner. Jack, now " 'Oh, no!' she said, when she heard the news. 'This year you promised to stay home and play Santa Claus for the kids!" '''Why don't we take the children with us,' Bob said. 'We can all go, you know.' "Sure enough, the next day, after a big scramble with suitcases, the Hopes were flying to Alaska." It takes an understanding and devoted woman to make that kind of quick adjustment to her husband's plans. But Dolores Hope has long since realized that she is destined to share her husband with the world for the rest of her life. "It's not a lot different than being married to a traveling salesman who's on the road six months out of the year," she recently told a friend. "But I'd rather have a part of his time than a whole lifetime with anyone else. I could never give our children the zest for living that Bob can in just a few minutes each morning. They go to school with enough laughter to last the whole day." The only place where Bob has even temporary release from the pressure of his activities is his comfortable home in Palm Springs. Very few people know his unlisted telephone number there. On those light weeks when he has only his radio show to do, Bob spends Wednesday through Sunday in Palm Springs, coming back to Hollywood on Monday morning for the rehearsal. But even there, Hope cannot get away from work. More often than not, his writers will come down to start writing the next week's script. five brothers. Here's the whole family. Bob, his manager, is in the center of the back row. Why does Bob set the pace? He has nothing left to prove to the world, but somehow he has a great deal left to prove to himself. He remembers back, beyond the growing up years in vaudeville, beyond the hungry, hand-to-mouth years of breaking into show business. It's easy to soothe memories of hunger, uncertainty and buffeting. You get tough, you look for security in terms of dollars, you live big and plushy to show the process server you're out of reach. Hope doesn't live big. He still lives in the first house he bought when he arrived in Hollywood many years ago. He has no swimming pools or yachts or airplanes. This man is not just making up for the lean years. The people who attribute Bob's absorption in work solely to economic reasons are missing the point. Although he's a very wealthy man, the fabulous money he earns will always surprise him. One evening in Oakland, when Bob came back to the hotel after a two-hour performance in the Civic Auditorium with a $19,000 check in his hand, he said to a friend, "Gee, look at that. Nineteen thousand dollars. Remember when we used to get $5 a day for hoofing in Cleveland?" always leave them laughing . . . Bob remembers back to the early days. When he was one of six sons, the kid who never got a full share of the attention he needed; he yearned for the spotlight. He found it when he put on an act. Sure — money was important. But all his life, Bob has been running in one direction: front and center. He's got to be "on." He's got to hear the ecstatic roar of an audience that is with him all the way. His security comes only in front of an audience. And the laughs have to be guffaws. He has developed a whole way of life that depends upon constant activity for nourishment. Nothing else can satisfy him. Doris Day, who's been singing on Bob's radio show for three years, believes that the real secret of his driving energy is his turn-it-on, turn-it-off constitution. "Bob could fall asleep sitting upright in a hard-backed chair, and wake up two hours later feeling more refreshed than most people are after eight hours' sleep." "Many times driving back from Palm Springs," another friend says, "Bob will drop off for 15 minutes, and when he wakes up, will take up the conversation exactly where he left off. I'm a guy who needs my eight hours, but Bob gets a lot out of those catnaps." Bob's brother feels that Bob will always have the thought that this might be his last week's work, and, if he isn't good, people may not ask him back again. "Self-consuming though his career has been," Jack says, "it has brought great rewards to Bob. The greatest of them all are the people who laugh. Bob really means it when he says, 'Thanks for the memories.' " Bob himself says, "There's nothing in the world like hearing people laugh. It's the greatest noise there is. I was talking to Jack Benny the other day, and he said he was going out on tour this summer for the same reason. And the longer you are in show business, the more you need to hear it. "Without live audiences to play to, I'd be cutting out doilies in no time. But I won't have to worry about that for quite a while, as long as I take care of myself, and keep the old ticker in shape." How long can he keep that ticker in shape? There's no answer. The only thing Bob knows is that he must keep going, because without his spotlight he wouldn't have a schedule. He wouldn't have anything. The End