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HERO WITHOUT UNIFORM
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everyone is talking about by a columnist who really knows the man he's talking about
[ BY ED SULLIVAN ________
anxious to see the celebs, and the admissions went to the camp fund, so everybody was happy. Hope pitched, Sgt. Joe Louis played first and I caught. Hope had the crowd roaring with his comedy antics. Finally, he got into a mock argument with Joe Louis. Louis puckered his lips and BLEW at him — and Hope collapsed on the diamond. That was the show-stopper.
On the way back to New York, by car (it was in those days when you could get gas), Hope looked at Joe and me thoughtfully and said, "You know, maybe you guys are right. Those soldiers certainly didn't seem to resent the fact that I wasn't in uniform." The heavyweight champ winked at me and said to no one in particular, "Well, it takes time, but even comedians catch on."
A YEAR later, Colonel Arthur Wirth, commander of that same 67th Coast Artillery outfit with whom we'd played soft ball at Maywood, was to welcome Bob Hope in Africa. Five weeks earlier, Col. Wirth had welcomed Hal Le Roy. "You men are doing a grand job," said the Colonel. "You performers are heroes without uniform."
Today it is pretty well accepted that Bob Hope and other people of show business, carrying their songs, dances and witty sayings to every outpost where the A.E.F. has planted the Stars and Stripes, have done a magnificent job. And you'll pardon me if I often think back to the afternoon at the Ridgewood Country Club, when Hope and I almost came to blows over the issue of his enlistment. Of course we've often been close to that stage, because we've played a lot of golf together and golfers are notoriously irascible.
Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen, Fredric March, Jimmy Durante, Joe E. Brown and Al Jolson have carried their humor to the far horizons of the A.E.F. Joe E. Lewis, Joan Blondell, the Ritz Brothers and Adolphe Menjou have played seven shows a day at off-shore bases. Ray Bolger has hoofed (Continued on page 70)
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Above: Reunion in America. Bob is greeted in Los Angeles by his wife Dolores. Left: Frances Langford, star of Hope's company sent overseas under the auspices of U. S. O. Camp Shows, tosses off a song for the boys in an African camp
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