Bob Hope: Not a Favorite Guest of Johnny Carson

What a coincidence. Catman felt the same way about Hope.

A GREAT book !!  Tore through it MUCH quicker than the time it usually takes me to get through a (somewhat) long book like this one!


Personally, I find Bob Hope to be ENDLESSLY fascinating, due to being such a DEEPLY flawed human being !!


He travelled hundreds of thousands of miles for MANY decades entertaining the troops in the far corners of the globe, yet cheated on his wife NOTORIOUSLY, was a distant father (in name only) to his four adopted kids, treated many of his multitude of writers terribly (at times), and MOST tellingly, by the end of his 100 year life, had VERY few (any?) truly close, personal friends....   


Never having any idea of the 'behind the scenes' drama he created whenever he showed up on The Tonight Show back in the day, it's REALLY fun watching those shows now, trying to pick up on any tension on Johnny's part, now knowing how much he disliked Hope's CONSTANT appearances on his show.....   



SAVE  FERRIS

A lot of those vaudeville comedians who transitioned to TV were given 50-year contracts, which were kind of like the 99-year sentences given to convicted criminals--no one really expected them to hang around for so long. Guys like Milton Berle and Sid Caesar gradually moved into semi-retirement as their ratings slipped. Hope seemed to stubbornly cling to his NBC contract, continuing to appear on specials long after his prime, just because he could. Those specials in his later years (1990s) were positively painful to watch--clumsily edited monologues in which Hope would deliver a line ("But I wanna tell ya...") which would be followed by a cut to a wildly laughing and cheering audience. The cuts to the audience would look and sound identical, because it was usually a few cuts used repeatedly. This would be followed by sketches in which a guest star would deliver a set-up line, then there would be a cut to Hope reciting the punch line. It was apparent that these scenes were done at different times, rather than an actual exchange between the guest and Hope, as Hope couldn't hear the guest star and probably had a lot of difficulty with his own lines. NBC finally decided to end the specials, leading one NY-based TV critic named Kay Gardella, an old, old friend of Hope, to react with outrage (her idea of being a TV critic, by definition not the most strenuous of jobs, consisted largely of getting advance copies of Hope's specials and rehashing nearly every sketch and joke in the show).

Even after he ended the specials, there continued to be stories, presumably released by his press agent, about how Hope went to his office every day and continued to present jokes from the official "Bob Hope's Joke File" to be printed in daily newspapers. Also, a story in the late, great Spy magazine, sometime in the late 1980s-early '90s, printed a story from a reporter who had spent the night at the Hope mansion and related how Hope had entered his bedroom one night and invited him to accompany him on a night of sexual thrills. Whoever the sex worker was that night, she had guts.

As for his lifetime of entertaining the troops--I attended a local program featuring a speaker who had researched and written about Hope and other celebrities for many years. He pointed out that many, many performers had also spent years entertaining the troops; they did their bit and went home, and didn't spend too much time talking about it, out of modesty and a reluctance to glorify themselves. It was Hope who continued to dwell on it a little too flagrantly. Yes, he invested a lot of time in doing so, and deserves praise, but sometimes he could go overboard.

I have been around a while and remember Bob Hope very well. Even when I was a young person he wasn't very exciting to me. Although I do remember one Hope appearance on Tonight With Johnny Carson. With Carson behind the desk and Hope on the sofa, Johnny introduced a comedian who was just terrible. Her big finale was singing out of tune and strumming a guitar she didn't know how to play. Dreadful. A couple of times the camera cut to Carson and Hope who were laughing their asses off. After the act had left and Hope followed her out, Johnny went on about how gracious a person Bob Hope was - presumably because he pretended to be amused at the lousy jokes when he didn't have to. I've always remembered that. It is quite a contrast to the stories being told on this thread. (But I do believe he was lousy to his wife, writers, and staff. Heard all that before.)

Carson was friendly with David Letterman and was his choice for his successor. After Leno got the show and Letterman went to CBS, Carson remained in contact with him, sending him jokes and making his final late-night appearance on the CBS show. Leno was awful, and managed to shut out both Letterman and, later, Conan O'Brien, two hosts who were far superior.

There’s a really good HBO movie about all this called The Late Shift (1996), if anybody wants to check it out.  It’s entertaining and informative about all the behind-the-scenes stuff that was going on.

Lee Marvin cracks up Bob Hope?