Have to agree with Hitch -- Hope's rep far outweighed his talent. Hope,
> in
> his prime, was a decent film comic actor, and displayed a loose manner
> amid
> seemingly dangerous situations (the Brave Coward). But as he aged the
> comedy
> went very south, so far south that some of it, like 1966's "Boy Did I Get
> A
> Wrong Number!", are quite enjoyable to watch. Very bad comedy performed
> by
> consummate pros has a grandeur of its own.
By the time I was even aware of Bob Hope, he'd been well past his prime, and he was pretty much on the same career path as Red Skelton or Milton Berle. He seemed to be kept going mainly by sentiment and fond memory, with reliable-but-creaky jokes sputtered out by a well-tested machinery. I was too young to think of the obvious question at the time: "Why the hell would guys in _Vietnam_ find this lame stuff _funny_?"
Still, Hope came out of an era when we didn't look at comedians as artists; vaudeville and the Keith Circuits weren't easy places to work, and if you had a gig that got you a decent living, you stuck with it-- even if it was as some toothless "institution."
Hope did do one thing that surprised me. I remember one of his specials in the late 1970s, broadcast from the deck of some battleship, and among his guests were the Village People and George Carlin. I know, it ain't much, especially next to his making war profits by getting big-dollar contracts for the broadcast rights to his shows-for-the-troops.