2/16/2023 0 Comments William kelly hope son of bob hope![]() ![]() When he returned with it, Hope would enjoy it without offering any to his hungry writers. Marx reminisced how, after a typically long writing session, he would ask Sherwood Schwartz, later of “Gilligan’s Island” fame, to go buy him a pineapple sundae. Whereas he had a heart of gold when it came to the troops and special friends like his agent Jack Saphier - paying all his medical expenses when he was terminally ill - he drove particularly hard bargains with others, including his writers, who made Bob Hope. His success was accompanied, and made possible, by a fiercely competitive spirit, combined with a penny-pinching nature - a remnant of his struggle just to survive as a child and in vaudeville. He was big business … (also including) oil, real estate, frozen orange juice, charity fundraising, golf, wholesale meat, personal appearances on both sides of the Atlantic … Major League baseball (i.e., Cleveland Indians)… He was also part owner of several radio and TV stations.” First, there was cerebral palsy then the Eisenhower Medical Center - donating land in Palm Springs and raising millions through his Annual Hope Golf Classic - followed by myriad other causes, especially Catholic charitable institutions that helped children and the poor.īy the mid-point of his life - as one his former writers, Arthur Marx, son of Groucho, wrote in The Secret Life of Bob Hope - he was “no longer just a comedian or film star. Starting in World War II, Hope began donating entertainment hours to cheer up the troops, soon expanding his charity work to other causes. Their 69-year marriage, rare in the annals of Hollywood, gradually welcomed four adopted children: Linda, Anthony, Eleanora Avis “Nora” and Kelly. Pivotal “Roberta” would transform his life in another important way.Įarly on, his co-star George Murphy took him to the Vogue Club on 57th Street to introduce him to a beautiful singer named Dolores Reade.įather Benedict Groeschel of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, a good friend of the Hopes - introduced by the Gallo family - fondly recalled that Dolores’ Italian-American father was a well-known “singing waiter” on bustling 149th Street in the Bronx and that her mother was Irish-American.īob wrote that he fell in love with Dolores when she sang in her “low, husky voice… soft and sweet… ‘Only a Paper Moon and Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?’” They wed a few months later - “The smartest thing Bob Hope ever did,” Lucille Ball once quipped. ![]() From there, his career took off - soon including radio, film, and eventually TV, his first special debuting Easter Sunday 1950. “‘Would $25 be all right?’ (the booker asked)… I just managed to say, ‘I’ll take it,’ without bursting into tears,” Hope wrote.īy 1929, now renamed “Bob Hope,” he was becoming a well-known and liked comedian and landing more small parts on Broadway, leading up to a large Broadway role in Jerome Kerns’ hit “Roberta” (November 1933 to July 1934). On the verge of giving up, by chance, he bumped into a Cleveland pal, who introduced him to a theater booker friend, who gave him a Decoration Day (i.e., Memorial Day) gig. But, after running up a $400 tab for donuts and coffee-and perhaps some Prohibition-era medicinal spirits-he wasn’t making it. In New Castle, Pa., Hope got his solo break and, at the conclusion of a three-day engagement, telling well-received Scotch jokes, became a “single” and soon headed for mob-ruled Chicago to make it on his own without his partner. “I was making $40 a week and sending $20 home to my mother to help out,” he recalled. He started in vaudeville as “Lester,” scandal-tainted Fatty Arbuckle intervening in 1925 to get him and his partner steady work in Hurley’s Jolly Follies. After winning a Charlie Chaplin contest in 1914, Leslie set his cap - later his trademark brown derby hat - for the theater, convinced that being “on stage” was his true calling. But he was ultimately saved by his mother, who, a singer herself, encouraged her young son’s theatrical talent early on.
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