We all have our faults,, Bill Clinton , above all is just a man ,, like any one else ,,
Can you forgive Bob Hope ?
If so ,, please forgive Bill Clinton for he has done a great job as the president of the United States in modern times,,
Century of Hope
NEW YORK--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--Dec. 13, 1998--Bob Hope once joked that he would rather be killed than ignored. There's no danger of that. In a career that spans most of the century, he has been nearly omnipresent. In a Profile called "The C.E.O. of Comedy," in the December 21, 1998, issue of The New Yorker, John Lahr examines the craving for fame that drove Hope to become one of the most recognized people on the planet, yet kept him a virtual stranger to his own family.
Woody Allen tells The New Yorker that Hope was a seminal influence on his screen persona and compares his delivery to Groucho Marx's: "It's more realistic than Groucho, and so his range is much wider." Allen only admires Hope's films, however. "In other media, particularly television, he was not very good," he says. "He was lazy, and nobody cared." Lahr points out that one of the keys to Hope's phenomenal success is his genial manner, which helped him to become a kind of court jester to eleven Presidents. "He's been able to interject himself into the political arena without anybody getting mad at him," Gerald Ford tells The New Yorker. "He liked to sort of stick the needle in a little bit, but do it in a very nice way."
Hope had a squadron of writers to supply him with jibes. They were well paid, but many of them were nevertheless taken aback by how cheap their boss could be. Larry Gelbart recalls Hope's telling him, "Ten o'clock. My house. Tomorrow morning. Bring your own orange juice." Another writer, Mel Shavelson, recalls a time when Hope would ascend a circular staircase on payday: "He would go up to his office, write out our checks, and make paper airplanes out of them. Then he'd yell out our names and throw them down. You had to jump up and catch it. He said he had to do it because it was the only exercise we got."
Lahr writes, "Hope is unique among the great entertainers of the century in having been at some point ... No. 1 in radio, in film, and in television." But if he was adored by one audience after another, things were different at home. "I don't feel that I really know him," his elder daughter, Linda Hope, says. "That's a kind of sadness for me, because I would have liked to know him better." His notorious womanizing might have inflicted another kind of sadness on his wife of sixty-four years, Dolores, but she demurs, saying, "It never bothered me, because I thought I was better-looking than anybody else." Calling Hope "the most self-centered person" he has ever known, Elliott Kozak, Hope's former manager, says, "She longed for romance from this man, and he was cold as ice to her."
Today, Hope stays at home, whistling old tunes. Has trouble with his eyes and rarely wears a hearing aid ("They can hear what I'm saying," he says.) He evades discussions about what he calls "the big divot." When Dolores raises the question of where they should be buried, he says, "Surprise me."
The December 21st issue of The New Yorker goes on sale at newsstands on Monday, December 14th.
CONTACT:
The New Yorker
Perri Dorset
Manager, Public Relations
212/536-5898
or
Maurie Perl
Vice President, Public Relations
212/536-5893
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