Hope: Entertainer of the Century (82 page)

At a Weight Watchers rally . . . he was booed
:
Variety
, July 18, 1973.

“I wish they’d flush the whole thing”
:
Variety
, June 20, 1973.

“I think dragging this thing”
: Interview in
Playboy
, December 1973.

“If the other guy got a laugh”
: Jonathan Winters, interview with author.

“He was usually at dinner”
: Avis Truska, interview with author.

Every fire truck and volunteer firefighter
: “Showplace Home of Bob Hope Destroyed in Palm Springs Fire,”
Los Angeles Times
, July 25, 1973.

Construction was put on hold . . . recovered $430,000 in damages
: Peter Aleshire, “But I Wanna Tell Ya About This House,”
New West
, September 11, 1978.

“Eddie Cantor haircut”
: Don Marando, interview with author.

“Watching him throw on that pancake”
: Ibid.

only if he got paid more than any other performer
: Elliott Kozak, interview with author.

Rosemary Clooney . . . challenged the woman’s story
: Anecdote related by Michael Feinstein, interview with author.

“The next time you talk to Bob”
: Lande, interview with author.

“It was his way of saying”
: Ben Starr, interview with author.

Waiting for him there
: Marando, interview with author.

“I now know why you were captain”
: Typewritten draft for telegram, March 15, 1974, Hope archives.!

“I would like the President to know”
: Hope letter to Rose Mary Woods, May 31, 1974, Hope archives.

“It was so sad for that poor bastard”
: Tom Donnelly, “Bob Hope: I’ve Enjoyed All of It,”
Washington Post
, February 14, 1975.

“I told him
The Towering Inferno
”
: “Hope, Wayne Talk Politics,”
UCLA Daily Bruin
, April 14, 1975.

“I just think that Nixon got himself”
: Johns,
California
, March 1977.

“Of all the Presidents”
: Bob Hope,
Dear Prez, I Wanna Tell Ya!
(Hope Enterprises, 1996), 99.

The statement caused a stir; “Don’t you dare!”
: Accounts of the Schneider brouhaha in Wiley and Bona,
Inside Oscar
, 504–7; and
Daily Variety
, April 10, 1975.

a “cheap, cheap shot”; “the Academy’s authorized representative”
: Ibid.

“So he was screwed up”
: Shirley MacLaine, interview with author.

“He was stingy to the end”
: The eulogy is contained in Lachman’s papers in the Writers Guild archives, strongly implying that he wrote it.

she had to pester her former boss
: Letters from Hughes to Hope, November 1974, Hope archives.

Texaco . . . agreed to pay $3.15 million
: Faith,
Life in Comedy
, 392.

“It had to be done”
: Ibid., 393.

“Bob caved in”
: Kozak, interview with author.

“He was very sad”
: Lachman, video interview, ATAS archives.

“I was shocked, disappointed and dismayed”
: Letter from Felix De Cola,
Los Angeles Times
, July 15, 1976.

“much harder than writing
”
: Letters to the editor,
Los Angeles Times
, July 24, 1976.

“the Queen and Prince Philip enjoyed”; “to have such a great man as Bob Hope”
: Ibid.

“The problem with Dad”
: Linda Hope, interview with author.

“I was in England writing a show”
: Lande, interview with author.

She was paid . . . only $600
: White,
Rolling Stone
, March 20, 1980.

“My God, Kanter”
: Hal Kanter, interview with author.

The production was beset with problems
: Barney Rosenzweig, interview with author.

“He felt he failed”
: Ibid.

“Bob and Dolores thought everyone”
: Judith Richards Hope, interview with author.

“Bob called Tony a lot”
: Ibid.

“It looks like you’ve been writing for me”
: Gene Perret, interview with author.

“I’ve got six more weeks”
: Bob Mills, interview with author.

“He liked people who worked fast”
: Perret, interview with author.!

the audience was actually a group of chiropractors
: Gene Perret and Martha Bolton,
Talk About Hope
(Jester Press, 1998), 26.

“How much time do you have?”
: Mills, interview with author.

“I pay you with new money”
: Perret and Bolton,
Talk About Hope
, 15.

“The other guys will be hot”
: Perret, interview with author.

Hope said he was going to play golf
: Robert L. Mills,
The Laugh Makers: A Behind-the-Scenes Tribute to Bob Hope’s Incredible Gag Writers
(Robert L. Mills, 2009), 16.

“Milton Berle liked to retake jokes”
: Sid Smith, interview with author.

“She thinks I just got into this business”
: Howard Albrecht, interview with author.

“What the fuck!” cried Hope
: Dennis Klein, interview with author.

“It’s unlikely that I’ll be able”
: Bing Crosby, letter to Hope, May 3, 1977, Hope archives.

“He had tears in his eyes”
: Linda Hope, interview with author.

“The whole world loved Bing Crosby”
:
Daily Variety
, October 17, 1977.

but not Dorothy Lamour
: Lamour,
My Side of the Road
, 222.

Hope was unhappy that he had to use a teleprompter
: Kaplan,
New Times
, August 7, 1978.

“So many guys can’t do that”
: Marty Pasetta, interview with author.

“I can’t . . . tell the whole world I’m seventy-five”
: Kozak, interview with author.

“It’s taken over a year”
: Tom Shales, “Bob Hope Breakthrough,”
Washington Post
, May 24, 1978.

“I’m pretty sure I’m seventy-five”
: Faith,
Life in Comedy
, 403.

“Can’t we change it to eleven?”
: Ibid.

“that peculiarly square and predictable style”
:
Variety
, May 31, 1978.

“Are you still working for me?”
: Liberman, unpublished memoir.

“When he pays you a salary”
: Kozak, interview with author.

“Oh, you don’t have time for me anymore?”
: Ibid.

“he’s gotta come up with the fifty thousand”
: Ibid.

“You don’t trust me”
: Ibid.

Nixon put in a call
: White House tapes, March 8, 1973, Nixon Library.

Hope called choreographer George Balanchine
: James Lipton,
Inside Inside
(New American Library, 2008), 216–17.

When he and his entourage got off the plane
: Accounts of the China trip in Lipton,
Inside Inside
; Mills,
Laugh Makers
; and interviews with Linda Hope and Marcia Lewis Smith.

“The Chinese were very, very difficult”
: Marcia Lewis Smith, interview with author.

Linda Hope . . . had the cameras record all of it
: Linda Hope, interview with author.!

“Dad was really aggravated”
: Ibid.

An aide to President Carter worked with Tony Hope
: Judith Richards Hope, interview with author.

“When my mother took me to see”
: Film tribute to Hope, Film Society of Lincoln Center archives.

“Oh, go on, highbrows”
: Kaplan,
New Times
, August 7, 1978.

“Age cannot wither”
: Tom Dowling,
Washington Star
, May 26, 1978.

Fortune
magazine put him on its list
: Arthur M. Louis, “America’s Centimillionaires,”
Fortune
, May 1968.

“Mrs. Hope was kind of a frustrated architect”
: Nancy Gordon Zaslove, interview with author.

“I love that little house”
: Andy Williams, interview with author.

CHAPTER 14: LEGEND

“Bob Hope would go to the opening”
: Quoted in Joan Collins,
Second Act
(St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 112.

“Hell, if I did”
: Al Martinez, “Comedy in Motion,”
TV Guide
, October 25, 1980.

stewed fruit, decaffeinated coffee, and a B-complex multivitamin
: Jolie Edmonson, “Where There’s Hope, There’s Life,”
Saturday Evening Post
, October 1981.

“Procrastination is the number one cause”
: Ibid.

Hope made 174 personal appearances
: Faith,
Life in Comedy
, 415.

“The thing that impressed me”
: Rick Ludwin, interview with author.

“We had so many problems”
: Fred Silverman, interview with author.

“I know that Nancy”
: Letter from Bob Hope, October 22, 1981, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

“Please don’t concern yourself”
: Reagan reply, October 27, 1981, Reagan Library.

“Do you want us to stick to policy on this?”
: Memo from Dodie Livingston to Mike Deaver, April 10, 1981, Reagan Library.

“Randy, don’t overdo”; “Keep it
short
”
: Various memos, Reagan Library.

“The thing I remember . . . is that he’d show up”
: Stu Spencer, interview with author.

“I always felt your career”
: Ann Jillian, interview with author.

“He was bigger than life”
: Cathy Lee Crosby, interview with author.

Hope got embroiled
:
Guardian
, December 20 and 21, 1983.

“When you’re bringing stars over”
: Ibid.

“He was very demanding”
: Linda Hope, interview with author.!

he asked if the dedication ceremony . . . was disappointed to find out that the building
: Faith,
Life in Comedy
, 416–17.

Hope’s staff worked diligently
: Ibid., 418.

Forbes
magazine put him on its list
: “The Forbes Four Hundred,”
Forbes
, September 13, 1982.

“I’ll kiss your ass”
: Richard Behar, “How Rich Is Bob Hope?,”
Forbes
, October 1, 1984.

“When we’re proved wrong”
: “On Trusting Bob Hope,” editors’ note,
Forbes
, October 1, 1984.

It was the first Cavett had heard of it
: Dick Cavett, interview with author.

His writers drove around the neighborhood
: Mills, interview with author.

“He supported the workingman”
: Tom Dreesen, interview with author.

“Gene, that’s all of us”
: Perret, interview with author.

“I’d come over to his house”
: Brooke Shields, interview with author.

“Take the tape”
: Dave Thomas, interview with author.

“Dave Thomas had a better handle”
: Casey Keller, interview with author.

“I knew why they were doing it”
: James Lipton, interview with author.

“It’s fake wood”
: Mills, interview with author.

“The Statue of Liberty has AIDS”
: Quirk,
Road Well-Traveled
, 305.

“Johnny admired Hope’s place”
: Peter Lassally, interview with author.

“We’d get a request”
: Ibid.

“We’d say, give us two minutes”
: Jeff Sotzing, interview with author.

Hope asked during a commercial break
: Anecdote related by Bob Dolan Smith, e-mail to author.

“There was nothing spontaneous”
: Andrew Nicholls, interview with author.

Tartikoff even suggested that Hope try
: Memo from Rick Ludwin, July 26, 1983, Hope archives.

“There might have been a time”
: Margy Rochlin, “Funny Man,”
Los Angeles Times Magazine
, February 1, 1987.

“permitting his team of writers”
:
Variety
, April 19, 1989.

“The whole show would cost him”
: Kozak, interview with author.

“He just takes the check”
: Ibid.

In the mid-1970s, the town of Hope
: Memo from Frank Liberman, Hope archives.

“I live for the press”
: Philip Shenon, “A Curtain Falls on Bob Hope’s Show,”
New York Times
, December 26, 1990.