The following was co-written with Jenny Paxson, an Administrative Assistant at the Packard Campus.
The Library of Congress is proud to be the home of the Bob Hope Collection, which he donated in 2000. I was fortunate to be one of the curators assigned to the acquisition, and thus enjoyed many happy hours working with Mr. Hope, his family, and his wonderful employees. Mr. Hope was an archivist’s ideal, a performer whose collection was thoroughly documented and meticulously organized, the pièce de résistance being his 85,000 page joke file, which has since been digitized and is available for searching in the Bob Hope Gallery of American Entertainment in the Library’s Jefferson Building.
Thursday, May 7 (7:30 p.m.)
Bob Hope on Television (1953-1979)
Bob Hope–who entertainment historian and critic Leonard Maltin declared “may be the most popular entertainer in the history of Western civilization” –was one of the nation’s best-loved topical humorists during the 20th century. Hope’s road took him through vaudeville, the Broadway stage, radio, motion pictures, the USO and television. He truly was America’s “Entertainer of the Century,” as the subtitle of Richard Zoglin’s new biography proclaims. This program, the first of three scheduled during the weekend, focuses on landmark broadcasts in Hope’s television career hosted by Alan Gevinson, curator of the Bob Hope Gallery of American Entertainment. Included are excerpts from “The World of Bob Hope,” a 1961 “intimate profile,” called by one critic “a remarkable piece of work”; Hope’s first televised appearance as host of the Academy Awards in 1953; his 1958 special from Moscow, for which he received the coveted George Foster Peabody Award “for his Outstanding Contribution to International Understanding”; his groundbreaking three-hour special from China two decades later; and his Christmas shows entertaining troops in Vietnam, for which parents of soldiers movingly thanked him for bringing them glimpses of their sons overseas.
Friday, May 8 (7:30 p.m.)
Hope: Entertainer of the Century with author Richard Zoglin
Richard Zoglin is the author of Hope: Entertainer of the Century. Released in November 2014, it is the first definitive biography of Bob Hope. In his exhaustively researched (much of it here at the Packard Campus) and critically acclaimed book, Zoglin makes the persuasive case that Hope was the most important entertainer of the 20th century. He was the only show-business figure to achieve top-rated success in every major mass-entertainment medium of the century–vaudeville, Broadway, movies, radio, television and live concerts. He virtually invented stand-up comedy in the form we know it today. His tours to entertain U.S. troops and patriotic radio broadcasts, along with his all-American, brash-but-cowardly movie character, helped to ease the nation’s jitters during the stressful days of World War II. Zoglin will discuss Hope’s life and career, followed by a Q&A after the screening of The Road to Morocco (1942), the third of seven of the “Road” comedies that Hope made with Bing Crosby. The film was added to the National Film Registry in 1996.
Saturday, May 9 (7:30 p.m.)
My Favorite Blonde (Paramount, 1942)
Bob Hope stars as a vaudevillian with a penguin act who gets involved with Nazi agents and a beautiful blonde British Secret Service agent (Madeleine Carroll) in this breezy comedy. According to Hope biographer Richard Zoglin, “My Favorite Blonde puts a comic twist on a familiar Hitchcock formula: the average Joe drawn unwittingly into life-or-death intrigue. Some of the scenes consciously echo The 39 Steps, the 1935 Hitchcock film in which Carroll raced around the Scottish countryside with Robert Donat, trying to foil an enemy spy ring. Hope does an amusing parody of their stiff-upper-lipped derring-do. He’s a quavering, reluctant hero who wants no part of the adventure but is too moonstruck by Madeleine to avoid it.” This was the first of six Bob Hope vehicles directed by Sidney Lanfield.
For more information on our programs, please visit the web site at www.loc.gov/avconservation/theater/.