kartooner

America’s fun­ny­man, Bob Hope, turned 100 today. Hope accord­ing to his daugh­ter Linda was a kid more than a par­ent and to all those who know him, he’s an ad-libbing, wise-cracking man who has enter­tained mil­lions through­out his life time. His ear­li­est of begin­nings were in Vaude­ville in the 1920s which even­tu­ally led to his own radio show and var­i­ous tele­vi­sion appear­ances. To Hope, tele­vi­sion was “vaude­ville in a box” and gar­nered him guest spots on The Tonight Show and the Golden Girls.

Hope knew that in order to have comedic effec­tive­ness he needed a crew of writ­ers with top-notch jokes. Among the orig­i­nal 8 writ­ers was Sher­wood Shwartz, cre­ator of Gilli­gans Island and The Brady Bunch. In ‘Amer­ica explained by Bob Hope’ Shwartz explains that he orig­i­nally was pur­su­ing to be a doc­tor and instead answered the call of Bob Hope. On a typ­i­cal evening, Bob Hope and his writ­ing team would meet at his home (rented by Woody Wood­pecker cre­ator’ Wal­ter Lantz) and brain­storm ideas. In order to remain fresh and cutting-edge Hope would pool together the best of the worst and use them on his radio show. Unlike an appear­ance at a Com­edy Club, being on the radio meant hav­ing a great col­lec­tion of jokes and mak­ing sure every­one of them was a win­ner con­sid­er­ing you can’t hear the lis­tener laugh.

His great­est tri­umph how­ever lies within his com­mit­ment to enter­tain­ing and sup­port­ing the troops dur­ing world con­flicts (namely World War 2). Var­i­ous pho­tographs and doc­u­men­taries show Hope on stage with an audi­ence of thou­sands atten­tive and laugh­ing their hearts out. To Hope, this was his great­est plea­sure because he was never sure who would be around in the com­ing days dur­ing the war.

For a man to have lived 100 years and live to tell about his adven­tures you have to applaud his per­for­mance. How­ever, for a man to make mil­lions laugh in his life­time deserves a stand­ing ovation.

Happy Birth­day, Bob.