Bob Hope’s Radio Comedy Hit The Mark With Soldiers And Presidents
“There is no distinctive kind of Bob Hope joke,” scriptwriter Larry Gelbart once wrote. “There is a certain Hope style when he’s coming on to a woman, or when he is in an awkward situation (often one and the same), and there is an unmistakable brashness in his delivery, but there is no typical Hope material beyond a good, sharp one-liner — sharp but rarely barbed. So much of Hope’s success is that, whether his target was a president or a peer, he was always nonthreatening.”
Perhaps no other comedian in Hollywood could poke fun at a presidential election, senators and congressmen and walk away unscathed. American audiences craved such entertainment, and Hope’s fast-paced delivery was just the prescription.
On the evening of May 6,
1941, months before the U.S. entry into World War II, Bob Hope’s popular Pepsodent radio program was broadcast not from the NBC Studios in Hollywood, but from the March Army Air Force Field in Riverside, Calif.This was the first remote broadcast of Hope’s coastto-coast radio program and would become the first of hundreds over a period of many years.
Performing in front of a live audience of soldiers and gearing the subject matter of the monologue to the troops, Hope fashioned a very successful variant on the radio comedy variety format. World War II-era stateside radio audiences, as well as the troops, appreciated Hope’s soldier-directed monologues, which provided home audiences with a special affinity with the soldiers’ lives and their contributions to the country.
It was only a matter of months before other radio comedians began following his lead. But for the soldiers who watched the comedian at work onstage before, during and after the broadcast, Bob Hope was immortalized.
His mildly irreverent humor, teamed with his variety troupe’s beautiful women, provided a welcome respite for the U.S. forces overseas, a reminder of what they were fighting for.The fast pace, broad diversity and informality of the shows, with acts ranging in tone from brash to sentimental, gave U.S. fighting forces a supportive reminder of home, an essence of American life and values.
Bob Hope was British, born LeslieTownes Hope, but this did not prevent him from receiving every possible award for his devotion to U.S. troops, including an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth and “honorary veteran” status by Congress. Hope relied on highly paid joke writers who were instructed to be on call 24 hours a day.