Hope: Entertainer of the Century Read Online Free Page A

memoirs of his travels during World War II and Vietnam, and books about golf and his encounters with presidents. He promoted all of them tirelessly, in personal appearances around the country, on his own TV specials, and in guest spots on other TV shows—an early demonstration of the power of show-business synergy.
    He was Hollywood’s inventor of the brand extension. Along with the books, he had a daily syndicated newspaper column (ghosted, as always, by his writers), which began with dispatches from his World War II tours and continued for eight years afterward, into the early 1950s. He brought his name, prestige, and showbiz connections to a struggling Palm Springs golf tournament, renamed it the Bob Hope Desert Classic, and turned it into the most star-studded pro-am event on the PGA Tour. He was the star of a comic book: The Adventures of Bob Hope , launched in 1950 by DC Comics and published quarterly for the next eighteen years. He even had his own logo—the familiar line-drawn caricature of his concave-shape profile, instantly recognizable from Boston to Bangkok.
    THE STAR AS PUBLIC CITIZEN. Hope was far from the only Hollywood star who used his talents to raise money for charitable causes. But no one else pursued his public-service mission so fervently or made it such an integral part of his image. He was awarded the first of five honorary Oscars in 1941, for being “the man who did the most for charity.”He was the most celebrated of the stars who toured the Pacific and European theaters to entertain the troops during World War II. Back home after the war, he became a ubiquitous fund-raiser, host of charity events, and supporter of patriotic causes, securing his reputation as Hollywood’s most tireless do-gooder.
    All this had a careerist aspect, of course. Hope sincerely loved entertaining the troops, and it fed the patriotic pride of an immigrant who had lived a classic Horatio Alger success story. But his troop shows also provided him with huge, easy-to-please audiences, lofty TV ratings, and boundless good publicity. Still, no cynical view of his motives can diminish the impact that Hope had in setting a standard for public service in Hollywood.“Playing the European theater, or any theater of war, is a good thing for actors,” he wrote in I Never Left Home , the memoir of his World War II travels. “It’s a way of showing us that there’s something more important than billing; or how high your radio [rating] is; or breaking the house record in Denver.” Hope showed by example that Hollywood stars have an opportunity, even an obligation, to do more than just make movies, sign autographs, and buy oceanfront estates in Malibu. They can give back, do good, use their fame to make an impact in the public arena.
    Hope’s particular causes and conservative political views, of course, were not the same as those of many of the stars who followed his example. But he opened the way for celebrities to have causes and political views—to work for endangered whales or starving children in Africa or hurricane victims in Louisiana. They may not acknowledge or even realize it, but a direct generational line connects Bob Hope to the globe-trotting activism of Angelina Jolie and George Clooney, Madonna and Oprah Winfrey. Hope made it safe for celebrities to be taken seriously as public citizens.
    THE STAR AS INSPIRATION. Even as he golfed with presidents, entertained royalty, and became one of the most famous people in the world, Hope maintained an unusually powerful and personal connection with his fans. This relationship was qualitatively different fromthat of most stars and their public, an intimate link that illustrated the symbolic role celebrities can play in the inner lives of their fans.“It is painfully obvious to us that our communications with our celebrated favorites is all one-way,” wrote Richard Schickel in his book about fame, Intimate Strangers. “They send (and send and send) while all we do is