Creator / Bob Hope

(Rocky's opponent, wrestling champion Thunderlips, enters the arena.)
Mickey: Let's call it off.
Rocky: Aw c'mon, it's for charity.
Mickey: You're wearing your anatomy out for charity! Nobody else does this much for charity!
Rocky: Bob Hope would.
Mickey: ...That's true.

— Rocky III

Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope KBE (May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was a British-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, films, television and radio. He also hosted the Academy Awards Ceremonies 18 times, and toured for the USO to entertain U.S. military troops in multiple wars, from World War II to The Gulf War; in 1996 he was named the "first and only honorary veteran of the U.S. armed forces" by Congress.

Hope's best-known films include the Road to ... series, in which he co-starred with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour; the spy comedy My Favorite Wife, with Madeleine Carroll; the Film Noir parody My Favorite Brunette, also with Lamour; and the Western comedy The Paleface, with Jane Russell. For many years his stand-up material was written by his good friend Bob Monkhouse, a stand-up comedian in his own right.

He was also a minority owner of Major League Baseball's Cleveland Guardians (known in his day as the Indians) for much of his life.^note The new team name has a roundabout connection to him. The "Guardians" name comes from the Guardians of Traffic, sculptures on the pylons of the Hope Memorial Bridge that crosses the Cuyahoga River near the Guardians' ballpark. Depending on the source, the bridge was named for Hope's father (a stonemason), either by himself or as representative of all the stonemasons who worked on the bridge; Hope himself; or the Hope family.

Hope was married twice. The first marriage, to his vaudeville partner Grace Troxell, lasted less than two years; the second, to singer Dolores Reade, lasted for nearly seventy years until his death from pneumonia at age 100. They had four adopted children.

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Filmography on TV Tropes:

Film

• The Cat and the Canary (1939)
• The Ghost Breakers (1940)
• The Road to ... series, seven films in all (1940-1962)
  • Road to Zanzibar (1941)
  • Road to Morocco (1942)
• My Favorite Blonde (1942)
• The Princess and the Pirate (1944)
• My Favorite Brunette (1947)
• The Paleface (1948)
• The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
• Here Come the Girls (1953)
• Scared Stiff (1953)
• Call Me Bwana (1963)
• The Oscar (1966)
• The Muppet Movie (1979)
• Spies Like Us (1985)

Television

• I Love Lucy (1 episode, 1956)
• The Joey Bishop Show (1 episode, 1962)
• The Lucy Show (1 episode, 1964)
• The Jack Benny Program (1 episode, 1964)
• Get Smart (1 episode, 1968)
• Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In (3 episodes, 1968–69)
• Julia (1 episode, 1971)
• The Odd Couple (1970) (1 episode, 1974)
• The Muppet Show (1 episode, 1978)
• Highway to Heaven (1 episode, 1988)
• The Golden Girls (1 episode, 1989)
• Roseanne (1 episode, 1991)
• The Simpsons (1 episode, 1992) (voice)

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Tropes associated with Bob Hope include:

• Casanova Wannabe: A frequent part of his comic persona. He even plays a literal example in Casanova's Big Night.
• Christmas Songs: He introduced the holiday standard "Silver Bells" in a duet with Marilyn Maxwell in the 1951 film The Lemon Drop Kid.
• Cue Card: Hope was notorious for using cue cards in his bits. It was parodied in shows such as Animaniacs.
• Deadpan Snarker
• Glamorous Wartime Singer: Hope himself couldn't honestly be counted as one, but he certainly associated with them.
• Iconic Item: Hope was an avid golfer, and during stand-up performances or USO appearances he would often carry and gesticulate with a golf club.
• Large Ham
• Lovable Coward: His persona in many of his films, like The Paleface and The Princess and the Pirate.
• Rapid-Fire Comedy
• Referenced by...: Early in the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, The Onion ran an article which claimed his caregivers were keeping the news away from him:
  "Bob is a true patriot, and whenever he hears about a new war, he wants to get out there and entertain the troops"
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Twice a victim, once in 1998 and again in 2003, just months before his actual death. Both were cases of pre-written obituaries accidentally being published.
• Running Gag: He hosted several Academy Award ceremonies, but was never even so much as nominated for one competitively (although he did receive five Honorary Awards throughout his lifetime). This became fodder for his routines about his movie career and Hollywood politics after Bing Crosby won for Going My Way. (See "Self Deprecation" below.)
  • The cover of the book Inside Oscar by Damien Bona and Mason Wiley has a gag photo of Marlon Brando trying to wrest his Oscar for On the Waterfront away from Hope.
• Self-Deprecation:
  • "Welcome once again to the Academy Awards... or as we call it in my family, Passover..."
  • On his 100th birthday: "I'm so old, they've canceled my blood type."
• Take That!: Though he was a staunch Republican, Hope usually made sure his writers would aim these equally at both U.S. political parties, so this exchange from 1940's The Ghost Breakers:
  Richard Carlson (as Geoff Montgomery): "It's worse than horrible because a zombie has no will of his own. You see them sometimes walking around blindly with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring."
  Bob Hope (as Larry Lawrence): "You mean like Democrats?"

...Is a follow-up to this exchange from the previous year's The Cat and the Canary:

Nydia Westman (as Cicily): "Do you believe in reincarnation? You know, that dead people come back?"

Bob Hope (as Wally Campbell): "You mean like the Republicans?"

• Theme Tune: "Thanks for the Memory", which he first introduced (in a duet with Shirley Ross) in the film The Big Broadcast of 1938.

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