Rant #2,385: Thanks For the Memories

Today is Bob Hope's birthday.

If he were still around, he would be 116 years old; as it was, he lived to the ripe old age of 100 years old before leaving us in 2003.

Hope was America's most popular comedian for decades. He did his standup routines before presidents and kings, and yes, us common folk too.

He also entertained the troops year after year, no matter what the conflict was.

He was controversial without being controversial, knocking both sides of the ledger even though he was crassly Republican all the way.

Hope was a comic of a different time. He didn't offend anyone, didn't try to offend anyone, he just wanted to make us laugh, and maybe make us think just a little bit about who he was mocking or making fun of.

But like the best of the comics, it was all done in fun.

Hope was a popular stage entertainer, he was one of the biggest movie starts in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, and he absolutely owned first radio, then television, for decades.

Even though he was America's most popular comic for decades, I doubt that there is one single person who can remember any of his jokes or any of his routines.

He was not either Bud Abbott or Lou Costello, where you can point to "Who's On First" or "7 Times 13 Equals 28" and recite the routine word by word.

Hope was simply funny; he didn't do routines, necessarily, but his writers and Hope himself were always on cue with what was happening at the present time, and how they could make America laugh about it.

He and one of his best friends, Bing Crosby, were in several "Road" movies, probably the first "buddy" movies that Hollywood produced. Those movies were fun, lively, and had absolutely no political messages at all.

Yes, Hope and his wife Delores were very, very wealthy. He seemingly owned real estate throughout California, and he also gave a lot of his fortune away as a philanthropist.

But during the Vietnam War, people knocked Hope as much as they knocked our troops during this unpopular war. People burned their draft cards, and said Hope's name in vain.

Hope, like a good Timex watch, just kept on ticking, He was the Eveready Bunny of entertainers, and he continued to take his troupe to some of the most foreboding spots on earth during and after this conflict, always accompanied by the top starlets of the day, including Ann-Margret and Raquel Welch.

And the troops loved him, loved him as much as they could. To them, he brought a little bit of home to the battlefield, and they really looked forward to his appearances to the point that an actual ship, the USS Bob Hope, is named after him.

The amazing thing about all of this is that Hope was British born; he came here as a baby, but he was as American as baseball and apple pie.

He was true Americana in the form of a living, breathing human being.

And as a comic, he was unique, because he actually had a signature song, "Thanks For the Memory," a tune he warbled in "The Big Broadcast of 1938," which he sung in a duet with Shirley Ross.

Towards the end of his life, his jokes became a bit stale, and he seemed to be rolled up to the camera to deliver his teleprompter-fed lines and then rolled away, only to come out again when the occasion called for it.

But for someone whose career literally lasted for 80 years or more, Hope was still around, still there, still having TV specials that drew huge ratings.

He died on July 11, 2003, and he took with him a kind of comedy the likes of which we will never see again--and the level of popularity that we will never see again either.

I used to watch his specials, saw many of his films and although I was pretty young, I think I really got this guy and what he meant to Hollywood and really to the country.

He was a living and breathing Mount Rushmore, and what he meant to many people--primarily our troops overseas--was immeasurable.

Bob Hope was truly a one of a kind entertainer, and love him or not, he entered into our consciousness and never left it.

Sure, a lot of kids today would say "Bob who?" but most of us know better.

Bob Hope was a national treasure, and the world has not been the same since he left us.