May 10, 2000–January 9, 2010

Bob Hope was among the 20,000 vaudeville performers working in the 1920s. Many of these performers were, like Hope, recent immigrants to America who saw a vaudeville career as one of the few ways to succeed as a “foreigner” in America. Throughout his extraordinary professional career of nearly seventy years, Bob Hope practiced the arts he learned in vaudeville and perpetuated variety entertainment traditions in stage musical comedy, motion pictures, radio, television, and the live appearances he made around the world in support of American armed forces. Today, the stage variety show is mostly a memory but its influence is pervasive thanks to the long and rich careers of vaudeville veterans like Bob Hope.

Exhibition Location

Bob Hope Gallery of American Entertainment