Hope for America: Performers, Politics and Pop Culture
From My House to the White House

The fifth child of a traveling stonemason, Bob Hope (1903–2003), born Leslie Townes Hope near London, immigrated to Cleveland at age four. Hope’s desire to entertain might be traced to his parents. “My dad was sort of an amateur comedian,” he remarked, “and he would go ’round and play a few pubs in England and have a few drinks with the boys. My mother was a concert singer in Wales before she got married.” In this photograph, Hope is seated in front of his father.

Bob Hope, going at that time by the name Lester Hope, entered vaudeville as part of a comedy dancing act before going solo as an emcee and comedian upon discovering he had a knack for telling jokes to audiences. “I would develop a routine and keep the same jokes for at least a season,” he later wrote, “not daring to change a line for fear all the magic would be lost and I’d have to go back to plucking chickens in my brother Fred’s meat market.”

“Radio was a medium where, every week, more people would hear my jokes than had seen my vaudeville act in ten years,” Hope wrote. “The radio season ran thirty-nine weeks. That meant I had to tell thirty-nine times as many jokes as I had used in a whole year of vaudeville.” Hope’s facility at delivering rapid-fire topical monologues attracted more than 23 million listeners each week. Critics voted him radio’s “leading entertainer” in 1941.

Hope's lampooning of national life on his radio show led to an appearance at the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner in 1944, where he left President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) roaring with laughter. FDR particularly liked Hope's joke that compared the likelihood of locating a room to rent in wartime Washington with that of finding his wife Eleanor's newspaper column, "My Day," in the Chicago Tribune, a paper owned by the anti-New Deal isolationist Robert R. McCormick (1880–1955). Hope's performance at the dinner prompted columnist Richard Wilson (1905–1981) to call him "another Will Rogers" and predict that "from now on he will be sought in Washington to provide that extra touch at the capital's lavish public functions." Wilson proved to be prophetic.

Bob Hope often poked fun at the frequency of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s (1884–1962) travels. In later life, Hope recalled a White House dinner during which he asked President Roosevelt if he would apologize to his wife for the “ridiculous traveling jokes” he told: “He looked at me very seriously and then said quietly, ‘I certainly will, Mr. Hope . . . In my next letter.’ Then he burst into laughter.” Here, Hope greets Mrs. Roosevelt at a Washington event.

The evening before President Roosevelt's fourth inauguration, Hope performed at the inaugural dinner of the Electoral College, attended by 1,500 guests, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Vice President-elect Harry S. Truman (1884–1972), Supreme Court justices, Cabinet officers, and more than 300 presidential electors from both parties. Hope called President Roosevelt "the greatest audience I ever worked for."

Bob Hope became a Washington, D.C. institution entertaining eleven presidents from Franklin Roosevelt (1882–1945) to Bill Clinton (b. 1946). Hope learned that presidents themselves enjoyed the ribbing he dished out. “They’re the greatest audience,” Hope remarked. “They love it when you bruise them a little, because nobody does.” After Hope accepted an invitation to be Master of Ceremonies at a White House Photographers Association Dinner honoring President Eisenhower, the president of the association, Tony Muto (c. 1904–1964), sent Hope this appreciative telegram that underlined the importance of entertainment as a respite from presidential pressures.