Bob Hope-Broadcasting

 

 

 

Hope first appeared on television in 1932 during a test transmission from an experimental CBS studio in New York.

 

His career in broadcasting spanned 64 years and included a long association with NBC. Hope made his network radio debut in 1937 on NBC.  His first regular series for NBC Radio was the “Woodbury Soap Hour”.  A year later, “The Pepsodent Show” starring Bob Hope began, continuing as “The New Swan Show” in 1948.

 

After 1950, the series was known simply as The Bob Hope Show, with Liggett & Myers, General Foods, and American Dairy Association as his sponsors. It finally went off the air in April 1955. Regulars on his radio series included zany Jerry Colonna and Barbara Jo Allen as spinster Vera Vague.

 

Hope did many specials for the NBC television network in the following decades. These were often sponsored by General Motors, Chrysler,  and Texaco. Hope served as a spokesman for these companies for many years. He would sometimes introduce himself as "Bob, from Texaco, Hope."

 

Hope's Christmas specials were popular favorites and often featured a performance of "Silver Bells" done as a duet with an often much younger female guest star (such as Olivia Newton-John, Barbara Eden, and Brooke Shields), or with his wife Delores, with whom he dueted on two specials.

 

In October 1956, Hope appeared on an episode of the most-viewed program in America at the time, “I Love Lucy”. He said, upon receiving the script: "What? A script? I don't need one of these". He ad-libbed the entire episode. Desi Arnaz said of Hope after his appearance: "Bob is a very nice man, he can crack you up, no matter how much you try for him to not." Lucy and Desi returned the favor by appearing on one of his Chevy Show specials later that season.

 

With James Garner, Hope's 1970 and 1971 Christmas specials for NBC—filmed in Vietnam in front of military audiences at the height of the war—are on the list of the Top 30 U.S. Network Primetime Telecasts of All Time. Both were seen by more than 60% of the U.S. households watching television.

 

In 1992, Bob Hope made a guest appearance as himself on “The Simpsons”, in the episode "Lisa the Beauty Queen". The episode attracted 11.1 million viewers when it premiered on October 15.

 

Hope's NBC television career consisted of monthly shows successfully spanning so many decades that it literally outlasted his ability to read his monologue from cue cards.

 

After 1992, his specials were re-formatted into retrospectives of Hope's past career, for occasions such as his 90th birthday in May 1993, which resulted in an Emmy-winning TV celebration on NBC, featuring guests such as Betty White, Walter Cronkite, Gerald Ford, Jay Leno and a rare post-Tonight Show appearance by Johnny Carson.

 

In October 1996, Hope announced he was ending his 60-year contract with NBC, joking that he "decided to become a free agent".  His final television special, “Laughing with the Presidents”, was broadcast in November 1996. Tony Danza helped Hope present a personal retrospective of presidents of the United States known to the comedian. The special received mixed reviews, mostly due to the weakening appearance and speech of the 93-year old Hope.

Bob Hope's last TV appearance was in a 1997 K-Mart commercial directed by Penny Marshall.