Bob Hope-USO

 

 

Hope's first wartime performance occurred at sea, aboard the RMS Queen Mary on September 1939. He went to the captain to volunteer to perform a special show for the panicked passengers. Hope sang "Thanks for the Memory" with rewritten lyrics.

 

Hope performed his first United Service Organizations (USO) show on May 6, 1941, at March Field, California. He continued to travel and entertain troops for the rest of World War II, and during the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Lebanon Civil War, the latter years of the Iran–Iraq War, and the Persian Gulf War.

 

When overseas he almost always performed in Army fatigues as a show of support for his audience. Hope's USO career lasted half a century, during which he headlined approximately 60 tours.

 

For his service to his country through the USO, he was awarded the Sylvanus Thayer Award by the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1968.

 

Of Hope's USO shows in World War II, writer John Steinbeck, who was then working as a war correspondent, wrote in 1943:

“When the time for recognition of service to the nation in wartime comes to be considered, Bob Hope should be high on the list. This man drives himself and is driven. It is impossible to see how he can do so much, can cover so much ground, can work so hard, and can be so effective. He works month after month at a pace that would kill most people.”

In addition to the star-studded casts Hope recruited his own family members for the far-reaching travel. Wife Dolores sang from atop an armored vehicle as recently as the Desert Storm tour, with granddaughter Miranda alongside Hope on an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean.

 

A 1997 act of Congress signed by President Clinton named Hope an "Honorary Veteran." He remarked,

 

"I've been given many awards in my lifetime — but to be numbered among the men and women I admire most — is the greatest honor I have ever received."

 

Hope appeared in so many theaters of war over the decades that it was often cracked (in Bob Hope style) that "Where there's death, there's Hope".

 

In 2009, Stephen Colbert carried a golf club on stage each night during his own week-long USO performance and taping of “The Colbert Report” and explained in his last episode that it was an homage to Hope.