COMEDY REVIEW : ‘King of Comedy’ Finds Only Mold in Hope Chest

OK, let’s start off with the good thing about Bob Hope’s show Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center: The performance was a benefit(for the Irvine Symphony Orchestra), extending the entertainer’s reputation as “Mr. Humanitarian.”

But as for another of Hope’s titles--”the King of Comedy”--well, that was an entirely different matter. His eminence wasn’t even the best comedian on a local stage Saturday, falling well behind both Sean Morey at the Laff Stop and Mark Schiff at the Improv.

There’s been a lot of Hope hoopla lately, surrounding his enormous number of years on the planet (he celebrates his 85th birthday later this month) and on NBC (he celebrated his 50th anniversary with the network in a special that was telecast last Monday).

Indeed, those are both nifty milestones. Unfortunately, though, much of Saturday’s material played as if it had been sitting around nearly as long.

Still, if it was difficult to believe some of the moldy jokes and dusty gags that were coming out of Hope’s mouth, the transitions were often unintentionally hilarious.

These were the kind of segues “Saturday Night Live” would spoof in a sketch or David Letterman would mock in his monologue: “Listen, I get around. . . . So I get around. . . . So I fly all over the place. . . . But I just love being here. . . . But I feel so damn good.”

At least there weren’t too many of these segues--but only because the entire performance was remarkably brief. Perhaps excruciatingly brief for those who paid $45 a ticket. The evening-- including a solo segment by singer and former Miss America Susan Akin, a heaping helping of tunes sung by Hope backed by the Ronnie Brown Orchestra and some high jinks between Akin and Hope--ran 70 minutes.

If you factor out Akin’s portion (another of the show’s unintentionally amusing aspects: Standing in front of the Brown Orchestra, she sang to tapes ) and the other musical moments, Hope’s comedy worked out to about a dollar a joke. In many cases, that was an overcharge of about 95 cents.

Clad in a sporty powder-blue suit, Hope walked out to a standing ovation as the audience immediately established a pattern of responding more to Hope as institution than as still-funny funnyman.

The low humor quotient, meanwhile, was established during his first bit, which addressed various aspects of Las Vegas: He recounted that he had performed at a Vegas convention for the “Kentucky Fried Chicken people. . . . They don’t shake your hand, they lick your fingers.”

Yikes!

Things occasionally got better from there; where else could they go? But even his better pieces were typified by a hit-and-miss quality. A section on religion brought a nice (if old) bait-and switch joke: “All religions have little idiosyncrasies. That’s why the Southern Baptists never make love standing up--’cause they don’t want people to think they’re dancing.”

But practically in the next breath came these groaners: “Are you a Jehovah’s Witness? He said, ‘Hell, no. I didn’t even see the accident.’. . . (My wife) is really religious; she thinks Oral Roberts is a dentist.”

Somewhat surprisingly, it was on the subject of drugs that Hope sidestepped this unevenness and put two adequate jokes back to back. Having made a reference to “drug traffic,” he quickly added that “in L.A. that’s about the only traffic that moves.” Pausing just long enough for the laugh, he continued “The Navy was trying to run one boat down there the other day; everybody on board threw the cargo overboard--and four sharks started a rock band.”

Hardly side-splitting stuff, granted, but that’s about as refreshing and absurd as Hope gets. You appreciated those moments even more deeply later, when he sang “Buttons and Bows” and interrupted himself several times for some truly musty material.

He even did the ancient joke about the doctor who has to break bad news and terrible news to his patient, the former being that he has 48 hours to live, the latter being that “I’ve been looking for you for two days.”

Come back, Henny--all is forgiven.

Actually, it’s a tribute to Hope’s exquisite timing that he can carry such a big shtick and still make it work, at least from the crowd’s standpoint.

He did push it a little when he engaged Akin--who had returned to sing a few more songs--in some oh-so-witty repartee.

Hope: “Do you know the difference between chicken hash and sex?”

Akin: “No.”

Hope: “How ‘bout lunch tomorrow?”

Oh, stop .

Actually, they did stop shortly after that knee-slapper, and Hope wrapped up the show a few minutes later.

The evening was pretty skimpy in terms of time and high-grade humor, but the Irvine Symphony Orchestra’s coffers must be far less skimpy, thanks to a little Hope.