Bob, Keep the Old Jokes Coming

“Did you hear about Bob Hope?” someone asked.

“What about Bob Hope?”

“He’s in the hospital.”

This was a couple of days ago. Hope had just been admitted to a hospital in Rancho Mirage--a hospital built on land he donated--suffering from a gastrointestinal condition.

“I wonder how old he is now,” the same someone said.

“Bob Hope is 97.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“I do,” I said.

*

A week or so before, I was speaking with someone who had been a great Hollywood star of the 1940s and ‘50s. It got me to wondering afterward which legends were still left from the Golden Age of entertainment, the ‘30s.

“Katharine Hepburn?” someone helpfully suggested.

“OK, that’s one.”

“And . . .?”

We put our heads together. What about so-and-so? No, she’s gone. What about what’s-his- name? No, he wasn’t really a star until the ‘40s.

Mickey Rooney? Shirley Temple?

It became a struggle after a while even to come up with names.

Some of these people were our original superstars--stars you could identify without the necessity of seeing a face, but just by the sound of a voice. They were the ones families listened to when families grew weary of listening to each other.

Nothing in 20th century culture influenced the masses more than radio, motion pictures with sound and television. But gradually it became the year 2000, and the most mythic of these artists, the giants, were becoming extinct.

“I can’t think of anybody else,” someone said. “I don’t think there is anybody else.”

Oh, yes, there was.

“What about Bob Hope?”

Bob Hope, who conquered radio, conquered Hollywood, conquered television, succeeded on stage, trotted the globe from war to war, entertained common folk and royalty. Bob Hope, who sang, danced and told a billion jokes, some of them a million times each.

Bob Hope, who provided hospital wings, sponsored golf tournaments and owned baseball teams, who pitched Pepsodent toothpaste and Chrysler automobiles and you name it, who prospered in investment and property, who practically single-handedly put Palm Springs on the map.

Bob Hope, who was one of the Academy Award presenters on Feb. 23, 1939, at the Biltmore Hotel, the night he spotted dozens of Oscars resting on a table and quipped, “Looks like Bette Davis’ garage.”

Bob Hope, who at one time seemed to be on the radio or television every time you turned one on, who made jokes about Bing Crosby whether or not Crosby was on the premises, who walked onto Johnny Carson’s stage whether or not Johnny was expecting him.

Bob Hope, who made his debut as the Academy Awards’ host on Feb. 29, 1940, at the Cocoanut Grove in the Ambassador Hotel, the night he spotted dozens of Oscars resting on a table and quipped, “I feel like I’m in Bette Davis’ living room.”

Bob Hope, who had always understood that a joke worth telling was worth telling more than once, which is why 13 years later, on March 19, 1953, at the Pantages, he hosted the Academy Awards, spotted dozens of Oscars resting on a table and quipped again, “Looks like Bette Davis’ garage.”

And people still laughed because it had captured a moment, broken the ice. Or because it was so hoary a chestnut, they couldn’t believe they were hearing it again. Or because the timing and the deadpan delivery were so perfect, whatever. Bob Hope didn’t care. If nobody laughed at one line, he’d just do another.

Clint Eastwood once said the funniest thing he ever saw in a movie was Bob Hope dressed as a cowboy, playing the Paleface, walking toward a gunfight, getting mixed up at all the advice he’d been given on what to do, where to stand, when to shoot. Woody Allen said nobody perfected the art of playing the perfect coward and fool on film the way Bob Hope did.

*

Get-well messages were pouring in at the Eisenhower Regional Medical Center, a spokesperson there said Friday. Bob Hope was not so young anymore, but he was certainly not forgotten.

He had been scheduled to come by Thursday for a regular checkup. Instead, he woke up that day with stomach pain.

A doctor diagnosed gastrointestinal bleeding, but said all of Hope’s vital signs were still strong as of Friday afternoon and that prospects seemed to be very good for the 97-year-old’s complete recovery.

“How did you know his age off the top of your head?” someone had asked the day before.

I replied that on Memorial Day, after a loved one had given birth to a baby, I had looked in a book of celebrity birth dates just to see which other prominent individuals had been born on that same day.

“Bob Hope,” the book informed me. “1903.”

I took it as a good sign. The sign of a long, full life.

*

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com