World Pulls for a Comedic Legend

My daddy is ill and in the hospital now, too. Some of my best memories are of watching you with him when I was a little girl. I can remember the laughter and it warms my heart . . . You are in my prayers!

--E-mail from a Bob Hope fan

in Gainesville, Ga.

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In Toluca Lake, they’re praying for Bob Hope too. They’re making red, white and blue floral arrangements in his honor. And they’re eating lemon bread, which he once credited with his longevity.

The world, it seems, is pulling for the legendary comedian, singer and dancer who, at 98, was hospitalized this week with pneumonia. But nowhere is that hope more evident than in Toluca Lake, his “hometown” since 1938, where he owns a two-block estate surrounded by purple flowers and pine trees.

“Bob Hope and Toluca Lake are synonymous,” said Shannon Hartman, owner of Priscilla’s Gourmet Coffee, Tea & Gifts on Riverside Drive, which makes the lemon bread that Hope loves so much.

“Bob Hope is Toluca Lake.”

Hope is the man who danced outside the Toluca Times newspaper building one night years ago. Who serenaded a waitress at Bob’s Big Boy with his beloved song “Thanks for the Memories.” Who, much to the delight of neighborhood children, handed out super-sized chocolate bars and dollar coins to trick-or-treaters.

He is the man whose health people wondered about Thursday.

“He’s gradually recovering,” said Lee Kagan, an internist and Hope’s physician at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank. “He has been weakened by his illness” but may gain the strength to go home in a few days.

Cards and flowers poured into the hospital Thursday. On his Web site, Hope has received more than 1,500 e-mails, such as the one from a Minnesota woman who declared him “a true American icon.”

Ward Grant, his publicist for the past 29 years, said Hope “is always positive, and he wants everyone to be positive too. Don’t feel sorry for this man. He has had the most remarkable life, and he appreciates it.”

Waitress Chris DeMay recalled Hope’s happy spirit when he ate cheeseburgers and fries at Bob’s Big Boy on Riverside Drive. “He joked and signed autographs,” she said. “And he sang to me. He is such a sweetheart. I’m thinking good thoughts for him.”

At St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in North Hollywood, parishioners have offered Masses for Hope, who attended services there with his wife, Dolores. “We’re keeping him in our prayers because they have been such an important part of our parish,” Father Vaughn Winters said.

At the Enchanted Florist in Toluca Lake, florists Thursday arranged for Hope a $135 gift bouquet of red gerbera daisies, blue delphiniums and sprays of white roses done up with a bow of stars and stripes. It was ordered by a colonel at West Point who appreciated Hope’s dedication to the military.

“Bob Hope is the best,” said Andrew Duncan, 31, the floral delivery man and lifetime Toluca Lake resident, who once bummed a ride with Hope. He was 15 and stranded at NBC studios when his hero offered to take him home. “He talked about how he was going to have chicken for dinner. He drove himself,” Duncan said. “It was cool. We’re all pulling for him.”

Especially a woman in Orange, who sent Hope a floral arrangement for $34, which was all she could afford. “She wanted it to be masculine, bright and cheerful,” owner Kim Randolph said. The woman preferred to remain anonymous, but her message read: “I love you. You’re the best of mankind.”

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Times staff writer Stephanie Stassel contributed to this story.