To the Editor:
I offer my sympathy to Terry Teachout, for he lacks a sense of humor. Anyone who has seen Road to Morocco or Paleface could not doubt that Bob Hope was a brilliant comic actor. To point out that he is unknown to children is ridiculous. They also know nothing of Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, or anyone else from the distant past. Even Mr. Teachout’s name will fade with time.
Paul Wright
Armidale, Australia
To the Editor:
I was astounded to read Terry Teachout’s article on Richard Zoglin’s biography of Bob Hope [“WASP Without Sting,” February]. When I was in Vietnam, my fellow soldiers would have done anything to see Hope. I watched his specials every year and enjoyed them a great deal. While his form of comedy isn’t for everyone, he had a long and successful career as a beloved actor and comedian. I guess those who didn’t find his comedy humorous would prefer the foul-mouth comedians we have to suffer today.
Stephen O’Rourke
Somerset, Massachusetts
To the Editor:
Terry Teachout closes his article on Bob Hope with these words:
During World War II, when Americans shared both a common culture and an iron determination to prevail over their common enemy, such a comedian could speak for millions of listeners from coast to coast. But that America no longer exists, and the Americans of the 21st century demand more from comedy than mere reassurance. That is why Bob Hope is forgotten today, and will remain so. All he had to offer were punchlines that no longer have punch.
Mr. Teachout’s emphasis on “punchlines that no longer have punch” is misplaced. The emphasis should instead be on the first sentence of the paragraph. Mr. Teachout correctly identifies Americans’ current (and future) major deficiencies, and he writes, desultorily, “that America no longer exists.” Perhaps he feels, but does not convey, a sense of grievous loss, merely a “ho-hum” or a “so it goes.”
Without the common culture and the iron determination that were the spine of American exceptionalism, America is indeed lost to all Americans, just another squishy Eurocratic state, with elites in comfortable and permanent charge. Their jokes, told at our expense, will have enduring punch.
Karl Noell
Lafayette, Louisiana
To the Editor:
I’d point out to Terry Teachout that movie, television, and radio comedy is mostly perishable, and very much of its time. However, Bob Hope’s best movie work is certainly memorable. And many of the better TV specials—mostly in the ’50s—showcased Hope to great advantage.
No, Hope wasn’t as brilliant as Sid Caesar, as innovative as Ernie Kovacs, or as witty as Bob and Ray, Jerry Lewis, Danny Kaye, and Red Skelton. But their movies are also very uneven and rarely memorable. I don’t think Hope was an inherently funny man, but he was a super salesman of comedy: personable, energetic, and possessing a command of the stage.
Perhaps he could have taken a different direction after the mid-’50s. He might have targeted a smaller niche audience instead of trying to appeal to a broad family audience and put himself in the hands of a new generation of first-rate talents like Blake Edwards and Larry Gelbart (he even could have hosted Saturday Night Live). Then he might have reinvented himself and found a new, younger audience, as Groucho Marx did. But he had a comedy business empire that was not conducive to creative change.
Interestingly enough, when Hope approached Bing Crosby about one more Road film, Crosby said it would have to be in the vein of a Monty Python show because people did not want to see two elderly men running around. One could only wonder if Hope had ever seen Monty Python at that point, but Bing was very astute.
David Pomerantz
Woodside, New York
To the Editor:
As Terry Teachout’s article reminded me, Bob Hope always seemed to be wooden. Unlike his contemporaries (many of whom were Jewish), he delivered or read his jokes as lines written out of others’ experiences and ideas. As a matter of fact, he seemed joyless, and to me—even as a kid—it was obvious he was detached from the content. Perhaps he was different in person or in movies, but the intimacy of television in the early ’50s did Hope no favors. His performances in that medium drew huge audience numbers, but his TV appearances were not frequent, so the bland content and stoic delivery were not as easily detected as they would have been if he were a weekly personality such as Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, and other comics with more personal investment in the material. I’d view Hope’s popularity for so long as a remnant of his work in the ’30s and ’40s, when his target generation did not engage in self-disclosure and self-effacing humor. By the mid to late ’60s, wittier, more genuinely energized stand-up comedians replaced and then eclipsed Hope’s modest talent.
Laney Bormel
Parkton, Maryland
