Bob Hope gets last laugh

2003-07-29 07:32

Los Angeles - US comedian Bob Hope, whose death was announced on Monday, assembled an unprecedented archive of around seven million jokes during his seven-decade career - all of them clean.

The funnyman's collection of gags even won a place among the trophies and knicknacks of presidents of the United States when the country's Library of Congress opened a permanent exhibit of his wisecracks in 2000.

The display features examples of Hope's jokes alongside photographs of his childhood and his early career in show business of the entertainer who celebrated his centenary less than two months ago.

Many of Hope's biting one-liners have entered popular culture, but despite his popularity and readiness to take pot-shots at politicians and rival Hollywood stars, the family man always eschewed blue humour.

Hope employed over one hundred writers to create jokes and lines for his famous and topical radio and stage monologues, and got inside information from army personnel in order to create in-jokes to amuse the 10 million troops he entertained over the years.

Here are some of the jokes and one-liners that made the English-born comic and actor, who left Britain at the age of four for America, one of the best-known entertainers of the 20th century.

On his British roots, he said:

"I left England at an early age, as soon as I was old enough to realise they already had a king."

"My folks were English . . . we were too poor to be British."

On his passion for golf:

"Golf is my profession. Showbusiness is just to pay the green fees," he said of his lifelong love of the game which he helped popularise.

"I set out to play golf with the intention of shooting my age, but I shot my weight instead!"

On his old age and busy life, Hope quipped:

"I don't feel old - I don't feel anything until noon. Then it's time for my nap."

"If I had my life to live over....I wouldn't have time."

"You know you're getting old when the candles cost more than the cake."

"I'm so old that they've cancelled my blood type," he said just before his 100th birthday in May

"I was able to find my original birth certificate, but it took three guys to help me get it. Stone tablets are heavy."

On the Oscars:

"Oscar night at my house is called Passover," he said of the competitive movie awards which he never won for his movie work.

On his childhood and large family:

"I came from a very big family. Four of us slept in the same bed. When we got cold, Mother threw on another brother. With so many boys, my father bought us a dachshund so we could all pet him at the same time."

On performing before a live audience:

"I really played some rough houses. I remember one theatre: The audience was so rough, they used to tie the tomatoes on the end of yo-yos so they could hit you twice."

On sex:

"My father told me all about the birds and the bees, the liar - I went steady with a woodpecker till I was twenty-one".

On his partnership with pal Bing Crosby, co-star of the "Road to ..." movies:

"It was love at first sight. We started to insult each other from the moment we met."

"Bing was always kissing Dorothy Lamour, and I was always kissing a gorilla or a camel. We both made a lot of money. But most of mine went to cure hoof-and-mouth disease."

"You know, all during the years, people have tried to describe Bing's voice, but I think my grandmother came closest of all. She says it sounds like a passionate cow being milked with suede gloves."

On politicians, the lifelong Republican supporter said:

"It appears that the president taped all his conversations in the Oval Office," he said of disgraced Republican Richard Nixon after the Watergate scandal that toppled him. "I just hope that 18 minutes of missing tape included some of the bad jokes I told him."

"It's not hard to find Jerry Ford on a golf course - you just follow the wounded," he said of the former president noted for his clumsiness.

"The Republicans wanted to balance the budget but after seeing what the Democrats left they found they had to budget the balance."

"I played golf with him yesterday," he said of former US president and army general Dwight Eisenhower. "It's hard to beat a guy who rattles his medals while you're putting. Ike uses a short Democrat for a tee."

On war and military topics:

"I was on the way to my hotel and I passed a hotel going in the opposite direction," he told an audience after he narrowly escaped a bomb blast at his hotel in Saigon in the then South Vietnam.

"The stealth bomber is supposed to be a big deal. It flies in undetected, bombs, then flies away. Hell, I've been doing that all my life."

- AFX