Newsletter December 2023

Hello everyone and happy December!  Here’s the Hollywood 360 newsletter, December 2023 / Vol. 32.  As someone on our mailing list, you’ll receive the most current newsletter via email on the first day of every month.  If you don’t receive it by the end of the first day of the month, check your spam folder as they often end up there.  If it is not in your regular email box or in your spam folder, contact me at carlpamari@gmail.com and I’ll forward you a copy.  The monthly Hollywood 360 newsletter contains articles from my team and the full month’s detailed schedule of classic radio shows that will air on Hollywood 360.  In December, we’ll bring you holiday programming each week on Hollywood 360, including a 1957 Bob Hope Christmas Shopping show the week of December 16th.  Here’s an article on this incredible comedian and humanitarian that I hope you enjoy.  Merry Christmas!

Bob Hope’s Radio USO

by Carl Amari and Martin Grams

Perhaps no other comedian in Hollywood could poke fun at congressmen, senators and even presidential candidates, and walk away unscathed like Bob Hope. American audiences craved such entertainment and Hope’s fast-paced delivery was just the ticket.

On the evening of May 6, 1941—months before the United States’ entry into the Second World War — Bob Hope’s popular Pepsodent radio program was broadcast not from the NBC Studios in Hollywood, but from the March Army Air Force Field in Riverside, California. 

Prompted by patriotism (and perhaps vaudevillian wanderlust), it was the first remote broadcast of Hope’s coast-to-coast radio program and would become the first of hundreds over a period of many years. Performing in front of a live audience of soldiers and gearing the subject matter of his monologue to the troops, Hope fashioned a very successful variant on the radio comedy-variety format The troops loved Hope’s soldier-directed humor, and stateside radio audiences felt a special connection to soldiers’ lives and their contributions to the country. 

His mildly irreverent humor, teamed with his variety troupe’s beautiful women, provided a welcome respite for the U.S. forces, a reminder of what they were fighting for. The fast pace, broad diversity, and informality of the overseas shows, with acts ranging in tone from brash to sentimental, gave U.S. fighting forces a supportive reminder of home, an essence of American life and values. 

It was said that behind every good comedian is a roomful of joke-writers, and Hope was no different. He paid top dollar for the very best writers and kept them on call 24 hours a day. Still, a great comedian could lose his notes backstage and still be able to bring the house down; Hope never missed a beat.

Born British, but this did not prevent Bob Hope from receiving every possible award for his devotion to U.S. troops, including the Congressional Gold Medal, Presidential Medal of Freedom and the United States Air Force “Order of the Sword” — the only time it had been awarded to a civilian. 

Hope died in 2003 at age 100. The comic who headlined 57 U.S.O. tours, lifted the spirits of untold thousands of U.S. soldiers and poked fun at golf and Presidential politics said this once about his work: “I have seen what a laugh can do. It can transform almost unbearable tears into something bearable, even hopeful.” Hope served his country well.