Bob hope biography zoglin

This book describes in great detail how Bob Hope started from an impoverished boyhood in England and worked his way up through vaudeville, the early days of.
“Bob Hope was an entertainment colossus, shrewd and influential well beyond show business.
Richard Zoglin has written the first definitive biography of Bob Hope, which makes the persuasive case that he was the most important entertainer of the.

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Hope: Entertainer of the Century (Simon & Schuster, 2014)

With his topical jokes and his all-American, brash-but-cowardly screen character, Bob Hope was the only entertainer to achieve top-rated success in every major mass-entertainment medium of the century, from vaudeville in the 1920s all the way to television in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. He virtually invented modern stand-up comedy. Above all, he helped redefine the very notion of what it means to be a star: a savvy businessman, an enterprising builder of his own brand, and a public-spirited entertainer whose Christmas military tours and unflagging work for charity set the standard for public service in Hollywood. Richard Zoglin has written the first definitive biography of Bob Hope, which makes the persuasive case that he was the most important entertainer of the twentieth century.

“Revelatory…unabashedly ambitious…fascinating.” —New York Times

“Terrific—scrupulously researched, likely definitive, and as entertaining and as important (to an understanding of 20th- and 21st-century pop culture) as

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Hope: Entertainer of the Century

February 25, 2022

Sometimes a person can remain on the stage too long. That is the case, both figuratively and literally, with superstar comedian Bob Hope. Living to exactly 100, Hope almost perfectly spanned the 20th century, mastering and excelling at all of the different forms of entertainment that came around during those many decades. Hope, who started on vaudeville in the 1920s, was still making TV specials for NBC in the 90s. Could anyone else say that? Then again, it may not have been a good thing that Hope was still active that late in life.

Richard Zoglin has, both by virtue of Hope's incredibly long life and his breadth of traveling and forms of media, plenty of material to work with. Hope actually was not an American by birth; he was born in England. But his family moved across the Atlantic Ocean to America when he was only a few years old, settling in Cleveland. Hope came from a large family (five brothers) and his parents, specifically his father, struggled to bring in enough money. Hope set out on his own in his early 20s and never

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Interview: Richard Zoglin on Bob Hope

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Having previously written a book about stand-up comics in the 1970s, Time magazine contributing editor and theater critic Richard Zoglin turned to one of the 20th century’s multimedia masters in his new biography, HOPE: Entertainer of the Century (Simon & Schuster, 2014). The Kansas City, Missouri, native, who lives in New York City, recently spoke with me about the legendary comedian. This is an edited transcript.

Scott Holleran: What was the first Bob Hope experience you had in life?

Richard Zoglin: Growing up with his movies watching the Road pictures. I grew

up in Kansas City and I loved Bob Hope. I watched his specials growing up. He seems like such a constant presence.

Scott Holleran: As an editor and theater critic for Time magazine, did the publication’s archives aid your research?

Richard Zoglin: They did. Time has a library, though it’s not what it used to be. There were clips that are now withering still sitting in folders. They’ve started converting to digital b