BOB HOPE: GONE, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

 

Photos from L to R: #1. Hope's first UK broadcast was on 17 July, 1943 - Yankee Doodle Doo at the BBC, alongside Frances Langford and David Niven. #2. His love affair with the BBC continued into the 1950s, with Denis Goodwin (l) and Bob Monkhouse in 1956 on The Bob Hope Show. #3. Hope always held his own with new generations of comic talent; here playing comic foil to Derek Nimmo on the BBC in 1970. #4. He became well known for entertaining US troops stationed overseas - here in Vietnam, at Cu Chu, near Saigon, December 1970.

 

 

Photos from L to R: #1. Two of the US' best-loved entertainers: Aged 96 at Disneyland with a fellow American icon of the 20th Century. #2. He made one of his last public appearances in January 2000 with wife Dolores, his companion for 70 years.

Television: Radio, movies, and a heavy schedule of personal appearances made Bob a star! But it was television that made him a super-star and a welcomed guest in every living room of America. Although he flirted with the 'new' entertainment medium as early as 1932 for an experimental station for CBS; appeared on the first commercial television broadcast on the West Coast in 1947; and was a surprise guest on Ed Sullivan's "Toast of the Town" in 1949 -- Bob was a latecomer to TV, not at all convinced it would succeed. CONTINUES NEXT