Bob Hope on TV: Thanks for the Video Memories (hardback)

ISBN  9781629332185

Your great-grandparents may have seen him in Vaudeville, your grandparents probably saw him in dozens of movies and heard him on Old Time Radio, and your father may have seen him on one of his 57 USO tours during World War Two. The rest of us knew Bob Hope mainly from television. He hosted the annual Academy Awards nineteen times, headlined his own specials for decades, and appeared as a guest on sitoms, talk shows, game shows, telethons, and documentaries featuring Brooke Shields, Betty White, Bing Crosby, Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, Dean Martin, Carol Burnett, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan.

Author Wesley Hyatt brings back the laughs from Bob’s greatest jokes, monologues, and sketches from hundreds of television appearances, drawn from rare resources, such as UCLA archives and the Library of Congress. 

Who knew that Bob felt uneasy about venturing into television in its infancy, or that he faced a chaffing challenge in the 1960s and 1970s staunchly supporting the unpopular Vietnam War and embracing President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal? Discover how Bob overcame these obstacles, anchored his legacy, and caused a new generation to laugh uproariously at themselves. 

Shows profiled include The Bob Hope Special (1950), The Academy Awards (1953), I Love Lucy (1956), The Tonight Show (1962), Get Smart! (1968), The Bob Hope Christmas Special (1970), The Golden Girls (1989), Roseanne (1991), The Simpsons (1992), and many more.

Illustrated. Bibliography and Index.

About the author: Television historian Wesley Hyatt has also published: The Carol Burnett Show Companion: So Glad We Had This Time Together (2016); Television's Top 100: The Most Watched American Broadcasts, 1960-2010 (2011); Kicking Off The Week: A History of Monday Night Football on ABC Television, 1970-2005 (2007); Emmy Award Winning Nighttime Television Shows, 1948-2004 (2006); A Critical History of Television’s The Red Skelton Show, 1951-1971(2004); Short-Lived Television Series, 1948-1978 (2003); The Billboard Book of Number One Adult Contemporary Hits (1999); The Encyclopedia of Daytime Television (1997).