A "New" Hope?

Zoglin, Richard.  Hope: Entertainer of the Century.  New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.
        ISBN: 978-1-4391-4027-7

Bob Hope died in July 2003 at the age of 100.  In Bob Hope: Entertainer of the Century, Richard Zoglin provides the first complete descriptive biography of Leslie Towns Hope (better known as Bob Hope).  In the introduction and 14 chapters, he lays out the evidence that Bob Hope should be considered a seminal figure in American entertainment in the Twentieth century.

Bob Hope began his career in vaudeville in the 1920's and he prospered even as vaudeville was dying.  In the 1930's, he became a star on Broadway, migrated to radio with NBC and then in 1938 became a movie star.  During World War II, he started a career as entertainer for US troops abroad which continued for close to fifty years.  Then, in 1950's Hope started a yearly series of NBC TV specials.  In all these fields Bob Hope excelled, Zoglin postulates due to his hard work, focus on comedy, willingness to change and innovate.  He also focused on the bottom line and was always thinking ahead.

Richard Zoglin focuses on Bob Hope as entertainer, comedian, and businessman, providing a narrative full of plays, movies, and television specials while providing little of the material in the sketches, and movies that made Bob Hope famous.  In large part Zoglin wrote Hope to bring Bob Hope back into the limelight he deserves.  Unfortunately, the narrative makes the case for Hope as a pioneer in multiple fields while almost ignoring Hope the man, the father, and the husband.  Hope in historical context is also missing from the book.  Despite these drawbacks, Zoglin has written a very readable life of Bob Hope that is recommended to anyone wanting to know more of his story.