"(For) six months the Marines had no entertainment," Hope has
recalled about a show for soldiers on the
South Pacific island of
Pavuvu. "Hell, they didn't even have an airstrip. We'd have to land
on roads."
Hope was always a master of the corner-of-the-mouth, vaudeville
groaner - "Bing Crosby pays so much income tax, every time a
Douglas bomber flies over his house it curtsies" - but it was the
force of his personality, the visceral reminder of home he brought,
that endeared him to the troops. And vice versa. Hope titled his
1944 wartime memoirs I Never Left Home, a tribute to the men and
women who kept him and his traveling Gypsies from feeling homesick
during long trips through those remote outposts.
Hope's success in entertaining the military was long lived, in part
because he never stopped relating to the soldiers in the field.
"Thanks to his vibrant aver-ageness, Hope is any healthy, cocky,
capering American," wrote Time in 1943. "With his ski-slide nose
and matching chin, he looks funny but he also looks normal, even
personable."
During the contentious
Vietnam War, Hope was criticized roundly for
making nine
Christmas trips to entertain in that country, sometimes
hearing criticism from the troops themselves. But he didn't duck
the issues, speaking to troops about home-front demonstrations and
telling one group of G.I.'s, "I wanna tell you guys, the country's
behind you 50 percent!"
"Vietnam was very difficult," says Hope's daughter, Linda, who now
manages Hope Enterprises. "Some people called him a hawk and a war-
monger, but the thing he used to say was, 'You know, I don't care
if a guy wants to be there or not, the fact is, if they're there
serving, putting their lives on the line, I want to reach out and
support these people no matter what the politics are.' "