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 But seriously, folks... some Bob Hope jokes

    July 28 2003 at 04:18PM

By Jill Serjeant

Los Angeles - Bob Hope was America's favorite funnyman for more than 70 years, spinning one-liners with immaculate timing from makeshift stages, radio microphones, vaudeville halls and Hollywood movie sets to an audience of presidents and royalty, soldiers and students.

More than 89 000 pages of his jokes - most of them written by an army of other people - have been preserved in the new Bob Hope Gallery at the US Library of Congress. From classic double entendre to politics, wars, sexual liberation, golf and movie stars, they capture a changing America.

As Hope might say, But seriously, folks ... Thanks for the Memory.
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"Wine, women and song have been replaced by prune juice, a heating pad and the Gong Show." (1980)

"I consider myself very fortunate. I owe everything to my family and my make-up man. My wonderful family keeps me going and my wonderful make-up man keeps me from looking like I already went."

"I'm tired. I've been digging a bomb shelter under my cellar but I can't quit now. The tunnel almost reaches Hedy Lamarr's house," during World War II.

"Where else but in America could the Women's Liberation Movement take off their bras, then go on TV to complain about their lack of support?" (1970)

"I have it on good authority that (Senator Joseph) McCarthy is going to disclose the names of two million communists. He has just got his hands on the Moscow telephone directory." (1954)

"Students are revolting all over the world. I don't know what they're revolting about, I just know that they're revolting." (1969)

"I feel very humble. But I think I have the strength of character to fight it," (1963, on being awarded a Congressional Gold Medal by President Kennedy)

"It's kinda confusing for Santa Claus over here. He climbs down the chimney and there's no house," (to a gathering of GI's in Vietnam)

"Did you see our show. Or were you sick before?" (to GI's in hospital tents in Burma, Vietnam and Korea)

"As soon as I arrived in camp they gave me a 10-gun salute - or so they told me on the operating table."

"I guess I have my critics everywhere." (in Saigon where a bomb blast went off at his hotel just before checking in)

"My parents were English. We were too poor to be British." (on his family's British origins)

"A lot of people ask me how I stay in shape. I've got a new video coming out called the Bob Hope workout tape. If you do the exercises carefully you'll be laughed at wherever you go."

"When they asked Jack Benny to do something for the Actor's Orphanage - he shot both his parents and moved in."

"There's so many talk shows, they're running out of applause machines... I may have to lend them the one I have over my bed." (to Johnny Carson on the "Tonight Show")

"I went to play golf and tried to shoot my age, But I shot my weight instead." (1984)

"I used to keep my birthday a secret but I decided to stop. I wasn't getting any presents."

"If this hardens, I won't be able to blow it for months." (1943, on immortalising his hand and nose prints in concrete outside Mann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood.

In a 1947 radio sketch with Dorothy Lamour:
Lamour: "I'll meet you in front of the pawn shop."
Hope: "Okay Dottie, and then you can kiss me under the balls."

"I don't believe in all that sexual permissiveness you hear about today. Maybe it's because I'm at the age when my bag is my lunch" (1969)

"I'm never going to retire. I intend to be cracking jokes on my way to the grave." (mid 1970s)

"Welcome to the Academy Awards. Or as it's known in my house - Passover." (1968, opening the Oscar ceremony. Hope won five "special" Oscars but none of them for acting)

Hope experienced one of his most embarrassing public moments in 1968 while introducing the Academy Awards after a two-day postponement because of the assassination of Martin Luther King.

"About the delay of two days... it didn't affect me but it's been tough on the nominees. How would you like to spend two days in a crouch?"

The joke was met with stony silence.

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