Seated at a restaurant in Banff, Canada, television critic Richard Zoglin was far too nervous to cross the dining room to meet movie and comedy icon Bob Hope, who was eating with a small group.
They were all taking a break from the 1992 Banff World Television Festival, where Mr. Zoglin was a judge, and he watched with vicarious glee as a Japanese counterpart got up from his table, walked over and introduced himself to the living legend, whom Mr. Zoglin had admired his entire life.
“I just didn’t have the courage to do it myself,” Mr. Zoglin said recently, seated cross-legged in an oversized armchair in his Wainscott living room. “That turned out to be my one chance.”
They wouldn’t cross paths again, except posthumously—Mr. Hope died at age 100 in his home in Toluca Lake, California. But, after five years of research, his legacy lives on in Mr. Zoglin’s newest book, “Hope: Entertainer of the Century,” heralded as perhaps the most all-inclusive, expansive biography of Mr. Hope.
“I wanted to write the book because Bob Hope has been so much off the radar lately, and I wanted to sort of spark a rediscovery and a reappraisal of him,” Mr. Zoglin said. “It is exactly what I hoped for. It is really spurring people to think again about Mr. Hope.”
Born Leslie Townes Hope on May 29, 1903, in Eltham, England, it was clear from an early age he was meant to be a star. After moving to the United States in 1907, the young boy was performing on the streets by age 12—singing, dancing and entertaining passersby to earn pocket money.
Over the span of his 80-year career, Mr. Hope would go on to star in more than 80 short and feature films; act in countless vaudeville performances; host the Academy Awards 14 times, a standing record; pen 14 books; and appear in several television and stage productions. He also accompanied United Service Organizations on 57 tours, in order to entertain military personnel.
“I wanted to tell the story of how much of a pioneer he was,” Mr. Zoglin said. “He was the first guy to really do topical monologues. He came out of vaudeville, where the jokes were all very formulaic and not related to the real world. He had his writers read the papers and give him lines from what was happening, and that was something new. He was truly a pioneering entertainer. And I wanted to show that.”
Years ago, he never would have thought it would be by way of a book—despite his bachelor’s degree in English and master’s degree in journalism, both earned at the University of California at Berkeley. He was, first and foremost, a fan of television, and recognized a dearth of television critics. The focus, in the early 1970s, was film and theater, he said.
“Television wasn’t taken seriously,” he said. “A lot of critics for the daily newspapers were old-timers, and I was looking for someplace where they needed good criticism and writers. Television critics were a lot of lightweights, and I saw there were a lot of opportunities there. So I started doing freelance pieces.”
Eventually, after landing at the Atlanta Constitution, he was tapped in 1983 by a new magazine owned by Time Inc.—competition against TV Guide that lasted only about six months, he said. But it was enough to get his foot in the door at Time magazine, where he spent the next decade reviewing every major television show.
By 1996, Mr. Zoglin was bored, he said, reviewing sitcom after sitcom. He switched to writing theater reviews, and still freelances them to this day, while exploring his literary side. He published his first book in 2008, “Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-Up in the 1970s Changed America,” and noticed, during his research, that none of the comedians he interviewed listed Bob Hope as an influence.
It got him thinking—especially after meeting an interested editor at Simon & Schuster Publishing.
“I got together a proposal,” Mr. Zoglin said. “He was such a major figure, and it was surprising to me that there were several books about him, but not one really good biography the way there is about most other entertainment figures.”
Over the next five years, Mr. Zoglin dedicated his life to learning as much as possible about Mr. Hope. The first step was reaching out to his family. With their cooperation, he spent three weeks at the Library of Congress annex building in Culpeper, Virginia, sifting through boxes of letters, photo albums and journals from Mr. Hope that were donated following his death.
In total, it took Mr. Zoglin five years to complete the book, which he finished writing in September 2013; it was published last November. The hardest part, he said, was tracking down Mr. Hope’s friends.
“Even the people who were still around, their memories were fading,” he said.”One of the problems was that I wanted to talk about Bob’s personal life, and he was a tough nut to crack, because he was so closed off that even the people who knew him well didn’t really know him very well. So it was hard to get inside of his head. People, of course, had funny stories—but to tell what he was really like, that was difficult.”
The publishing of “Hope: Entertainer of the Century” is a childhood dream realized in a way he had never thought possible, he said. Moving onward and upward from it is quite the battle.
“It is hard because everything after Bob Hope sounds anti-climactic,” Mr. Zoglin said. “He was such a big character, such a giant that everybody else now seems so secondary. So I am trying to figure that out.”
For more information, visit richardzoglin.com.
on Feb 3, 2015