Posted by Steven Lewis on December 15, 1998 at 23:36:48:
The New Yorker, Dec. 21 issue, contains a 16-page biography of Bob Hope by John Lahr (son of the Cowardly Lion). Included in the article are many quotes about Bob from his former employees and some surprisingly bittersweet statements from two of his children. Among the references to Bing:
Hope was so undone by Crosby's death that, for the first time in his life, he cancelled a performance. "I met him at the airport," Elliott Kozak, then Hope's manager, recalls. "I drove him home. He was a basket case. I'd never seen him cry."Those who have read Arthur Marx's The Secret Life of Bob Hope and Lawrence Quirk's The Road Well Traveled will not find any new revelations here. More than anything, this bio provides additional evidence for some of the controversial aspects of these two earlier biographies, including the disdain that some of Hope's writers felt toward him and his numerous extra-marital affairs, which Dolores seems to have 'accepted' a la Hillary.Hope frowned on Bing's drinking [in reality, Bing's drinking problem ended before he met Hope]; Bing looked askance at Hope's philandering. "Bing was a man with an education," says Hal Kanter, who wrote for both stars, separately and together. "He had a good vocabulary and spoke with good grammar.... He used to poke fun at Bob's lack of it. Bob, I think, resented it. He almost assiduously went around trying to improve himself," Kanter adds, "Whatever Bing had, Bob wanted."
Among the other things that Hope envied were Bing's Academy Award for acting and his reputation as a romantic leading man. This offscreen ambivalence added emotional vigor to their amiable onscreen jousting ....
The recent biographers of Hope seem to include all the salacious gossip anyone will dish up to them regardless of its improbability. Rumor-mongering sells books and tabloids. It's an easy way to fill the pages. It saves one from doing serious research. In the end the definitive biography of Bob Hope has yet to be written. At least for Bing the wait for the definitive biography may soon be over. Gary Giddins' many years of research on the Old Groaner should result in a printed text on the bookshelves by the end of 1999.