Bob
Hope: Court Jester
By
Marty Jezer
CommonDreams.org
02 August, 2003
Ive
always been a sucker for comedy. In my system of values, a bad joke
is better than no joke. In my hierarchy of heroes, there is no one braver
(at least in the field of non-life-threatening occupations) than a stand-up
comedian risking existential death every time he or she tells a joke.
In life, Bob Hope
made me laugh. To indulge the sentimentality that was so much a part
of his act -- thanks for the memory, Bob. His recent death, at age 100,
leads me to reflect on the nature of comedy and the characteristics
of comedians. Yeah, I know, comedy is made for laughter, not for critical
commentary. Right! So, if you decide to stuff this column and play a
Marx Brother video or tune-in to John Stewarts nightly Daily Show
instead, go for it.
Bob Hope was an
important comedian in the history of show business rather than a brilliant
performer in the history of comedy. Moving from vaudeville to radio
to movies and television, he helped create the persona of the stand-up
comedian, skewering the headlines with zingy one-liners. But the jokes
were rarely, if ever, his own.
Many comedians,
even the great ones, have writers. Most comics have to work their shticks
and hone their craft. Bob Hope was totally dependent on a full-time
staff of writers and he worked them hard, even demanding that they provide
him with one-liners for private social engagements like dinner parties.
What sounded to his audience at these occasions as spontaneous banter
was, in fact, prepackaged lines. Hopes craft was as an editor,
knowing which jokes would work at what time. He also had a relentless
delivery. If one joke bombed, hed hit the audience with a dozen
more, some of which were bound to get a laugh.
But there was a
kind of hollowness in Hopes performance, a desperation (self-acknowledged)
to get that laugh; humor treated as if it was a commodity. What precisely
was his talent? Who was the man? As a monologist, Hope told other peoples
jokes. As a movie actor, he played just one role, that of a wisecracking
coward who leered at but never got the girl. He was not a physical comedian
like, say, Chaplin, Red Skelton, or Michael Richard (Kramer
on Seinfeld). He was not a great comic actor, like Lucille Ball, Jackie
Gleason, Sid Caesar, Rowan Atkinson, who can inhabit a character and
make him or her funny. He was not conceptual like the great Ernie Kovacs
or Andy Kaufman, who created comedy out of surreal situations. Nor was
he madcap, zany, and over-the-top like Robin Williams who in his public
persona seems instinctively funny.
Hope was famous
for making fun of politicians. In the 1950s this was considered proof
that our democracy worked. No small accomplishment considering what
was going on elsewhere in the world: we could laugh at our leaders!
But Hopes political commentary, like his social observations,
never cut deep, never dealt with real issues, were meant to tickle the
funny-bone, not excite the brain. Politicians liked being insulted
by Hope. It gave them the aura of Everyman, and they trusted that Hopes
barbs would not be pointed.
Hope is celebrated
for entertaining the troops. His vaudeville shows were no doubt great
gifts to scared kids risking their lives in faraway places. By the time
of Vietnam, however, his style of humor was passé. Did the troops
love him for his shtick? Or for the sexy actresses who always shared
his stage?
The 1960s transformed
comedy, as it did everything else. Bob Hope was the house
comedian of fifties America. He did not cut deep and shock his
audience into recognizing the hypocrisies of the time. Safe and non-controversial,
his humor assumed that there was nothing amiss in the country.
In the late 1950s,
a new generation of comedians came to the fore: Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce,
Dick Gregory, Elaine May and Mike Nichols, Jonathan Winters, Bob Newhart,
and Shelly Berman to name a few. Their subject was social and political
reality, what was happening behind the headlines, and in the bedrooms,
boardrooms and backseats of our lives. Bob Hope got laughs from sexual
double entendres. The new comedians spoke about real relationships,
which, because they were real, included sexual situations.
In making everyday experience the subject of humor, these comics gave
Americans permission, and a language, to talk about what was bothering
them. Time Magazine, mounting a defense of Bob Hopes humor and
Bob Hopes world, dubbed them sick comedians. Their
sicknik humor, Time said, represented a personal and
highly disturbing hostility toward all the world.
The world was changing
and comedians were on the cusp of that change. In totalitarian states,
people who question authority are often dismissed, hence marginalized,
as having mental problems. But who or what was sick: comedians or society?
As Abraham Maslow, one of the founders of humanist psychology, was soon
to ask, what is a healthy reaction to racism, poverty, totalitarianism,
and the husband who wants his wife to remain a child? Maslows
answer, written in Toward A Psychology of Being, was, It seems
quite clear that personality problems may sometimes be loud protests
against ones psychological bones, of ones true inner nature.
What is sick then is not to protest when this crime is being committed.
Inoffensive and
superficial, Hopes comedy did not explore, challenge or protest
anything serious. It spoke to a phony reality, an era of niceness that
didnt exist. As a comic, he was a company man, ingratiating himself
with whoever held power, the jester in the court of the king. If all
that comedy is meant to do is make us laugh, Hope and his writers produced
an excellent product. But we know, because of the creative brilliance
of so many other American comedians, that laughter has the power to
rattle our bones, open our senses, stir out minds, move us personally,
and shake the world.
Marty Jezer
has more
to say about the sick comedians in The Dark Ages: Life in
the U.S. 1945-1960. He writes from Brattleboro, Vermont and welcomes
comments at [email protected].