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Hollywood Square Renamed For Bob Hope

Aired May 29, 2003 - 15:40   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Legendary comedian and icon Bob Hope turned 100 years old today. Friends and family and fans are honoring Hope in a big way. The comedian even got his own Hollywood Square today, so to speak.
CNN's Eric Horng is live from Los Angeles with more on that.

Hello, Eric.

ERIC HORNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Miles.

Bob Hope not actually able to attend this ceremony because of health reasons, but nonetheless an outpouring of love, appreciation and patriotism at what is now dubbed Bob Hope Square. Friends, family members, fans, as you said, turning out to pay tribute to a true comic icon.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HORNG (voice-over): Bob Hope is synonymous with Hollywood. So perhaps it's fitting the most famous intersection in Tinseltown now bears his name.

BOB HOPE, ENTERTAINER: What are you going to do with two girls?

HORNG: In his more than 50 films and hundreds of TV specials, Bob Hope sang danced and joked his way into millions of hearts.

CONNIE STEVENS, ENTERTAINER: You're clean.

HOPE: You better try it again, huh?

HORNG: But if comedy made him a star, his compassion made him an icon. Spanning six decades, his USO show entertained military audiences around the world, during times of both peace and war.

MICHAEL TEILMANN, BOB HOPE HOLLYWOOD USO: He's been my hero and he's been the hero to millions of GIs from World War II right on through Desert Storm.

HOPE: I don't know how big this ship is but they use Sicily for an anchor.

HORNG: The master of the one-liner, Hope and his writers amassed millions of jokes during his career. Today you can read them at this permanent exhibit at the Library of Congress in Washington. Printed on some 85,000 pages and categorized by topic, they read like an encyclopedia of 20th Century history.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was always current so that he was a man of his times, a citizen of his day.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HORNG: And one of the big highlights of this ceremony today here in Hollywood a military flyover of four vintage World War II aircraft. They flew over twice, as a matter of fact. Of course, honoring Bob Hope for his commitment to the U.S. servicemen and women during the course of those 50 years of USO shows.

Bob Hope,again, was not able to attend. He has not actually made any public appearances in about three years, not expected to leave the home today. The family says they will have a private celebration at the home near Los Angeles, complete with a cake with 100 candles -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Eric, anybody who has read a little bit about Bob Hope knows about the famous joke vault. Where are all the jokes now? They were card catalogued and cross-referenced in every manner you can imagine, organized in a very fastidious manner. Is it possible for people to look at these somehow online or elsewhere?

HORNG: Certainly. They're housed in actually two locations: In the San Fernando Valley here near Los Angeles in a vault and they're also housed, perhaps you saw in the piece, at the Library of Congress. They went in and scanned some 85,000 pages of those jokes, which were amassed by Bob Hope and his over 100 writers during the course of his career. There's been one number putting the estimate at around 7 million jokes. Quite hard to comprehend, quite astonishing number.

But at this day, if you want to go to the Library of Congress in Washington and view those jokes you can. And it's quite amazing. You look at -- because he was so topical, because he was so current in his jokes and -- by the way, that was not the norm back then when he first started, being topical and current -- it really reads like a text book of American history during the 20th Century, poking fun at figures during the 20th Century and events that happened during his time.

O'BRIEN: So he was among the first, then, really to -- sort of the forerunner of the monologues we see on late night TV, really.

HORNG: In many ways, yes. I mean, you see the comedians today like Jay Leno, David Letterman, very topical, very current, taking the news of the day and using that as material. But back then, when he first began, it was a different story. Will Rogers, other comedians did poke fun of the leaders and events of the day, but Bob Hope really popularized it at that time. At that time, it was the really exception, not the rule.

O'BRIEN: Eric Horng at Bob Hope Square in Hollywood, thanks very much.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com





Aired May 29, 2003 - 15:40   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Legendary comedian and icon Bob Hope turned 100 years old today. Friends and family and fans are honoring Hope in a big way. The comedian even got his own Hollywood Square today, so to speak.
CNN's Eric Horng is live from Los Angeles with more on that.

Hello, Eric.

ERIC HORNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Miles.

Bob Hope not actually able to attend this ceremony because of health reasons, but nonetheless an outpouring of love, appreciation and patriotism at what is now dubbed Bob Hope Square. Friends, family members, fans, as you said, turning out to pay tribute to a true comic icon.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HORNG (voice-over): Bob Hope is synonymous with Hollywood. So perhaps it's fitting the most famous intersection in Tinseltown now bears his name.

BOB HOPE, ENTERTAINER: What are you going to do with two girls?

HORNG: In his more than 50 films and hundreds of TV specials, Bob Hope sang danced and joked his way into millions of hearts.

CONNIE STEVENS, ENTERTAINER: You're clean.

HOPE: You better try it again, huh?

HORNG: But if comedy made him a star, his compassion made him an icon. Spanning six decades, his USO show entertained military audiences around the world, during times of both peace and war.

MICHAEL TEILMANN, BOB HOPE HOLLYWOOD USO: He's been my hero and he's been the hero to millions of GIs from World War II right on through Desert Storm.

HOPE: I don't know how big this ship is but they use Sicily for an anchor.

HORNG: The master of the one-liner, Hope and his writers amassed millions of jokes during his career. Today you can read them at this permanent exhibit at the Library of Congress in Washington. Printed on some 85,000 pages and categorized by topic, they read like an encyclopedia of 20th Century history.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was always current so that he was a man of his times, a citizen of his day.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HORNG: And one of the big highlights of this ceremony today here in Hollywood a military flyover of four vintage World War II aircraft. They flew over twice, as a matter of fact. Of course, honoring Bob Hope for his commitment to the U.S. servicemen and women during the course of those 50 years of USO shows.

Bob Hope,again, was not able to attend. He has not actually made any public appearances in about three years, not expected to leave the home today. The family says they will have a private celebration at the home near Los Angeles, complete with a cake with 100 candles -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Eric, anybody who has read a little bit about Bob Hope knows about the famous joke vault. Where are all the jokes now? They were card catalogued and cross-referenced in every manner you can imagine, organized in a very fastidious manner. Is it possible for people to look at these somehow online or elsewhere?

HORNG: Certainly. They're housed in actually two locations: In the San Fernando Valley here near Los Angeles in a vault and they're also housed, perhaps you saw in the piece, at the Library of Congress. They went in and scanned some 85,000 pages of those jokes, which were amassed by Bob Hope and his over 100 writers during the course of his career. There's been one number putting the estimate at around 7 million jokes. Quite hard to comprehend, quite astonishing number.

But at this day, if you want to go to the Library of Congress in Washington and view those jokes you can. And it's quite amazing. You look at -- because he was so topical, because he was so current in his jokes and -- by the way, that was not the norm back then when he first started, being topical and current -- it really reads like a text book of American history during the 20th Century, poking fun at figures during the 20th Century and events that happened during his time.

O'BRIEN: So he was among the first, then, really to -- sort of the forerunner of the monologues we see on late night TV, really.

HORNG: In many ways, yes. I mean, you see the comedians today like Jay Leno, David Letterman, very topical, very current, taking the news of the day and using that as material. But back then, when he first began, it was a different story. Will Rogers, other comedians did poke fun of the leaders and events of the day, but Bob Hope really popularized it at that time. At that time, it was the really exception, not the rule.

O'BRIEN: Eric Horng at Bob Hope Square in Hollywood, thanks very much.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com