Entertaining the Troops
Bob Hope’s best audiences were servicemen and women stationed far from home at military bases in the U.S. and abroad. Beginning in May 1941 and continuing for nearly fifty years, Hope brought his variety show to military camps and war zones to entertain troops with song, dance, comedy, attractive women, and people in the news. He discovered early on that audiences appreciated jokes about their locale and local elite. The strategy worked especially well when he teased soldiers about their bases and skewered their officers. Hope believed he gained more from the experience than he gave. “I hate war with all my guts,” Hope told a crowd in 1971, “but I admire the guys with guts enough to fight them when they have to be fought.”
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