From the S&S archives: Bob Hope Show has something for the boys

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Maj. Ed Swinney was the executive officer of Pacific Stars and Stripes when he wrote this article. He came to Stripes after five years as an Air Force representative in a joint service activity that coordinated the DOD's worldwide entertainment program. His responsibilities included logistics for Bob Hope's annual Christmas tours.)

SOMEWHERE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA — Bob Hope burst on the local scene last week and discovered too late that he had a talented tiger by the tail.

For the first time in many a moon the veteran comedian began barnstorming the boondocks with a troupe so loaded with talent that he was being hard pressed to make full use of it. The audiences were yelling for more and the talent was pawing the dirt to take an encore, but there just wasn't time.

This Christmas season, as usual, Hope was setting a fast pace for his talented cast and drawing big laughs with his incisive critiques of contemporary affairs and tongue-in-cheek deprecation of everything in sight, including himself. "I went down to volunteer to my draft board," he says, "and they burned MY draft card."

He was getting the biggest response from his razor-sharp cracks about the anti-Vietnam demonstrators. "At least some of them are on our side," he said. "They're sending their blood to north Vietnam."

Also as usual, MATS was sent reeling with barbs about the flight crew ("It was inspiring the way the rest of the crew carried the pilot onto the plane. They had to. He fought them.") and the in-flight lunches ("Les Brown's band has a new game: They toss the box lunches overboard and watch the sharks get sick.")

This year's glamor girl is Carroll Baker, and her recent screen portrayal of the late cinema sex symbol Jean Harlow and some revealing Playboy magazine photos are touched on in Hope's introduction: "I know you've seen quite a bit of her already."

The tight show schedule doesn't permit tall redhead Kaye Stevens enough time to do as much as she'd like to, but she makes the most of it. Asked how she developed the quality of being able to "grab" a male audience so quickly, she quipped: "Being born a woman helped."

Kaye sings well and accomplishes mental miracles with a few flourishes of her hips. Then, while the driving Les Brown Band of Renown furnishes a musical hint of burlesque, Kaye strips off her elbow-length white gloves and tosses then to the audience. From the reaction, you'd think she'd tossed her tassels.

Auburn-haired Anita Bryant, making her sixth straight Hope tour (it's Hope's 12th consecutive Christmas trip), has abandoned her past penchant for singing her early record hits in favor of a country and western routine that shows off both her figure and her gifted voice. The applause indicates she knows what she's doing.

As a Hope trouper, this shapely former Miss America contestant (1958) has progressed from newlywed to mother-of-two, and she still evokes that "girl you want to marry" feeling rather than otherwise.

Surprise hit of the show has been singer Jack Jones. The last male singer to grace the Hope Show cast was Andy Williams, in 1960. Like Williams, Jones is a straightforward ballad singer who interprets lyrics the way the composer wrote them and the way the male listener would like to have his true love hear them.

At the first few shows, time limited Jack to a fast medley from Sound of Music.'' This tall Air Force reservist sets off the sane tingles with "Climb Every Mountain" that his father Allan Jones did with "Donkey Serenade" some three decades ago.

The 1965 Hope Show has something for everyone, and for the young and vibrant there's diminutive Joey Heatherton, 19-year-old daughter of New York's radio-TV "Merry Mailman" Ray Heatherton. At one show, a mess attendant somehow got the idea she was French, spoke to her in that language, and drew a blank. Small wonder, She's Scotch-Irish.

When 5-foot-3 Joey waggles a watusi the entire audience threatens to come unglued. Clad in a turtleneck leotard that would inspire Hugh Hefner to publish a more liberal magazine, Miss Heatherton does nothing to offset the local temperature. So far, no one has complained.

In true show biz tradition, the current hope show opens with a fast act, the Nicholas Brothers. These veteran tapsters expertly display an almost lost art — and make it look easy. Hope worked with them in the Ziegfeld Follies 30 years ago, when Harold Nicholas was only 9.

No Hope show would be complete without Jerry Colonna who, in the past 25 years, has missed only one Hope military tour (1950). His cross-over routine with Hope, in which they portray two second lieutenants meeting on the street, is still a classic laugh provoker.

This year, Hope-show veteran Peter Leeds is doing a specialty act for the first time. Previously limited to bit parts in sketches, Pete does well in a U.N. meeting monolog written for the 1965 tour. And Dianna Lynn Batts stacks up as the shapeliest Miss U.S.A. Hope's ever had on tour.

At some performances, Hope is filming for television (in color and sometimes with great difficulty, due to uncooperative cloud cover) a number of comedy sketches which lampoon military life.

In one sketch, Kaye Stevens portrays an Army nurse conducting sick call (8 to 8:05 a.m.) and her bit with Les Brown's younger brother Stumpy might end up on the cutting room floor, if Stumpy stands too close. He comes about to here on the tall Miss Stevens.

Later in the sketch, Kaye tells Hope, "Look. I've been an Army nurse for 10 years. Now open your mouth and stick out your pulse." At one show, Hope ad-libbed a line which undoubtedly will be cut, and it's not about to be repeated here.

That show, like some of the others, ran well into the night and had to be finished virtually by flashlight. It wasn't supposed to be that way, but even Hope could find no way to stop the clock.

The problem was too much show, too little time, and too much interference from such things as jets taking off on missions that are, after all, slightly more important, all things considered.

This isn't the first time Hope has played second fiddle to a war. His only complaint is that the jet jockies always cut in the afterburners just when he's doing his monolog.

Obviously Sherman, and now Hope, was right. War is a drag, man.