"Bob Hope is an applause junkie. Bob Hope will go to the opening of a phone booth at a gas station in Anaheim, provided that they have a camera crew and three people there. He's a pathetic guy."-- Marlon Brando, Playboy interview

The radio show This American Life has a wonderful report on the history of Bob Hope's USO shows-- as host Ira Glass puts it, an examination of what happens when altruism interconnects with self-promotion.

Reporter Margy Rochlin documents how, beginning in 1954, Hope started selling the shows to NBC, and that he had to have been the sole moneymaker on them, since the guest-stars almost always worked for free, and the Pentagon (read: taxpayers) picked up all the travel and lodging expenses. Also, during Viet Nam, Timothy White wrote in Rolling Stone that G.I.s told him that attendance at the USO shows was mandatory, and that they were a captive audience. (Rochlin notes that the long-haired dope-smoking soldiers responded to Hope's golf jokes by giving him the finger and booing him off the stage.)

To be fair, Rochlin also points out what a business genius he was. In 1961, Bob had a clause added to his 40-year contract that all production costs be frozen at 1961 rates-- meaning that every set, piece of equipment and crew member his company used all the way into the '90s cost the going rate from decades past.

The entire piece is great, but the best parts are excerpts from a taped interview Rochlin did with Hope in 1986. As she says, it started with Bob's dog biting her and went downhill from there. He does horrible political jokes for her, and you really feel her pain as she tries to laugh. When the talk turns to Viet Nam and how he was perceived by some of the public, Bob mentions that a couple people once called him a "warmonger" and he sicced the local cops and the FBI on 'em! ("They chased 'em out of the town-- they were some bums that were, you know, probably guys that were defectors or something.")

At the end, Rochlin sums it up beautifully: Hope used international conflict as a marketing tool to further his career.

You can hear her report here (move the Real Audio slider to about 35 minutes in).