subject: Bob Hope in China: Lights! Camera! Cue the Great Wall! [print this page] Bob Hope in China: Lights! Camera! Cue the Great Wall!
Today, visitors to Beijing travel to Badalay's Juyong Pass north of the city to view one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Great Wall. Spanning a distance of 4000 miles, the wall that astronaut Neil Armstrong claimed he could see from space begins on the banks of the Yalu River in the east and meanders toward the Qilian and Tianshan Mountains in the west. Built between 600 BC and 1500 AD, it's a monument to man's patience and persistence as the stones were hand-laid individually without mortar.
From our earliest productions meetings in preparation to tape our 3-hour special, we all agreed that Hope's opening musical number --- to be written by producer Jim Lipton ala "The Road to Morocco" --- should be filmed atop the Wall. Since China had only recently been opened to the West, there were few tourists, so we were able to obtain permission from the Chinese government to use the Wall, empty save for Bob Hope, as far as the camera's lens could see. (The few tourists there were agreed to remain hidden in a tower during the filming.)
As Hope, in sports shirt and slacks and carrying a 3-wood for a walking stick, proceeded to strut down the ancient cobblestones, he lip synced to a prerecorded music track from speakers set up out of sight behind him. Only occasionally did he glance at cue cards that cue card man Barney McNulty had taped beneath the guard rails just out of the camera's view. He sang:
"Hey, we're off on the road to China
With fun and adventure in mind
The seventh Wonder of the World
Is here beneath our feet
Compared to this the
Road to Mandalay is obsolete
We're off on the road to China
Who knows what we're going to find
Like Marco Polo long ago
We enter starry-eyed
Ready to be Peking-eed
And hot to be Shanghaied
We'll meet on the road to China
If you're into foreign affairs
And since there is so much to see
From sea to shining sea
We'll sample one from column A
And one from column B
It's neat on the road to China
We've nothing to lose but our cares
We're half a world away
From old New York and London Town
We're doing pretty well
for people Standing upside down
It's time for the feast to begin
Our table's set with China
So let's all dig in"
With the Great Wall spiraling into the distant sky, it was the most auspicious and visually impressive opening Bob Hope ever performed on television. We had no doubt that it was worth the time, expense, and full day of shooting it had taken to get it on tape.
Excerpted from THE LAUGH MAKERS: A Behind-the-Scenes Tribute to Bob Hope's Incredible Gag Writers (c) 2009 by Robert L. Mills and published by Bear Manor Media. To order: http://bobhopeslaughmakers.weebly.com
