subject: Bob Hope in China: The Peking Opera Meets Gilbert & Sullivan [print this page] Bob Hope in China: The Peking Opera Meets Gilbert & Sullivan
(Ed. note: The author was a script writer for Bob Hope from 1977 tro 1992.)
We set aside a full day for our visit to Peking's Chinese Opera School, which can best be described as the New York School for the Performing Arts with barracks. Hand-picked by the government, kids from all over China are given free room, board and training to someday take their place in the cast of the Oriental version of the Met the Peking Opera. I take that back. Compared to the Met, this ensemble is a Green Beret unit.
With more centuries under their belt than they care to admit, the Opera combines tumbling, juggling, gymnastics, slapstick comedy, fencing, acting, dancing and singing. The entire company consists of a first string unit as well as a number of road versions that constantly tour the provinces. Sort of AAA-Opera.
The kids, who range in age from about eight to twelve, gave us a heart-pounding demonstration of calisthenics that seemed to transform them into prepubescent pretzels. We would later borrow six of these talented youngsters for a musical number that Hope would perform on Peking's famous Marble Boat.
Near the city's edge is a lake, on the banks of which the emperors built a summer palace for those times when the pressures of emperoring called for a little R&R. Its most famous resident was the empress dowager, who apparently handled money something like Leona Helmsley, who left her fortune to her dogs. Somehow she managed to blow hundreds of thousands of yuan that the Chinese parliament had allocated for a navy.
To appease an unsatisfied admiralty, she ordered the construction of a boat made entirely of marble. The size of a small Mississippi paddle-wheeler, it forever stands immobile at the dock, a monument to the dowager's quick thinking gift-giving. Not to take advantage of such a weighty set and one with a fascinating history to boot would have been unthinkable, so we dressed Hope as a Chinese admiral complete with a uniform borrowed from the Peking Opera, backed him with the six singers, and gave him "The Queen's Navy" from Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore with lyrics by James Lipton:
When I was a lad I tapped my feet for nickles and dimes on a Cleveland street.
I sang at picnics to the crowd's delight, and came in second at an amateur night.
I came in second so frequently, that now I am the ruler of the Queen's navy.
I knew I'd never get rich that way so I took my act on the two-a-day.
After six short months in vaudeville I worked my way to the bottom of the bill.
When vaudeville died, I was all at sea so now I am the ruler of the Queen's navy.
When Broadway beckoned one lucky day, my career was launched on the Great White Way.
The critics rose with a mighty roar and heatedly announced I wasn't Barrymore.
So many shows sank under me that now I am the ruler of the Queen's navy.
My next adventure was radio. At last I was captain of my very own show.
It pleased my family and it paid the rent and it also sold a tube or two of Pepsodent.
I sailed the airwaves for NBC so now I am the ruler of the Queen's navy.
So here I stand in my navy blue on a marble boat with a Chinese crew.
When I give commands they stand and stare; if I say "Let's go" they reply "Go where?"
This boat hasn't moved since the Qin Dynasty and neither has the ruler of the Queen's navy.
On my return visit to China in 2007, I saw the marble boat once more, still dead-in-the-water near the Summer Palace. I could almost see Hope on her deck with the six Peking Opera dancers twenty-eight years before. I doubt she ever had a more talented captain.
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
