subject: The Bob Hope Show Salutes Annapolis [print this page] The Bob Hope Show Salutes Annapolis The Bob Hope Show Salutes Annapolis
For our third academy special in 1982, we set our sextant on Annapolis, Maryland and the United States Naval Academy, accompanied by an able-bodied crew that included Bernadette Peters, James Coburn, Roger Staubach, Brooke Shields and to deliver the USO tribute, Secretary of State Alexander Haig.
Hope greeted the midshipmen:
*Here we are at the Naval Academy, the nation's only federally funded yacht club.
*This place is so military, the midshipmen are required to salute anyone in uniform, and I mean anyone. Annapolis has the proudest mailman in the Postal Service.
*This morning, I had breakfast at King Hall, and I've never had to eat so fast. They give you three minutes to chew, but you swallow on your own time.
*Navy food is great and there's no waste. The leftovers go into nuclear warheads."
At West Point, we had Hope trying to con his way into a coed dorm so at Annapolis, we decided to promote him to a legitimate upperclassman. In our now traditional barracks sketch, we again billeted him with Brooke Shields a year older and several inches taller. Hope has been harassing the newly-admitted female middies when the Academy Commandant (Bernadette Peters) enters in a captain's uniform.
BERNADETTE: Midshipman Cruikshank!
HOPE: (oblivious) Pull in your bowline. I gave at the Officers Club. . . (turns around, sees her and snaps to attention) Yes, sir I mean ma'am. . .
BERNADETTE: Well, which is it?
HOPE: (thinks) Spam?
BERNADETTE: Try again.
HOPE: (more thinking) Saran Wrap?
BERNADETTE: (exasperated) You'll address your new commandant as "ma'am" is that clear?
HOPE: (salutes) Yes, sir!
Our Naval Academy show included appearances by heavyweights Jerry Cooney and Larry Holmes with walk-ons by Leslie Neilsen, Charlton Heston, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Robert Goulet in a boxing segment with Hope. Cast members of Broadway's "Sophisticated Ladies" and Dolores Hope also delivered musical numbers.
Bernadette Peters and Hope performed a sea-going medley that concluded with "Anchors Aweigh," accompanied by the Annapolis Choir that drew tears and cheers.
Thus concluded our trilogy of academy specials, each of which received high ratings and favorable reviews and would turn out to be the last military-themed specials that would approach the quality and high production values of those that Hope produced during World War II, Korea and Vietnam and that were the subjects of a six-hour retrospective.
(Hope's military junkets to the Middle East in the early-nineties were hastily produced affairs that proved too physically demanding for an 88-year old even one named Bob Hope.)
Honors continued to arrive in appreciation of Hope's work with the military. When he was in his late 90s, the Navy christened a ship the USNS Bob Hope and the Air Force named one of their new C-17 bombers "The Spirit of Bob Hope." In 1997, President Bill Clinton named him and "honorary veteran," the first in history.
One of his proudest possessions, presented to him by its owner in North Africa during World War II, was a snapshot of Gen. George C. Patton urinating in the Rhine.
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
