Watching the various tributes to Bob Hope, I was again struck
by the idea that in the black and white movies he made in his
prime, the 40s and early 50s, he was nearly as noir as
Garfield or Mitchum or Bogart. He delighted in playing the
loser. A brash loser, but a loser nonetheless. He takes it on
the chin and loses the girl to Crosby in every Road movie
save one and in that one, his and Lamour's child looks like
Crosby. His "My Favorite Brunette" may be the best private
eye parody (of "Murder My Sweet") ever filmed. Many if not
most of the movies he made during that period involved crime
-- and particularly vicious criminals. Otto Preminger leads a
cadre of homicidal Nazis in
"They Got Me Covered." Roland Young of all people, as a
strangler in "The Great Lover." (That film opens with Young
choking George
"Superman" Reeves to death.) Francis X. Sullivan doing a
Casper Guttman turn in "My Favorite Spy." In all, Hope is a
hapless, hard luck hero being played for a sap by every other
character, even the women who wind up falling for him.
Dick Lochte
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