Paramount followed up its successful Bob Hope/Paulette Goddard co-starrer The Cat and the Canary (1939) by warming up another venerable "old dark house" stage play, Paul Dickey and Charles Goddard's The Ghost Breaker, pluralizing the title to accommodate both stars. This time Hope plays radio personality Lawrence L. Lawrence (the middle initial ...
Originally intended as a 3D film, this standard-issue Bob Hope musical comedy was released "flat." The 50-year-old Hope plays over-aged chorus boy Stanley Snodgrass, whose attempts to get ahead in the early 20th-century theatre world always come acropper. His luck suddenly changes when he's promoted to the leading-man role in a show headlined by ...
Bob Hope and an all-star cast have great fun in this frothy romantic comedy about a wealthy tycoon who learns that he only has one month left to live. Not realizing that the tests were wrong, he decides to make hay while the sun still shines. He dumps his fiancee and then heads for the lovely Bad Gaswasser Spa in Switzerland. There he meets a ...
Frank Benson (Bob Hope) and his wife, Elaine (Jane Wyman), decide to end their marriage after 20 years. Their daughter, Nancy (Joanna Cameron), announces she wishes to marry her college sweetheart, David Poe (Tim Matheson). David's father, Oliver (Jackie Gleason), is against the union and tries to sabotage the relationship. Nancy ends up pregnant ...
This second of four film adaptations of Damon Runyon's Little Miss Marker is tailored to the talents of Bob Hope. A shifty Broadway bookie, Sorrowful Jones (Hope) becomes a reluctant foster parent when an anxious gambler leaves behind his little girl Martha Jane (Mary Jane Saunders) as a "marker," or IOU. When the father is killed by mobster Big ...
In The Great Lover, Bob Hope plays "Boy Rangers" scoutmaster Freddie Hunter, who accompanies his young charges on a European tour. During the ocean voyage to the continent, Freddie falls under the influence of erudite cardsharp O. J. Dabney (Roland Young), who promotes a romance between Freddie and Duchess Alexandria (Rhonda Fleming), the daughter ...
With his movie career fading in 1955, Bob Hope was amenable to writer/director Mel Shavelson's suggestion that Hope try something different. The Seven Little Foys was the first of Hope's two "straight" biopics (the second was 1956's Beau James). Though not completely abandoning his patented persona, Hope does an admirable job of impersonating ...
The second Bing Crosby/Bob Hope "Road" picture casts Crosby as a penny-ante sideshow promoter and Hope as Crosby's only client, "Fearless Frazier." Under Crosby's tutelage, Hope has been shot from a cannon, zapped in an electric chair and nearly strangled by an octopus. Now they're practically broke and stranded on the African coast. Crosby spends ...
Monsieur Beaucaire, Booth Tarkington's novel about an 18th-century French barber who poses as a swashbuckling aristocrat, was the surprising source for this Grade-A Bob Hope comedy. While in the original novel the tonsorial hero pretended to be someone he wasn't by choice, in this 1946 film Hope is coerced into posturing as a nobleman on the ...
In his second film for producer Sam Goldwyn, Bob Hope is felicitously teamed with luscious Goldwyn contractee Virginia Mayo. Hope plays Sylvester the Great, a two-bit entertainer "touring" the West Indies in the 18th century. Mayo is Princess Margaret, who is kidnapped by a rough, tough buccaneer known only as The Hook (Victor McLaglen). Through a ...
The story goes that such stars as Fred MacMurray, Jack Oakie and Burns & Allen had turned down The Road to Singapore before the leading roles went to Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. More conventionally structured than future "Road" efforts, the film casts Crosby as Josh Mallon, the irresponsible son of shipping magnate Joshua Mallon IV (Charles Coburn). ...
Having accidentally caused a merchant ship to blow up, stowaways Bob Hope and Bing Crosby are shipwrecked on the African coast. Commandeering a convenient camel (who takes time to ad-lib a spit in Hope's eye!), Bob and Bing are off on the road to Morocco, an event they celebrate in song. With nary a penny in their pockets, the boys try various ...
Two of filmdom's finest farceurs--Hollywood's Bob Hope and France's Fernandel--are teamed in the location-filmed Paris Holiday. Since Hope coauthored the script, however, guess which actor has the largest part. Cast more or less as himself, Hope plays an American comedian who comes to Paris to purchase a script. Little does his suspect that the ...
This was the last trip in the "road" comedies that Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and a bevy of female stars that featured Dorothy Lamour once made famous. In this road to Hong Kong and parts far beyond, Chester and Harry (Hope and Crosby) are a couple of failed vaudeville stars looking for a way to riches in the confidence game. Chester's memory goes ...
Road to Rio was the first of three "Road" pictures jointly produced by stars Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. On the run from the law again, musicians Bob and Bing stow away on an ocean liner. They try to come to the rescue of heiress Dorothy Lamour, who is doomed to an arranged marriage to caddish George Meeker. All gratitude and effusions for their ...
Ira Levin wrote the stage comedy Critic's Choice as a good-natured retort to a comment made by critic Walter Kerr. In his essay How Not to Write a Play, Kerr noted that the worst possible scenario would involve a drama critic forced to review a play written by his wife (we should mention that Kerr's own wife was noted playwright Jean Kerr). Levin ...
O'Farrell (Bob Hope) is a navy sergeant who tries to boost the moral of the men by bringing in a shipment of beer. When the beer turns up missing, he calls an all-out search for the suds. In the process, O'Farrell captures a Japanese submarine single-handedly and tries to pilot the boat to safety. Phyllis Diller stars as the nurse who does ...
Bob Hope plays a famous movie star who does his best to avoid the pre-war draft, but ends up in uniform all the same. Hope marries Dorothy Lamour, the daughter of Army colonel Clarence Kolb, in hopes that this union will help him sidestep military service. Stuck in boot camp, Hope is a class-A screw-up until redeeming himself during a sham battle- ...
The classic "old dark house" motif is given sterling treatment in this second filmed version of the hit play. Bob Hope's status as a star was assured with his role as Wallie Campbell, the cowardly protector of Joyce Norman (Paulette Goddard), who must spend one night in the eerie mansion of her late, eccentric, millionaire uncle. If she can make ...
A sequel to Bob Hope's 1948 box-office success The Paleface, 1952's Son of Paleface is a superior product in every way, thanks largely to the spirited, creative direction of Frank Tashlin. Hope is cast as Junior Potter, a Harvard-educated dude who heads West to claim the inheritance left him by his gunslinger father. Much to his chagrin, Junior ...
Paramount's final "Big Broadcast" musical had perhaps the least exciting musical lineup of the series (Tito Guizar, The Shep Fields Orchestra, and opera singer Kirsten Flagstad are hardly household names today), but a slightly stronger storyline than the others, as well as a top-notch comic cast. This time out, most of the action takes place as ...
Bob Holcomb (Bob Hope) is a widower who worries about his teenage daughter JoJo (Tuesday Weld) in this light romantic comedy. He doesn't care much for JoJo's boyfriend Kenny (Frankie Avalon) because the smooth operator has a motorcycle and some money. Bob manages to get his company to transfer him to Sweden, which effectively separates Kenny and ...
Bob Hope plays a 19th-century insurance agent whose miserable sales record prompts his boss to send him out West, where he can (supposedly) do little harm. Hope manages to sell a $100,000 life insurance policy--to outlaw Jesse James (Wendell Corey), one of the worst "risks" in history! In his efforts to get the policy back, Hope finds himself ...
Each of Bob Hope's "My Favorite" films (My Favorite Blonde, My Favorite Brunette, My Favorite Spy) was, by accident or design, a parody of a dead-serious movie genre. 1942's My Favorite Blonde, for example, was a takeoff of Alfred Hitchcock in general and Hitchcock's 39 Steps in particular. Two-bit vaudeville entertainer Hope gets mixed up with ...
Usually cited as the absolute nadir of Bob Hope's film career, Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! is by no means a classic, but it isn't nearly as bad as some of his other sixties efforts (take a look a Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell sometime). The plot is set in motion by movie sex bomb Elke Sommer, who flees from the set of her latest picture when ...
We guarantee every item's condition, as described on Alibris. If you are not satisfied that an item is as described, return your purchase for a refund.
Portions of content provided by All Music Guide or All Movie Guide. © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. All Music Guide and All Movie Guide are registered Trademarks of All Media Guide, LLC.