*How do you distill the decades-long career of Bob Hope, let alone the many guests he had on this special, into one video playlist? Well, we try with a selection of monologues, talk show clips, commercials, and more! Click below to see Bob with special guests, plus Tahoe in the Seventies, Mac Davis with Dolly Parton, and even the halftime show of Super Bowl XI! Plus the special we discuss is there (for now), so see it while you can!
And remember you can always visit our official YouTube channel for all past podcasts and episode-specific playlists for each one of them!
*Here's another mention of the two books I made extensive use of for research:
Bob Hope on TV: Thanks for the Video Memories by Wesley Hyatt
The Laugh Makers by Bob Mills
The Laugh Makers by Bob Mills
Hyatt's book is a critical look at all prominent TV appearances by the showbiz legend, while Mills offers an autobiographical look at what it was like to write for Hope as well as a lot of insight into the man himself.
*Hope was born May 29, 1903 and died July 27, 2003.
*Cancel My Reservation (1972) was the last of Hope's movie starring roles, and it was a critical and commercial disappointment.
*In the 1970s, Melvin Dummar claimed to have resucued Howard Hughes in the desert and earned a piece of his estate. His story inspired Melvin and Howard (1980).
*Bob Hope's All-Star Comedy Spectacular premiered January 21, 1977 at 8:30 on NBC. It was preceded by Sanford and Son (with Frank Nelson!) and followed buy The Rockford Files. To clarify what we talk about on the pod, the slide at the beginning of the special (you can see this in the playlist) explains that Chico and the Man, normally at 8:30, was pre-empted and that Rockford, normally at 9, would be on at 10.
*Bob's ratings were very high until the Eighties, and even then he got more specials from NBC. Ratings went up and down, but as the decade went on he was often in third place on the night.
*Texaco became Bob's primary sponsor in 1975.
*Super Bowl XI occurred January 9, 1977 at the Rose Bowl in California.
*The average price of a gallon of gas in real dollars in 1977 was 62 cents. Sounds cheap, of course, but consider that it was 39 cents in 1973, so there was a huge relative increase in between.
*Muhammad Ali had retired from boxing while still champ after a controversial win over Ken Norton in September 1976 but would return after this special aired, defeating Alfredo Evangelista and Ernie Shavers in 1977 while instigating concern for his well-being. He lost the heavyweight championship to Leon Spinks in 1978, then regained it later that year.
*Nancy Dickerson was CBS News' first female correspondent, then worked for NBC News before producing a syndicated daily news show, Inside Washington, in the 1970s. Her son John Dickerson has been a high-profile face at CBS News for years.
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