Bob Hope: the road to bed
The trademark leer of America’s top comedian was the public clue to an insatiable appetite for women. Bob Hope was one of show business’s most incorrigible philanderers, reveals his biographer Arthur MarxRecommend? (4) In Bob Hope’s seven decades of superstardom there was hardly a breath of scandal connected to his name. Yet his womanising made Gary Hart, John Kennedy and Bill Clinton look like amateurs in the philandering derby. His character and his attitudes, his Midas-like greed and his callous dismissal of long-time, loyal associates would not have played well in the headlines either.
In his inner circle it was widely known that there was a lot more to the sexy innuendos and lecherous laughter-evoking leers directed at the beautiful women on his shows than the average fan suspected or would have dared to imagine.
According to Robert Slatzer, a former Paramount publicist: “It was pretty generally known around the studio that whenever Bob had to go off on one of his tours or play to the army camps, he’d have girls he wanted to boff sent ahead for him. But his favourites were beauty contest winners. He was always trying to get them on his show — not only to rev up the GIs in the audience, but because he wanted them himself.”
While Hope and Bing Crosby were still close friends and at the height of their popularity as a team, they used to trade girlfriends. Not girls they were serious about, but the bimbo, one-night-stand types that were so common on studio lots or around broadcasting stations. If, for example, Crosby found a girl he thought was particularly good in bed, he’d introduce her to Hope, and vice versa.
In the late 1940s, while Crosby was recuperating in hospital from an appendectomy, he had a nurse who gave him what he described to Hope as “the greatest blowjob of my life. You ought to try her, Bob”.
The next day Hope had his personal physician, Tom Hearn, check him into St John’s hospital on the pretence that his nerves were shattered and that he needed a rest. He insisted on having the same room and the same nurse. He got anything but rest.
By the time of his divorce from his first wife in 1934, Hope was living with Dolores Reade, a singer who remained loyally at his side for nearly 70 years. Though there was certainly a wedding ceremony, there is no record of their marriage certificate. They adopted four children, but Hope’s long absences were thin pretexts for escaping the shackles of domesticity and indulging his extramarital passions.
In many cases the sole criterion for choosing an actress to take along with him on tour would be whether she was willing to have sex with him. One such was a Minnesota-born movie starlet named Barbara Payton. She was 25, 5ft 4in with blonde hair and a saucy personality. Moreover, she was willing to bed down with just about any man who asked her, provided he could supply the required incentives — money or a shot at a film role.
Hope had just done a whirlwind tour of 21 American cities with his radio cast. In Dallas, he checked into the Baker hotel where, as fate would have it, Payton was staying. She was Hope’s type and, of course, he appealed to her. Not only was he America’s number one motion picture star, but he was attractive, fun to be with, and able to keep pace with her in the drinking department.
There was immediate chemistry between them. “As a result,” Payton recalled, “we only knew each other a few hours before we knew each other as well as a boy and girl ever can.” Their affair lasted about six months.
Link to rest
Bob Hope: the road to bed - Times Online