ATLANTA, July 28 — “Who’s A Jew” may be our tribe’s favorite trivia game, as in uncovering the Jewish roots of Madeleine Albright or Winona Ryder, but when it came to Bob Hope — who died July 27 at 100 — his ski-slope nose gave it away: the comedian was not Jewish. But his comedy, inescapably, was. The British Protestant émigré referred to the Academy Awards, which he hosted 13 times, as “Passover” because he never won an Oscar. And throughout his career, Hope employed Jewish writers. Hal Kanter, for instance, co-wrote a dozen screenplays for Hope, Leo Robin and Robert Rainger wrote his signature tune, “Thanks for the Memory,” and Norman Panama and Melvin Frank wrote the screenplay for “The Road to Utopia.” Brooklyn-born Melville Shavelson directed him in perhaps his best dramatic film, “The Seven Little Foys.” “On the simplest level, the New York wise guy approach to humor appealed to him,” said Lawrence J. Epstein, author of “The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America.” Hope was ridiculed as a child because of his real first name — Leslie — so he became a master of the one-line zinger, which allowed him to “put on a brave front even though he [was] chicken underneath,” said Epstein. The shlemiel character was one of Hope’s greatest gifts to comedians, said Epstein. “You see it in Woody Allen.” Allen has said that Hope is the comedian he most admired because of his “brilliant gift of delivery, breezy attitude” and light-as-air witticisms, he wrote in his 1993 memoir. “He made it look so easy, too,” added Epstein. Unlike many comics who preceded him, including Groucho Marx, “Hope wasn’t manic. He wasn’t up there sweating. There was a sense of being in control. He looked the camera in the eye, and he let the audience in on the joke, as if to say, this is only a movie about nothing — let’s have some fun.” This style paved the way for Jewish comics such as Jerry Seinfeld, said Epstein. But Hope’s legacy is richer than comedy alone. He performed during a century fraught with war and conflict — often in venues his peers avoided. Hope not only visited burn units and hospitals on hundreds of military bases worldwide — performing for troops who needed a laugh as desperately as he craved their applause — he also raised money for endangered European Jews in the 1940s at a rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden. “It was at the invitation of screenwriter Ben Hecht,” said Epstein. “It wasn’t a popular time, but Hope was a good guy. And by rallying troops around the world in World War II, on a deeper level you could say he was helping Jews around the world. “There are rumors that [Hope resented] Jews’ success” in show business, Epstein added. “But if there was a piece of documented evidence, I think somebody would have put it out there already.”
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