Air Force Museum
Bob Hope: 50 Years of Hope
For more than half a century, Bob Hope brought live entertainment to American servicemembers at bases, hospitals, ships, and combat zones around the world. His first military show took place at March Field in 1941. Wartime and USO tours carried him from World War II through later conflicts, making the performances a familiar connection between deployed forces and home.
In depth
History & service
For more than 50 years, Bob Hope entertained men and women of the U.S. Air Force and the other services at home and overseas, in peace and in war. At least 10,000,000 G.I.s benefited from his efforts, and the United States Air Force thanks Bob Hope for those 50 years of memories.
Already a popular comedian and movie star in the 1930s, Hope started his long service of entertaining American military personnel just before America entered World War II. It began in May 1941, when he and other performers broadcast a live National Broadcasting Company (NBC) radio show before an audience of Army Air Corps personnel at March Field in Riverside, California. All through the war, he performed radio shows at military installations around the United States.
Usually, he opened the radio show with the same familiar phrase: "This is Bob -- the name of the installation -- Hope." Starting with a trip to Unimak Island, Alaska, in 1942, he made annual tours with the United Service Organizations (USO) for troops stationed in the war zones. Throughout the rest of WWII, Hope and his fellow entertainers logged thousands of miles and gave countless scheduled and unscheduled performances for troops around the world.
In the summer of 1944 alone, Hope logged over 30,000 miles across the South Pacific and gave more than 150 performances.
When the post-WWII peace turned to a Cold War, Bob Hope again entertained the troops protecting America's interests overseas. In 1948 the Soviet Union blockaded Berlin and the newly created U.S. Air Force implemented the Berlin Airlift. At the request of the secretary of the Air Force, Hope went to Germany that Christmas to perform for the troops, and this gesture of support became a Christmas custom for the next 30 years.
When the Korean War broke out, Bob Hope again took his USO shows to the troops in combat zones. In the fall of 1950, he entertained the troops fighting in Korea.
During the Vietnam War, Hope's Christmas tours entertained American service members throughout Southeast Asia and the southwestern Pacific. Many of his shows were filmed and televised later in America. For his 1966 Christmas show, filmed in Southeast Asia, Bob Hope won an Emmy. However, Hope's "Around the World with the U.S.O." tour in 1969 became the most ambitious of all.
Starting with a performance at the White House for President Richard Nixon and guests, Hope gave performances in Germany, Turkey, Thailand, Korea and South Vietnam.
In 1983 Bob Hope spent Christmas with the American troops in Beirut, Lebanon, and seven Christmases later, he and his wife Dolores traveled to Saudi Arabia for the troops serving in Operation DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM.
Details that tell the story
First military performance at March Field in May 1941 · Began a long Christmas-tour tradition during the Berlin Airlift · Named an Honorary Veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces in 1997
What survives after the mission
A museum object begins a second life when it stops performing its original job. An aircraft that once carried a crew becomes a place for public memory. A jacket, letter, medal, or small piece of equipment can preserve a much more intimate connection. The object is valuable both for what it reveals physically and for the documented story that gives it meaning.
Famous aircraft and individuals can make a complicated history approachable, but they are only part of it. Many people left no celebrated machine behind. Memorials, personal possessions, unit records, and photographs help recover the experiences of those whose service was less visible. They also preserve loss, separation, captivity, recovery, and the consequences of war for families and communities.
Preservation involves choices. Restoring an aircraft may make its design easier to understand, while retaining wear or damage may protect evidence of its use. A reproduction can explain how a machine worked, provided its identity remains clear. Linking objects across collections helps fill the gaps created when surviving material is dispersed. A uniform in one gallery, an aircraft in another, and a memorial elsewhere can illuminate the same history from different directions. The result is more than a record of machines: it is a way to keep the people, decisions, and experiences connected to them in view.
