![]() ![]() "He had a tough childhood, was arrested for shoplifting, branded a 'delinquent' and sent to reform school for seven months. After brushes with the law, Hope dropped out of school at 15. He sleepwalked through city streets, so his mother tied his feet to his older brother each night. "He was born Leslie Townes Hope in Eltham in south-east London but the family moved to Weston-super-Mare, then Bristol, to smaller and smaller houses, until they moved to America when Bob was four." "His father was a neglectful alcoholic who wasn't there much and money was tight," says Zoglin. "It was actually a very good marriage, except for his serial infidelity." Yet Hope's womanising may have been a result of a love-starved, impoverished childhood with a boozing absentee father and a mother struggling to cope with seven sons. ![]() He could play around as long as he never brought his mistresses home and never embarrassed her publicly. "Dolores came to an understanding with Hope. Even in his 80s he had a long-term affair which must have been serious because his lover later sued for breach of contract claiming that Hope had promised to support her for life. He moved her to Hollywood, paid for her apartment and told friends she was the love of his life. "In the 1960s his lover was Welsh beauty queen Rosemarie Frankland, Britain's first Miss World. She wanted to marry him but Dolores wouldn't give Bob a divorce. Marilyn Maxwell became his lover in the 1950s and was with him so often people called her Mrs Hope. His team of writers remember an orgy in his New York hotel room one night, with naked bodies everywhere. "He had women in every port," says Zoglin "He had affairs with Ethel Merman and Doris Day but usually it was not his co-stars but starlets that he bedded. Hope found fame in films often playing a wise-cracking, girl-chasing, blustering coward: a character bearing more than a passing resemblance to the real Hope. But he never forgot Louise and quietly sent her money in her later years." "More intriguing, there is no record anywhere of his marriage to Dolores, if it happened. When he claimed he had married Dolores in Erie he was actually miles away in New York, on Broadway. "He'd actually married Louise in January 1933 in Erie when they were travelling on the Vaudeville circuit. "I found divorce papers for Bob and Louise dated November 1934, so either Bob Hope was a bigamist or he lied about marrying Dolores in February that year. But at that time he was secretly married to his Vaudeville partner Louise Troxell, after three years together on and off," says Zoglin. "Bob and Dolores always claimed that they married in February 1934 in Erie, Pennsylvania. He worked for years in Washington, where he was a partner with the Touche Ross & Company accounting firm.His marriage to nightclub singer Dolores Reade was considered one of Hollywood's most successful and enduring, yet it was founded on a lie and may never have even been a legal marriage, the author discovered. ![]() He was confirmed in 1990 and served through five years of the Clinton administration. Hope as chairman of the gaming commission, which oversees the gambling enterprises of American Indian tribes. The first President George Bush appointed Mr. Ford appointed him to the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, President Jimmy Carter named him to the Government Management Improvement Council and President Ronald Reagan appointed him to the Grace Commission, which was formed to find waste and fraud in the federal government. Hope was beaten in the primary by the mayor of Simi Valley, Elton Gallegly, who went on to win in the general election and is still serving in Congress. Hope, who was known as Tony, made a try at politics in 1986, entering the California Congressional race to fill the seat vacated by Representative Bobbi Fiedler, a Republican. His death was announced here by his sister, Linda Hope. Hope, the former head of the National Indian Gaming Commission and son of the late entertainer Bob Hope, died Monday at a hospital near his home in Washington. ![]()
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