(5 of 5)
Hollywood thought Hope conceited when he first arrived, today merely finds him a little vain. He is well liked, easy to work with, hard to rile, so fast with gags he is almost fatiguing. He can never resist one, recently phoned a Hollywood friend all the way from London to wheeze: "I saw Churchill last night—a great news-reel."
With his attractive wife Dolores Reade, a former nightclub singer whom he calls Mommy, and their two small adopted children, Hope lives unpretentiously in a rambling 15-room San Fernando Valley house that boasts neither swimming pool nor tennis court. His home life is best described as nonexistent. Said Hope recently: "When I get home these days, my kids think I've been booked there on a personal-appearance tour."
Inexhaustible, Hope piles job on job —work, which originally meant the path to glory, has become an end, a need, a form of excitement in itself. His camp tours, by putting him under incredible pressure, have given him an enormous lift. Pleased that he is first in the hearts of the service men, he can hardly wait to be off to the South Pacific. "When the war ends," Hope confesses freely, "it'll be an awful let-down."
* Two USO performers (including Tamara) were killed in the Lisbon Clipper crash.