Richard ZoglinReseñas

This book could just as well be titled "Great Entertainers in Las Vegas", because so much of it covers the Rat Pack, collectively and separately, in their Vegas performances and personal lives. The author also looks at the casino lounge acts who did very well, such as Keely Smith and Louis Prima, and the comedians who headlined in Vegas. The book explores the change in taste from the 50's, when Liberace was the hottest act, through the 70's, and some of the acts that were popular across decades, like Wayne Newton. Woven throughout the book is the story of Elvis and his ongoing connection to the city, from his first unsuccessful performances as a teen idol, to the shows of 1969-1971 that jump started his comeback.
The last seventy-five pages or so are solidly Elvis, discussing the musicians, casino owners and others who were involved in the shows at The International. A reader picking up a book with this title might have been disappointed by how much of it was about other performers, but I was interested in all of it and enjoyed all the chapters that were devoted to the Rat Pack, but also enjoyed learning more about the mob, various casino owners, show producers, and how Howard Hughes changed the way casinos ran and how entertainers were treated. There are little quibbles. A native of California is not a Yankee, and sometimes it seems like the author is laying the criticism on too thick to prove he's a journalist, but overall I really enjoyed this very informative book. I recommend it not just for a fan of these entertainers, but also for someone looking for Vegas history.½

A extensive and well researched overview of Bob Hope’s career, but I felt it was missing something. It didn't really explore the man behind the brand. It is obvious that the more successful he became as “Bob Hope” the less that Leslie Townes Hope mattered. The book, while acknowledging his ego-driven work-ethic, his reliance on other people for his material, and his hypocrisy about relationships, also brushes over them and never tries to get at the roots of the legends and stories that Hope built up about his own past. If you want to know what Bob Hope did, this is an informative volume, but if you want to know why he did them, it might disappoint.

Comedy at the Edge by Richard Zoglin is a fantastic comprehensive and concise history of stand-up comedy during the late 1960 through the 1970s, from the death of Lenny Bruce to the ascendance of stand-up into the mainstream of American popular culture. It's well researched and compellingly presented.

I've always had a soft spot for stand-up comics. I love watching them on TV and seeing them in person. The conversational aspect of this style of performance lends an intimacy that you don't get from any other form of popular entertainment. Stand-up comedy is a type of theatre—it's really the only form of theatre that has attained truly mass appeal in our culture.

Despite my love of stand-up, I had never considered the history of it or thought too deeply about the differences between modern stand-up and the older styles that defined comedy in the middle of the 20th century. Consequently, Comedy at the Edge is revelatory.

Beginning the late 1960s, in the aftermath of Lenny Bruce, stand-up comedy underwent an evolution that broke with past humorous traditions and established new styles of comedy that still dominate stand-up today. Moreover, Mr. Zoglin argues that this evolution was not merely a product of the rebellious culture of the '60s and '70s, but one of its most powerful driving forces.

The evidence he presents in Comedy at the Edge is enough to convince me. Comedy has always been an essential tool for people to critique and analyze ourselves and our culture. Comedy can speak truth to power in a unique way that's easy for everyone to hear. In tumultuous times, comedians help us understand what's going on and warn us when we start down the wrong path.

What made the comedy revolution of the '60s and '70s so unique is that it brought stand-up to a level of mass popularity that it had never seen before and that continues to this day. It saw an explosion of creativity and inventiveness that has yet to be equaled. The comedians who came to prominence in this era—George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Richard Lewis, Albert Brooks, Steve Martin, Robin Williams, Andy Kaufman, et al—forged the blueprints that stand-up comics still follow. They elevated stand-up comedy from mere entertainment to a fully expressive and nuanced art form.

I admit that I'm biased—I grew up on the comedians Mr. Zoglin profiles in this book. They will always rank as my favorites. I'm an easy sell for anyone who wants to call them geniuses.

The book is structured with each chapter profiling one comedian (or sometimes two) who best exemplifies a specific aspect of the stand-up comedy culture of this time period. It's packed with quotations, interviews, analysis, and commentary from many comedians, club owners, and critics who were there and lived it all first-hand. Mr. Zoglin ably captures the vitality and excitement of it.

There are times, though, when the conciseness of the book feels a little too concise. Twelve chapters (plus a short prologue), examining just over a dozen comedians, packed into a meager 225 pages doesn't leave room for much depth. The broad strokes are vivid enough to paint a compelling picture, and all the important thesis statements are made and supported—but I'm also frequently aware of how much is getting left out.

Perhaps, though, that may be one of Comedy at the Edge's greatest accomplishments—it leaves me eager to learn more. There are plenty of biographies that have been written about the comedians in this book, and I want to go read all of them now.

What an amazing entertainer! I actually saw Bob Hope perform in Charlotte, NC, many years ago when he was probably in his 80’s. What a wonderful performance, much better than some legendary performers. Richard Zoglin in his book Hope relates the good and the bad of Bob Hope. Bob Hope started in vaudeville and went to radio, movies, and television. Bob Hope also entertained military from WWII until Vietnam. What man could maintain Bob Hope’s level of activity for so long and so well. Bob also presented the Oscars for many years and hosted many celebrity galas. I learned so many hidden facts concerning this icon—a womanizer and a Scrooge. I enjoyed the stories and the pictures and learning about the development of entertainment.

I would never have thought Bob Hope to be the worthy subject of an in depth biography, but Richard Zoglin’s book happily proves me wrong. HOPE: ENTERTAINER OF THE CENTURY goes a long way toward reclaiming Hope’s rightful position among the 20th Century’s most influential entertainers. Zoglin makes a strong case that modern standup comedy as we have come to know it would not exist if not for Bob Hope; and that latter day movies star activists like George Clooney and Angelina Jolie owe not a small debt of gratitude to man who was nicknamed Old Ski Nose. Not only that, but Zoglin details how Hope virtually invented “personal branding” as he promoted himself to stardom, first in vaudeville, on Broadway, radio, Hollywood and television.

To me the book provides panoramic history of 20th Century American popular culture as it follows a star whose career stretched from 1920’s burlesque houses all the way to the dawn of the Internet Age. Along the way, the reader gets a good sense of a changing America and the fickle tastes of the people; what one generation thought hilarious, a younger one would find lame and out of touch.

The portrait Zoglin paints of Bob Hope is of a man whose genial nature masked a tremendous work ethic and a boundless ambition to succeed. He was not a man driven by demons, and unlike many famous and successful comedians, Hope was not bitter, selfish, or mean spirited outside of the spotlight. Many who worked on his team of comedy writers found him to be a demanding boss, but also a fair and generous one and quick to give credit to the men who wrote hard to make him funny. Like many successful entertainers of his generation, Hope came from humble beginnings, he was actually born in England and immigrated with parents and brothers as a child to Ohio, where he would grow up and learn a love for the stage early in life. It’s easy to surmise that Hope’s lifelong success in business could be traced to the poverty of his childhood; few in Hollywood were as smart with a buck as Bob Hope, investing so heavily in California real estate that by the 1960’s he was rumored to be the state’s largest landowner. His biggest vice was his chronic womanizing, which went on with the clear knowledge of his wife Delores for decades until Hope was in his 70’s. To his children, he was a loving, but distant father, one who was frequently absent, a familiar story in the Hollywood of its time.

He honed his persona as a wisecracking ladies man with a yellow streak on the vaudeville circuit and then took it to radio and the movies; the book details how Hope was always improvising and improving his act. There was something about his personality that depression era audiences warmed to; nobody could deliver a punch line better and by the early 40’s he was one of the highest paid performers in Hollywood. His Paramount comedies, especially his Road movies with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour are masterpieces of comic timing and physical comedy. SON OF PALEFACE, which I saw many times on TV growing up, was a favorite of mine. Yet few, if any, modern cinema buffs champion his films today, most of which were made by the same handful of studio directors with scripts tailored to Hope’s strengths; it’s a shame he never worked for Preston Sturges or Howard Hawks, men who could have made good use of Hope’s quick witted talents with the right material. For the better part of four decades, his annual specials for NBC were must see TV with their mix of a monologue, hot chicks, athletes, pop singers and often hackneyed skits poking fun at current pop culture and movies; he never did a weekly variety show so as not to wear out his welcome with his audience.

During World War II, Hope traveled the world entertaining American troops, bringing a piece Hollywood to the battlefront in an effort to raise the spirits of soldiers far from home and facing a determined enemy. For Bob Hope, this would become a labor of love as he continued his USO tours through Korea, Vietnam and ultimately to the Persian Gulf. Zoglin makes it clear that while Hope reaped many rewards and career advancement for his overseas travels, he was motivated by a genuine patriotism; he always put in the hard work, and lined up great talent to back him-always making sure there was a current sex symbol (Jayne Mansfield and Jill St. John to name but a few) to stand beside him on the stage. It was an act that varied little as the years and the wars changed.

The most interesting part of the book for me is the chapters covering the Vietnam era, when Hope took a side in the generational conflict that enveloped the 60’s. He backed the war and the policies of Johnson and Nixon; a lifelong Republican who in the past had poked fun at politicians of both parties, Hope went from a patriot to a partisan. And as a partisan, he earned the enmity of a younger generation who saw him as the court jester of a corrupt system, one that drafted young men to die in a hopeless war in Southeast Asia. It was not pretty, as Hope fired back with lame sketches on his TV specials making fun of long hairs and hippies. It was a war he could not win and his reputation took a hit from which it never fully recovered. He threw his arms around Nixon and increasingly became dependent on reading cue cards, and as Zoglin puts it in the book, became the Mount Rushmore of comedy. An institution that would not get off the stage. Perhaps he couldn’t, for outside of his beloved golf, there nothing Bob Hope wanted to do but perform, and he continued to do so long after age had caught up with him. I can remember a Kmart commercial featuring a feeble 90 something Bob Hope, who spoke only one line, running on TV only a few years before his death at the age of 100.

Yet I would point out, there were times in the late 60’s and early 70’s it seemed that outside of their families, no one but Bob Hope really gave a damn about those young men out there in Vietnam, who were putting their lives on the line and walking patrol in the bush. He really cared, unlike the politicians in Washington who sent them there and then prattled about “peace with honor” and the anti war protestors who talked about bringing the boys home, but only after calling them baby killers and Nazis.

HOPE: ENTERTAINER OF THE CENTURY does its best to restore Bob Hope to his place of honor in the American comedy pantheon, a place that was accorded to his contemporaries Groucho Marx and George Burns. Many readers have pointed to the anecdote with which Zoglin ends the book, an account of a show during a USO tour in World War II England when he truly goes the extra mile to entertain a group of American soldiers, as bringing tears to their eyes. I think it perfectly sums up the man and it is certainly how Hope would have wanted to be remembered.

This book, a look at one of the most important entertainers of the last century, hits all the right notes and reveals the reality behind comedian Bob Hope.

Read my entire review here: http://rzubiate.tumblr.com/post/140347038058/hope-entertainer-of-the-century

I tend to shy away from biographies, believing them to be fawning hagiographies or ruthless hatchet jobs. My Zoglin is obviously a fan of his subject, but isn't afraid to show a bit of Mr. Hope's less alluring side. I've always been a fan of Bob Hope, even though he was well into his 7th decade by the time I was born (one of my fondest memories was when he and Delores came through the drive through of In N Out Burger and he signed my hat), and it's nice to know a bit more about his skeletons. Still a fan, viewing him less as a saint and more as a human being.

Well researched, no holds barred, bio of entertainer Bob Hope. This was someone who did it all - vaudeville, radio, movies, television, and personal appearances. Well know, especially for his shows all over the world for servicemen beginning in WWII, Hope is somewhat forgotten today yet he is probably the first to create the monologue that was used by Carson and Leno to open their shows. The author interviewed many co-workers, employees, and family members, including his daughter Linda, and also spent quite a bit of time going over Hope's time in England and early years. Hope lived for applause and the live audience is where he found it - making numerous personal appearances over the years. Additionally he was heavily involved in his television specials, including the editing and a savy investor. He was a well known womanizer but his staff, and the press, managed to keep this quiet. Unfortunately, as the book indicates, his support of the Vietnam War and his lack of adapting to changing times could be why he is not as well remembered today. But I am sure that any veteran who saw a show, will be forever grateful to Hope. There are not as many photographs as I would have liked and I wish the lists of works in the back could have been more extensive, i.e. for each television show listing the date aired and guest stars.

Not sure if this book will appeal quite as much to those who don't remember watching Hope on television for many years, but it is a meticulously researched biography and makes a very strong case for remembering Hope and noting his contributions to the 20th century and the development of comedy. The end drags a bit as Hope should have retired but didn't, but as part of a biography it's useful to know the full character. Well worth reading.

Loved it! A fascinating look at how certain comics made an indelible impression to those who grew up in the 1970s (and 1980s).½

My husband was a stand-up comic during the 80's heyday, and he thought this book would be a good addition to what he likes to call my "comedy education."

The book traces the major shifts in stand-up from the sixties through Seinfeld by detailing the lives of the important players involved. Though I grew up listening to Carlin records and trying to follow Steve Martin's instructions how to fold soup, I had little awareness of how the changes in comedy reflected the upheavals in the political and social landscape of the times. Zoglin's book provides an interesting overview of the interrelationship between what was happening on stage and the greater world beyond it.

All of the major names in 70's comedy make an appearance here. As clichés would suggest, the life of a comic off-stage is not all fun and games, and the chapter on Richord Pryor's drug abuse and violence was particularly hard to read. But the author does a good job of highlighting the very fierce battles Pryor and other comics fought to bring stand-up out of the safe, predictable niceties of the mid-century and into a form that had such social and political relevance that at least one comic found himself shadowed by Nixon's FBI.

Though Zoglin liberally quotes the trademark bits of his subjects, the book bears much more of the tone of the reporter who wrote it than the comics he’s writing about. Since stand-up is a live art form, it makes sense it doesn't really translate onto the page; one can only imagine how funny Albert Brooks’ bad mime impression must have been to those fortunate enough to actually see it. Those looking for laughs will therefore likely find the tone a little dry. But anyone interested in a broad social history of stand-up comedy should find plenty of interest here.