The Legendary Bob Hope was one of the biggest stars of all time! He was a multi-talented entertainer who spent most of his life performing in vaudeville acts, Broadway productions, feature films, and on the radio and television. He’s also remembered for his years touring with his popular USO shows around the globe.
Hope’s career spanned a staggering 80 years. Over that time, he appeared in more than 70 full-length and short films, hosted the Academy Awards 19 time. More than any other host – and appeared in dozens of stage and television productions. If that wasn’t impressive enough of a resume, Hope also authored 14 best-selling books.
Hope had one of the longest marriages in show business history. He and his wife Dolores Reade Hope wed for 69 years until his death at the age of 100 in 2003. Before Reade, Hope married to Grace Louise Troxell. Although their marriage only lasted less than a year between 1933 and 1934.
While a marriage that lasted almost 7 decades certainly is something remarkable, Hope wasn’t in any way, shape, or form faithful. Some have even described Hope as a ‘sex machine’. He had countless one-night stands and developed a reputation for being a womanizer. A few of his most high-profile affairs were allegedly with actresses like Lucille Ball and Doris Day, although it’s hard to determine at this point just how valid these claims are.
With that in mind, always remembering to take sensational claims with a grain of salt, join us as we take a closer look at the love life of Bob Hope. In this video, we’ll be covering practically everyone that the veteran comedian rumored to have hooked up.
Doris Day
Hope reportedly told a friend of his years after the fact that he and Day had a brief romantic relationship while they were on tour together fundraising for the March of Dime in 1949. After they returned to Burbank, California, Delores Hope was there at the airport to greet them. She gave Bob a big, over-the-top welcome-home hug. According to Bob, Doris saw this as Dolores’ way of marking her territory, so to speak. Not long after that, Hope and Day’s relationship came to an end.
Day never commented on or acknowledged this alleged affair.
Barbara Payton
Payton best known for her roles in noir films like Bad Blonde and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. She had a relationship with Hope that started in the spring of 1949 that lasted for several months.
She followed Bob around the nation, even moving into a fully-furnished apartment that Bob had rented for her in Hollywood.
After their affair ended later that year, Bob allegedly paid her off to keep their affair a secret. That didn’t seem to deter her, however, because she spilled the beans about their fling to Confidential Magazine in 1956.
Later, Payton ended up succumbing to drug and alcohol addiction,dying at the age of 39 in 1967.
Marilyn Maxwell
This voluptuous singer and actress was Hope’s girlfriend from 1950 to 1954. During that time, she co-starred with him in the films Off Limits and Lemon Drop Kid while also joining him on tour with his USO shows and vaudeville act.
It pretty obvious to everyone that the two romantically involved. They were together so often that folks on the Paramount lot even began to refer to Maxwell as Mrs. Hope.
Maxwell ended up marrying three times before dying of a heart attack at the age of 50 in 1972.
Ursula Halloran
Hope and Halloran had a pretty open affair around 1958. She was a member of Bob’s publicity staff who joined him on a trip to Russia that year. Sadly, Ursula died of a drug overdose in 1963.
Rosemarie Frankland
Welsh crowned Miss World by Hope in 1961. Hope then took the beauty queen on his 1961 Christmas trip to the arctic and supported her when she relocated to LA to pursue her dream of becoming a film star. He even ended up giving her a minor role in his 1965 film I’ll Take Sweden.
Reportedly, they continued their on-again-off-again affair for over 30 years. Hope reportedly even once called her the greatest love of his life.
Frankland died in 2000 of a drug overdose.
Sandy Vinger
Vinger and Hope dated in 1980s and was reportedly his last major girlfriend. Sandy worked as a writer who developed a number of Hope’s memorable California Federal Savings commercials.
In 1994, Vinger sued Hope for breach of contract. She claimed that Hope had promised to support her for life. The matter ended up being settled out of court.
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And don’t go anywhere just yet. Keep watching to learn why some suspect that Bob Hope never actually legally married his second wife Dolores Reade Hope.
Did Bob Really Marry Delores Reade Hope?
Delores Reade joined Bob Hope’s vaudeville troupe in 1933 and started performing with him at Loew’s Metropolitan Theater in Brooklyn, New York. She was billed as a ‘former Ziegfeld beauty and one of society’s favorite nightclub entertainers’.
Bob and Dolores claimed that they got married in February 1934 in Erie, Pennsylvania, but author Richard Zoglin pointed out in his 2014 biography Hope; Entertainer of the Century that Bob was secretly married to his vaudeville partner Louise Troxell at the time.
Zoglin claims to have found divorce papers for Troxell and Hope from November 1934, so either Bob was a bigamist who was married to both women for several months, or he lied about when he married Dolores.
It’s documented that Hope and Troxell got married in January 1933 while they were traveling on the vaudeville circuit together. At the time that he claimed to have married Dolores, he was many miles away in New York City performing on Broadway.
There apparently is no record of Dolores and his marriage either, leading Zoglin to believe that the two never actually got legally married. If this were true, then that would explain why no wedding photos have ever surfaced either.
Regardless of whether or not they ever actually married, it’s very clear that Dolores was a very important person in Hope’s life. The couple adopted four children together, Linda, Kelly, Eleanora, and Tony. They were also the legal guardians to another child named Tracey who was the youngest daughter of Bernard ‘Toots’ Shor a New York City Bar Owner and his wife Marion ‘Baby’ Shor’.
In 1935, Bob and Dolores moved to Manhattan. They moved once again to Los Angeles in 1937. They would remain there in their Toluca Lake neighborhood home until their respective deaths.
Hope Had Countless Other Affairs
Up until his 70s, Zogln claims that Bob Hope continued to have a different girl on his arm every night. He had affairs with everyone from chorus girls to beauty queens, singers, and other show business wannabes. Zoglin further asserts that Hope was still having affairs well into his 80s.
Many may be wondering whether or not Dolores knew about Bob’s cheating ways. According to Zoglin, she almost certainly knew. She would have had to have been blind not to!
Hope’s daughter Linda was quoted in Zoglin’s book as saying that she was sure that her mother knew what was going on. But likely decided that he was worth going through just about anything she had to in order to have a life with him as Mrs. Hope.
Linda went on to say that she didn’t believe that any of the other women had the same kind of significance to her father as Dolores did.
Besides the previously mentioned women, Hope is said to have had encounters with ladies like Jane Russell, Madeline Carroll, Joan Fontaine, Dorothy Lamour, Paulette Goddard, and even Lucille Ball.
His Death Was Prematurely Announced
In 1998, a full five years before his actual death, the Associated Press inadvertently released a prepared obituary for Hope that resulted in his death being announced on the US House of Representatives floor.
Bob remained in reasonably good health until late into his life. Although he had become rather feeble in last several years of life.
At the age of 97, in June 2000, Hope was treated for gastrointestinal bleeding at a California hospital. The following year, he spent almost two weeks in the hospital once again after coming down with pneumonia.
Hope died of pneumonia on the morning of July 27, 2003, at his home in California, just two months after celebrating his 100th birthday. When asked on his deathbed where he wanted to be buried, he reportedly told Dolores to surprise him.
His remains were first temporarily placed in a mausoleum before the Bob Hope Memorial Garden was built at the San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Los Angeles.
After Dolores passed away at the age of 102 in 2011, she was laid to rest there beside him.
It’s always fascinating to take a look back in time at some of the biggest stars of yesteryear. We tend to put folks like Bob Hope up on some sort of pedestal. We see them only for their accomplishments and contributions while turning a blind eye to their less-than-flattering qualities.
Where you aware of Bob Hope’s cheating ways or did you think that he was some kind of beacon of virtue and conservative values? Let us know in the comments section down below.
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