HOPE WAS MASTERFUL AS 20TH CENTURY'S FUNNY MAN.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

Bob Hope is the M.C. of America's Century.

In every medium by which the nation came to dominate world culture in the 20th century, Hope was there, cracking wise and exemplifying attitudes that spoke volumes about the way this country thought.

Tireless humanitarian, unstoppable workaholic, brilliant investor, loyal employer, self-styled lady killer, patriot beyond the call of duty, darn fine golfer, arguably the most awarded guy on the planet.

Yet, he is notoriously vain and still self-deprecatingly humble in the face of astonishing success. It is remarkable how much Hope has achieved and represented, especially when one considers Hope is a guy whose primary talent was telling other people's jokes - and not always particularly funny ones.

His ease of delivery - a sure sense of timing coupled with a well-honed instinct for just how much antic energy or confident cool with which to pitch a line - made him a conquering presence in every entertainment venue of a technologically accelerating era.

Originally billing himself as a master of ``Songs, Patter and Eccentric Dancing,'' the British-born comedian, raised in Cleveland, Ohio, successively conquered vaudeville, Broadway, radio, Hollywood films, the USO stage and television. He's even carried on into home video, DVD and the Internet.

No other funnyman's career matches Hope's for longevity (his contemporary George Burns became a comeback kid in his 80s; Hope worked regularly from his teens through his 10th decade). Although he's never approached the specific comic genius of such colleagues as Jack Benny and Groucho Marx, his more facile brand of humor clearly reached the widest audience, held up longer and transferred more felicitously to the variety of delivery systems the entertainment industry learned to exploit.

And, of course, it made him the perfect master of ceremonies.

He proved that time after time, from stages as posh as the Academy Awards ceremonies' (Hope still holds the record for hosting that difficult, widely watched annual event), as utilitarian as the TV variety specials he headlined for decades, and as far-flung as Saudi Arabia, where he took the last of his 40-plus troop-entertaining revues during the Persian Gulf War.

Hope's wide range of achievements aside, it is arguably his work in movies that made him an indelible household name. Though he was big on radio before and during his 1940s Hollywood heyday, it was his many genre satires and the ``Road'' movies with Bing Crosby that turned Hope into a true popular phenomenon. He made the top box-office rankings most years of that decade, which also boasts the highest attendance levels in movie history.

At odds with his real-life image as a hard-working, boundlessly charitable guy, Hope quickly established a bankable screen persona as a lascivious, cowardly and untrustworthy con man.

His first big hit was 1939's ``The Cat and the Canary,'' a comic thriller in which Hope's fast fright responses still remain among his funniest bits.

He rang variations on that same, weaselly wimp formula through a series of international espionage (``My Favorite Blonde,'' ``My Favorite Spy,'' ``They Got Me Covered''), service (``Caught in the Draft,'' ``Let's Face It''), Western (``The Paleface,'' ``Son of Paleface'' sequel, ``Alias Jesse James''), romance (``The Great Lover,'' ``Casanova's Big Night'') and gangster (``The Lemon Drop Kid,'' the inevitable ``My Favorite Brunette'') travesties.

The ``Road'' pictures - respectively, ``Road to Singapore'' (1940), ``Road to Zanzibar'' (1941), ``Road to Morocco'' (1942), ``Road to Utopia'' (1946), ``Road to Rio'' (1948), ``Road to Bali'' (1953) and ``Road to Hong Kong'' (1962) - projected a breezy, ``We can handle (or connive our way out of) any fix'' assurance that reflected a society that, during the time, was quite literally dominating the world, both militarily and economically. The darker side of that, of course, was that the films' glib humor reflected unexamined chauvinism and ethnic arrogance not uncommon to the era, and continued later in some of Hope's bad '60s movies such as ``Call Me Bwana'' and ``Cancel My Reservation.'' An extension of that could also be seen in his die-hard hawkishness for the Vietnam War.

Regardless of how Hope represented his generation through entertainment, the question remains: Could he act?

The few instances when he was allowed, or allowed himself, to break out of the lucrative mold indicate that he could.

Hope was persuasive as real-life figures Eddie Foy and New York Mayor Jimmy Walker in the 1950s biopics ``The Seven Little Foys'' and ``Beau James.'' He was surprisingly solid opposite the queen of more sophisticated movie comedy, Katharine Hepburn, in the ``Ninotchka'' remake ``The Iron Petticoat.'' And ``The Facts of Life,'' the 1960 adultery comedy he produced and starred in with Lucille Ball, hinted that he could project deeper, stronger emotions.

But why spoil the congenial, fundamentally well-intentioned party that was America's ascendancy with tougher aspirations? Especially when, as in Hope's case, the safe alternative was so rewarding.

An extremely truncated inventory: Hope has received five special (though no, as he often joked, competitive) Academy Awards; he was estimated to be worth as much as $400 million in 1972 (an even more astonishing sum then than it is now).

He isn't just a beloved entertainer but a national figure, honored four times by the U.S. Congress and by every branch of the armed services. Beyond our shores, he holds an honorary knighthood in Britain, his homeland.

Bob Hope never needed to prove anything more than that he knows how to make people laugh.

And, maybe more by example than anything else, how to make them feel good about themselves and who they are.

When you consider what the whole agenda of mass entertainment is all about, Hope is indeed its Master of Ceremonies. With a capital M.

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(1 -- 3) Bob Hope, far left, served as host or co-host of the Academy Awards ceremonies more than 15 times, though his movies, like ``Paleface'' (with him, at right, in a scene with Joseph Vitale), were mostly audience-pleasing slapstick comedies. At far right, Hope is the emcee for KTLA's first telecast in 1947.

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