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Bob Hope Early 1950's carswell afb


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Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, (May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003), born Leslie Townes Hope, was a famous British-born American entertainer who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, on radio and television, in movies, and in performing tours for U.S. Military personnel.
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Hope performed his first United Service Organizations (USO) show on May 6, 1941, at March Field, California. He continued to travel and entertain troops for the rest of World War II and later during the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the 1990–1991 Persian Gulf War. When overseas he almost always performed in Army fatigues as a show of support for his audience. Hope's USO career lasted half a century, during which he headlined approximately sixty tours.
A 1997 act of Congress signed by President Clinton named Hope an “Honorary Veteran”. He remarked, “I've been given many awards in my lifetime — but to be numbered among the men and women I admire most — is the greatest honor I have ever received."
However, there were also critical voices relating to the entertainer's patriotic activities. In his biography, Bob Hope: The Road Well-Traveled (1999), Lawrence J. Quirk writes that Hope was making sacrifices to entertain U.S. servicemen, whom he called "my boys". But according to the author, the government always paid for Hope's trips, and by Vietnam, his routines had grown thin and become synonymous with the "war machine."
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