Leslie Townes (Bob) Hope

May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003

   ”The publics “Stooge”.  Stand still for only a moment and someone comes up with a wise crack, Bob Hope explains in and article that appeared in LIFE Magazine October 27, 1941. Young boys ask for my autograph while explaining that they want to trade them for better ones. Men tell him they want them for weak-minded relatives.  This article is just the beginning of an affair between Bob Hope, LIFE magazine and the public. Just like LIFE, Bob became an icon to the American people and eventually the world. Articles recounting his life appeared in no less than 12 issues including 4 covers.

            Born Leslie Townes Hope in Eltham, England on May 29, 1903, in 1907, Leslie’s father brought the family to Cleveland, Ohio. In 1920, by virtue of his father’s naturalization, ‘Bob’ — the name by which the world would later know him — and his brothers became US citizens. (Bob joked, “I left England at the age of four when I found out I couldn’t be king.”)

James (Jimmy) Stewart

One of Life’s most enduring Actors

            Jimmy Stewart is undoubtedly one of the most famous names in film from both yesterday and today. Known for both his ability to take a role and turn it into a real person before our very eyes and his genuine personality both on screen and off. The reviews of just one of his many films pays homage to what may well be One of Life’s most enduring Actors.

MOVIE OF THE WEEK

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

October 16, 1939 LIFE Magazine

 

      Hollywood stages an amazing reproduction of the Senate in making pictures of Washington, politically timid Hollywood long confined its efforts to the eras preceding President Lincoln’s assassination. Its few glances at the contemporary capital have been imaginative rather than reportorial, and unconvinc­ing to anyone familiar with its scene. Now in Frank Capra’s new picture, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the architecture, artifacts and anthropological cur­iosities of that city are recreated with almost fan­atical authenticity.

History of LIFE Magazine

Like a lot of things that have been around for a few generations, it’s hard to imagine a time when LIFE didn’t exist. But before its inception, there was simply nothing like it in America . Up to then, published photos had been posed and static. But in the early thirties a marvelously portable 35mm camera was developed that could take pictures of almost anything under the sun, and Henry R. Luce and his colleagues at Time Inc. made plans to use it for an entirely new publishing venture. Their project, shrouded in secrecy, emerged full-blown in November 1936, and journalism was forever changed.