{"id":33270,"date":"2020-05-29T09:21:16","date_gmt":"2020-05-29T13:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=33270"},"modified":"2020-05-29T09:21:16","modified_gmt":"2020-05-29T13:21:16","slug":"the-bootleg-files-bob-hope-on-the-road-to-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/29\/the-bootleg-files-bob-hope-on-the-road-to-china\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: Bob Hope on the Road to China"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 730:<\/strong> \u201cBob Hope on the Road to China\u201d (1979 television special).<\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> On YouTube in a truncated form.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> None.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS<\/strong>: Out of circulation for many years.<\/p>\n

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> Not likely.<\/p>\n

On January 1, 1979, President Jimmy Carter established U.S. diplomatic relations with the People\u2019s Republic of China. Two months later, the longtime rivals established embassies in each other\u2019s capitals. Remarkably, the two countries retained their diplomatic ties despite NBCs \u2018s broadcast of the astonishingly atrocious \u201cBob Hope on the Road to China\u201d in September that year.
\n<\/p>\n

By the late 1970s, Hope\u2019s television specials were beginning to grow stale around the edges and felt like an anachronism in a decade defined by edgy and often outrageous comedy. But while he still managed to keep his fans and an extremely lucrative contract with NBC, it was difficult not to acknowledge that his output was far below what he was capable of producing.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Hope\u2019s star power was strong enough for NBC to secure the first U.S. television special to be shot in Communist China. Hope and his producers assembled a hodgepodge of guests to join him across the Pacific: the ballet great Mikhail Baryshnikov, country music singer Crystal Gayle, the mimes Shields and Yarnell, R&B singers Peaches and Herb, the Philadelphia Boys Choir and Men’s Choral, and Sesame\u2019s Street Big Bird. Hope\u2019s wife Delores tagged along to sing with some Chinese children. <\/p>\n

Not to be outdone, the Chinese offered up their own stars to shine before the American cameras: a seven-foot-tall basketball player, a ballerina to perform opposite Baryshnikov, a trio of loud comedians, an 8-year-old ping-pong champion, the cast of the Peking Opera, acrobats from a circus and trained panda bears doing elementary tricks.<\/p>\n

The resulting production seemed like a wobbly collaboration between Ed Sullivan and Mao Zedong: a show that gave the impression that American and Chinese culture was primarily fueled by vaudeville-level shtick with only a few glimmers of fine arts allowed to peek through. And at the center of the madness was Hope, who decided to make himself the center of attention rather than highlighting the country he was visiting.<\/p>\n

From the opening, \u201cBob Hope on the Road to China\u201d gets off on that proverbial wrong foot and never gets its balance. The production opens with Hope sauntering down the Great Wall of China, swinging a golf club while lip-syncing to new Sino-focused lyrics saddled atop the tune \u201cRoad to Morocco.\u201d He then tours Tiananmen Square and refers to the massive space as looking like \u201cJackie Gleason\u2019s patio.\u201d A weak laugh track follows Hope\u2019s wisecracks, which is odd since there is no outdoor audience watching this.<\/p>\n

Hope gets to perform for an indoor audience made up of the foreign diplomatic corps in Peking (as the capital was called at the times) and unidentified Chinese who were probably part of the government bureaucracy. Hope shared the stage with a deadpan Chinese translator, and the only genuine funny moments come when the translated jokes fall flat with the local audience. Hope\u2019s writers unwisely decided to pepper his opening monologue with references that were obscure to the Chinese audience \u2013 remarks about California\u2019s Gov. Jerry Brown, Caesar\u2019s Palace, Billy Graham and Raquel Welch caused the translator to stop and ask Hope what he was talking about.<\/p>\n

Hope and his company used the capital city as a backdrop for corny segments that did little to enhance the exotic nature of the venture. Lip-synced musical numbers with Peaches and Herb and Crystal Gayle are shot against Chinese exteriors that have no bearing on the songs \u2013 Gayle and Hope do a duet with new lyrics written to \u201cIf They Could See Me Now\u201d \u2013 while the local Chinese watching these segments are happily baffled over what is going on. <\/p>\n

Incredibly, Hope gets into yellowface make-up and an Imperial Chinese robe for a riff on the Gilbert & Sullivan ditty \u201cWhen I Was a Lad\u201d that is rewritten to highlight his vaudeville and radio career. A group of Chinese male dancers bounce around him, occasionally offering a phonetic echo of the song\u2019s chorus.<\/p>\n

Even moments that are supposed to be spontaneous, such as Hope conversing with Baryshnikov before the latter tries to show him some ballet steps, are forced and tiresome. The one classy moment is the ballet number with Baryshnikov and Chun Ren Lian \u2013 their brief performance from \u201cGiselle\u201d feels like it was grafted from a PBS special.<\/p>\n

In fairness, Hope realized that he could not push the envelope in the Communist setting. \u201cI couldn\u2019t do anything political,\u201d he told an Associated Press reporter. \u201cI said I had one Mao-Tai (a powerful local drink) and my head felt like the Gang of Four. They said that was political. Then I said I felt like my head was going through a cultural revolution. That was also political.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cBob Hope on the Road to China\u201d premiered on September 15, 1979, and I can still clearly recall the show \u2013 seriously, something that bad is not easily forgotten. But I did not see the entire three-hour event \u2013 I turned it off about one-third of the way through. I don\u2019t think I missed much. Tom Shales of the Washington Post reviewed the production as \u201cthe season’s first huge disappointment. Poorly organized, sloppily performed and stingy with views of Chinese life, this marathon jaunt turns quickly into a plod. NBC is counting heavily on Hope specials for ratings this season, but if Hope’s producers can blow a sure thing like this China show, it’s likely Hope’s best roads are behind him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hope clearly wanted to keep this show behind him \u2013 it was never reissued on any home entertainment format. A slightly blurry and truncated version can be found in a four-part unauthorized posting on YouTube, but only Hope-worshipping masochists are advised to seek it out this road to Chinese awfulness.<\/p>\n

IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.<\/em><\/p>\n

Listen to the award-wining podcast \u201cThe Online Movie Show with Phil Hall\u201d<\/a> on SoundCloud. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 730: \u201cBob Hope on the Road to China\u201d (1979 television special). LAST SEEN: On YouTube in a truncated form. AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None. REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Out of circulation for many years. CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely. On January 1, 1979, President Jimmy Carter established U.S. diplomatic relations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":33271,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1513],"tags":[1352,1388,219,1728],"class_list":["post-33270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bootleg-files","tag-bob-hope","tag-china","tag-comedy","tag-tv-special"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33272,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33270\/revisions\/33272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}