CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) – “Bob Hope was the champion of comedy for about fifty years, starting in vaudeville, then into radio, big star again, teevee, huge, movies,” said Tom Kelly, Cleveland historian and author of “The Cleveland 200.”
Born Leslie Townes Hope in England in 1903, Hope’s family emigrated to the United States when Bob was five, settling in Cleveland, where Bob’s father found work as a stonemason, working on a bridge that would eventually bear the family’s name.
The young Hope eventually changed his first name to Bob and sang and danced in the streets of Cleveland and even boxed under the name Packy East. But like his mother, a light opera singer, he eventually chose show business…