The Gang, the Hope, and the Instamatic

WE MOVED TO NORTH HOLLYWOOD FROM WHITTIER in December of fifty-six—two months after The Ford Show’s premiere on NBC and about a year after the release of ‘Sixteen Tons’. It was a grand house, a two-story cape cod-ranch-Georgian in Toluca Lake, next door to Bob Hope and his family. Six blocks up the street, the Warner Brothers lot sat at the corner of West Olive and Riverside, and just a few blocks beyond, the Disney Studios fronted Buena Vista Drive.

Tucked-away and over the hill from Hollywood proper, Toluca Lake and Burbank were quiet, safe neighborhoods between fifty-six and sixty-one. Narrow streets meandered through manicured neighborhoods that looked like the back-lot of the Republic studios where Beaver Cleaver and My Three Sons lived. Stars with families moved there because it gave them the sense of community that was missing in Bel Air or Beverly Hills, yet it was still close to the studios. For Dad, that was paramount. From the driveway to the gate at the NBC lot on West Alameda and Bob Hope Boulevard, it was less than ten minutes, and no freeways.

Along three of the four lines marking the rectangular lot, the original owner had erected a split rail fence and trellised it with honeysuckle when the house was built. Just inside the westernmost corner, they’d built a two-room playhouse for their daughter, that later would become the perfect fort for Brion and I. By the time we moved to the house, the split rail fence was all but invisible, crushed along some spans by the honeysuckle, which had grown to a hedge more than eight feet high; thick, redolent and dense, impassable by anything larger than a field mouse or rock lizard. At the same time the fence had been built, and the trellises placed, sapling eucalyptus trees had been planted along the row, some twenty feet apart. When we arrived, they towered along the hedge line like quiet sentries, their pungent fragrance matched only by the sweet scent of the honeysuckle trumpets when they bloomed.

Above the leafy top of the hedge wall, you could just make out the slope and pitch of Bob and Dolores Hope’s roofline. It was a large, sprawling compound, occupying two to three acres, with his own one-hole golf range, on the corner of Moorpark and Ledge. They were quiet neighbors, unobtrusive and private. In the five years we lived next door, I personally saw and spoke to him on only three occasions, to two of their kids once (who were not really kids anymore), but I never once so much as laid eyes on Mrs. Hope. Had no idea what she looked like. For several of us in the neighborhood, she became somewhat of a mystery, prompting more than one attempted foray over, and several aborted penetrations through the hedgerow separating our houses, in the hopes of gaining even one furtive, brief glimpse of the woman.

Aside from the normal, petty mischief expected from neighborhood hooligans—good natured, and free of malicious intent though we were, I should, in all honesty, also admit that those incursions were fueled in part by the rumor (started, I still believe, by Chris Noonan, who claimed firsthand experience) that Mrs. Hope sunbathed and walked, walked around regularly, according to Noonan, in the nude.

For this gang of miscreants, the promise of such a vista, no matter how unsubstantiated the rumor, could not go unexplored. Great campaigns were planned in long strategy sessions in the fort. With all the deliberation and seriousness of a special forces unit, we sent out advance teams to recon the weak points in the hedge—the gaps of thinning vegetation that would give us not only relatively unobstructed passage through to the other side, but views of the uninhibited tableau that we hoped would greet us. Armed with a Brownie Instamatic that Kodak had given us as a gift following a photo spread they‘d done at the house, we hoped also to capture that prurient image for posterity, and neighborhood fame. That Hope was rumored to have planted electrified lines just under the surface of the loamy ground along the fence -hot conduits that would fry our pre-adolescent guts to smoldering innards- deterred us only for the briefest time - long enough to send Brion through first, to see if it was true.

Finally the point of entry was selected. Arduous hours of painstakingly tedious pruning -by hand- was completed. A camouflaged tunnel we’d built; one nearly invisible to all but the trained eyes of a spy, or a good gardener.

When the hour finally came, like true soldiers embarking on a mission of the greatest importance, it was determined we would draw straws to see who would go through and take the picture. Shortest straw wins. Had Dimitri Tiomkin, or Henry Mancini been in the fort with us, they would have been scoring gut-wrenching musical interludes to accompany the tense, high drama unfolding in the playhouse. I mean, fort.

Sending Brion to the house with the ruse we were choosing sides for kickball, he came back with our housekeeper, Beatrice, who agreed, albeit reluctantly and hurriedly (she had a roast on, if memory serves me correctly) to appropriate the kitchen broom -for that was the source of our ballots- and hold the straws for the drawing. Obviously a professional in this, as she evidently was in many other endeavors, Beatrice positioned the five chaffs she’d cut expertly behind her palm, held in place by her thumb, the ends perfectly level and aligned just above the ridge of her long, bronzed, and calloused index finger. Although it would have been next to impossible for any of us to have divined the lengths of the straws she held, she nevertheless added her own rule to the game, insisting that we turn our head when drawing, so that our choice be made blind.

How such a short a broom straw could have been so successfully aligned with the other three lengths without giving its size away, I can‘t say. Doubtless a skill Beatrice Smith took to her grave. Nor do I recall how that same straw ended up between my thumb and forefinger, but there it was. Beatrice wiped her hand on her apron, looking suspiciously at each of us like we were the Dead End Kids.

“How are you goin to play a fair game of kickball with five of you?” she asked. But before any of us had time to provide an answer that would allay the doubt furrowing her brow, her eyes shifted to take in the Brownie on the table in the corner, and then leveled on me. “And does Miz Ford know you’ve got that camera the commercial people gave you out here?” But again, before a suitable response could be formulated, her attention shifted a second time—to her watch. “Oh, Lord,” was all she said, and then she was gone, striding at a long lope back to the house, and presumably to whatever was on the stove or in the oven. We were, evidently, saved.

With Beatrice gone, Mom shopping, and Dad on the back nine at Lakeside, the hour so long in planning had come. Muffled only slightly, we could hear laughter and splashing coming from the Hope’s pool. Clearly, it was now or never. Grabbing the Instamatic, I slung the strap over my neck, and we made our way to our entry-point. There, flanked by Brion and the gang, I dropped to all fours, and began removing the camouflaged greenery we’d replaced to disguise the tunnel. Once clear on our side, I said goodbye to my mates, and began the crawl through the bore we’d cut through the hedge. Finally, I reached the outer wall. Ahead of me, the sound that could only be that of a body entering a pool. Surely, this was her, I remember thinking. All that was left now was to carefully move the fewest of branches and vines, position the Brownie just so, and history would be mine. I pulled the last net of vinery away, and came face to face with…Bob Hope. On his hands and knees. Staring right at me.

“Let’s see, you’re Buck. The oldest. Right, young fella?”

Knees turning to oatmeal, hands rooting into the ground, where I expected jolts of electric current to fry me any second, my brain moved at a pace that astounded even me. As nonchalant as I could be, I took the Instamatic off my neck and held it between my hands like a pro paparazzi.

“Can I take your picture, Mr. Hope?”

….

Somewhere, long-since lost from those prized possessions of my youth, there exists a one-of-a-kind snapshot of the greatest profile in show business. Somewhat out of focus, if I remember correctly, but recognizable nonetheless; the vines draping over his one-and-only schnozz, the bright white honeysuckle trumpets dimmed by his brilliant smile.

Thanks for the memory, Bob. And for not telling Mom and Dad about the hedge.

Oh…Mrs. Hope? She was wearing a one-piece. Another mystery of our youth dashed.

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An excerpt from 'River of No Return ~ Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Woman He Loved'

Available on Amazon at https://a.co/d/di7Ijmo

© 2008. Jeffrey Buckner Ford