Just finished this third book of Hope in a row. Though better written than Arthur Marx’s book, this book does have a very disturbing streak.

The author, Lawrence Quirk, is as hell-bent to tie Hope in with homosexuality as Marx was to tie Hope with philandering. Marx was better able to sorta kinda give time and place of the philandering. Quirk casts veiled references that Hope is homosexual and then heartily condemns Hope for being involved with jokes that he feels are anti-homosexual. Gags like Hope in dresses or dance outfits, referencing wanting to hang around women than men, etc. are enough for Quirk to write that Hope was anti-homosexual. Clearly, the homosexual angle was how he sold the book to publishers as a different book than others written about Hope. It’s pretty far-fetched. Quirk in the last few pages is pretty much flailing his arms like Ian Holm in the robot out of control scene in the film ‘Alien’ about Bob Hope and homosexuality. Quirk would have been more believable in his writing about this if he had bothered to have covered even a tenth of the bed hopping Arthur Marx claims or if he had written about Hope’s two adopted daughters becoming lesbians also as Marx claims. And what’s with the cover considering all of this.

Also, though Marx writes against Hope’s being a Republican, he also writes it more as it being part of a biography of a person. Quirk gets into anti-Reublican tirades and swerves into non-Hope issues. In other words – He needed an editor!