In Francis Ford Coppolla’s, Apocalpyse Now, there is an iconic scene in which Playmate of the year, Miss Terri Foster (played by Cynthia Wood) descends from a Playboy helicopter to entertain the gathered troops. In a sexy cowgirl outfit, she struts her stuff in the spotlight to a soundtrack of Dale Hawkins’, Susie Q. The local “Vietnamese” watch from behind a chicken wire fence as the soldiers grow more agitated.
As she brandishes her silver six shooters, the stage looks set to be invaded. M.Ps fight back the frenzied spectators. The helicopter lifts off in a cloud of smoke after the master of ceremonies has scattered a handful of pills, bait for the rampaging soldiers. Several cling to the runners of the helicopter as it ascends, recalling the famous images from the fall of Saigon that was to bring a final end to the Vietnam War in 1975.
At first sight the harmless razzmatazz of Bob Hope’s Vietnam Christmas special seems markedly more banal than Coppola’s Wagnerian vision. Sure we get Raquel Welch’s Go-Go routine in white thigh length boots, as Hope wise cracks but the soundtrack keeps it easy with jazz standards, sentimental songs and sing-alongs. Nonetheless one veteran vividly recalls a performance by Ann-Margret at Da Nang in 1966 that clearly prefigures the febrile atmosphere of the scene in Coppolla’s film.
“We only caught a glimpse of a marine carrying Ann-Margret from the helicopter across the mud and to the stage. [ ] Ann launched right into the whirlwind pulsating (Oh) Susie-Q and rocked the valley with her American-woman-magic, stirring the crowd into a slathering hormone-testoseterone (sic) frenzy of mostly 19 and 20 year old men.”
Bob Hope, already a veteran of U.S.O shows in World War II, had wanted to visit Vietnam as early as 1962 but the first of his annual Christmas shows would have to wait until 1964. They would continue for the next eight years. He would later grimly quip. “Where there’s Death, there’s Hope”.
From the outset the intention to film these shows had been part of the arrangement. Hope’ s impeccable timing, even as he flinches as a plane passes overhead, serves not just as a morale raiser for the troops but also as a message in the propaganda war back home.
Vietnam was famously the first television war. Images of its brutality had swept around the globe long before the 24hr news cycle or its careful management. Whilst the American television networks earlier coverage had generally been upbeat, by 1967 the tide was on the turn. A year later American troops would massacre up to 500 unarmed civilians at My Lai, coverage of the Tet Offensive of 1968 was largely hostile and in 1969 Life Magazine would run with the cover story, The Faces of The American Dead.
Hope narrates his whistle stop tour of bases and aircraft carriers with a string of glib one-liners and casual sexism. At one point an army translator asks a Thai siren, “Aimez-vous les chiens?”, Bob quips that he is asking her if she likes American men. The political tone is set by interviews but it remains anodyne and lighthearted (with the odd bit of Commie bashing thrown in). As one servicemen, asked what he is doing in Vietnam responds, “I heard a lot about this Communism as a kid, it was called Bolshevism or something back then. I don’t now what it is but I want it stopped.”
When the gags let up the camera returns constantly to the military audience, which stretches as far as the eye can see. At Cam Ranh Bay the crowd was 27, 000. The following year the soldiers would sit in torrential rain, singing Silent Night together with Ann-Margret.
“We only caught a glimpse of a marine carrying Ann-Margret from the helicopter across the mud and to the stage. [ ] Ann launched right into the whirlwind pulsating (Oh) Susie-Q and rocked the valley with her American-woman-magic, stirring the crowd into a slathering hormone-testoseterone (sic) frenzy of mostly 19 and 20 year old men.”
Bob Hope, already a veteran of U.S.O shows in World War II, had wanted to visit Vietnam as early as 1962 but the first of his annual Christmas shows would have to wait until 1964. They would continue for the next eight years. He would later grimly quip. “Where there’s Death, there’s Hope”.
From the outset the intention to film these shows had been part of the arrangement. Hope’ s impeccable timing, even as he flinches as a plane passes overhead, serves not just as a morale raiser for the troops but also as a message in the propaganda war back home.
Vietnam was famously the first television war. Images of its brutality had swept around the globe long before the 24hr news cycle or its careful management. Whilst the American television networks earlier coverage had generally been upbeat, by 1967 the tide was on the turn. A year later American troops would massacre up to 500 unarmed civilians at My Lai, coverage of the Tet Offensive of 1968 was largely hostile and in 1969 Life Magazine would run with the cover story, The Faces of The American Dead.
Hope narrates his whistle stop tour of bases and aircraft carriers with a string of glib one-liners and casual sexism. At one point an army translator asks a Thai siren, “Aimez-vous les chiens?”, Bob quips that he is asking her if she likes American men. The political tone is set by interviews but it remains anodyne and lighthearted (with the odd bit of Commie bashing thrown in). As one servicemen, asked what he is doing in Vietnam responds, “I heard a lot about this Communism as a kid, it was called Bolshevism or something back then. I don’t now what it is but I want it stopped.”
When the gags let up the camera returns constantly to the military audience, which stretches as far as the eye can see. At Cam Ranh Bay the crowd was 27, 000. The following year the soldiers would sit in torrential rain, singing Silent Night together with Ann-Margret.
Connie Stevens, Ann-Margret and Joey Heatherton were all regular guests. From 1968 Hope would be accompanied by the 15 strong Goldiggers, sometimes performing 4 or 5 shows a day. His typed packing list reveals that he never ventured into the jungle without silk socks and a tuxedo.
The gang show content of the on stage cabaret is of secondary interest to the logistics of staging such a tour. The American presence in Vietnam had reached 500,000 by 1967 and the tour was covering 250,000 miles. An old Vaudeville trouper, Hope wielded his golf club in lieu of a cane, occasionally exchanging his bright red cap for camouflage.
Security for these events was so tight that no official announcements were made and even Hope and his fellow players didn’t know the name of their destination until they arrived. As he ruefully tells his adoring crowd, “You try being listed as a state secret.”
State secret or not, the propaganda war was surely being lost. In 1968 Emile de Antonio’s Year of the Pig, an evocative account of the origins of the war (with a soundtrack by John Cage), had been nominated for an Academy Award, even as the theatres at which it played suffered bomb threats. AP and Magnum were providing an insatiable International Press with graphic photography by the likes of Henri Huet,Don McCullan and Eddie Adams. Whilst in his report on the Tet offensive, Walter Cronkite had argued the war was un-winnable and it seemed that President Johnson concurred.
Bob’s song and dance routine was starting to look a little tired. The easy-going, cocktail set, American exceptionalism of the “Greatest Generation” was out of step with the times. In 1970, when he made references to drug use by the troops, NBC removed them prior to broadcast.
The same year Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland (with whom she had won an Oscar starring in Klute) along with Fred Gardner organized the F.T.A Tour in direct response to Bob Hope’s U.S.O work. Seeking to initiate a dialogue with troops facing immanent deployment, it initially toured West coast military cities before moving on to a number of military bases on the Pacific Rim.
The F.T.A tour had grown out of Gardner’s experience establishing a network of alternative coffee houses for dissenting G.Is, of which their were a growing number. Fonda and Sutherland’s routines (captured in Francine Parkers F.T.A, 1972) are a counter cultural reflection in the bulletproof professional veneer of Magret and Hope’s wholesome gag machine.
After nine consecutive Christmas tours, the American military presence in Vietnam was receding and Hope’s audiences dwindled. Often under threat of attack and called to task for his support of an increasingly unpopular war, the exhausted comedian called it a day in 1972.
As Judith Johnson writes, “During the final montage of photos and film of his last televised Vietnam Christmas special in 1972, Hope narrates film footage of Long Binh shot a year earlier, bustling with troops. "Well," he said, showing the new footage of a deserted Long Binh, overgrown with weeds, "this is how [it] looks now…and this is how it should be…all those happy, smiling, beautiful faces are gone. But most of them are really where they belong, home with their loved ones."
Three months earlier Jane Fonda had visited Vietnam. In her radio transmissions from Hannoi, she spoke of girl militias, the temple of literature, rehearsals for plays, ballets and poetry, urging the American soldiers to, “Accept no ready answers fed to you by rote from basic training...”
Photographed sitting astride a NVA anti-aircraft gun, she became “Hanoi Jane” and called for the trial of captured pilots for war crimes. The images scandalized America and produced an unexpected propaganda coup for the Viet Cong. Several members of the US Congress wanted Fonda prosecuted for Treason seeing her as a pot smoking “pinko slut” who appeared nude in movies, used profanity in public and now, worst of all, was aiding and abetting the enemy during wartime. Even Jean-Pierre Gorin and Jean Luc Godard subjected her to a Maoist scolding in their film, Letter to Jane (1972).
Perhaps muttering cynical gags to himself in the tankard made from a shell case presented to him in 1969, Bob Hope in later years might have wondered if his nemesis had not turned out after all to be the woman who played Barbarella. Sometimes blind with compassion (and not a little naive) “Hanoi Jane” had become the mirror image and the assassin of Susie Q.
The cameras flashed. I got up, and as I started to walk back to the car with the translator, the implication of what had just happened hit me. “Oh my God. It’s going to look like I was trying to shoot down U.S. planes.” I pleaded with him, “You have to be sure those photographs are not published. Please, you can’t let them be published.” I was assured it would be taken care of. I didn’t know what else to do.
HYPERLINK "http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/cteq/letter-2/" Letter to Jane, Jonathan Dawson. Senses of Cinema 19
HYPERLINK "http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/bobhope/images/vc162.jpg"Mug made from an artillery shell casing, 1969.presented to Bob Hope