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Article:
Bob Hope Stories by: Stephen Schochet Once when he was a little boy in England, Leslie Hope (He later renamed himself Bob after a race car driver he idolized) wanted to pick an apple off a tree. Symbolic of his career, he didn't want just any apple but the highest one possible. He lost his balance, fell and permanently changed the shape of his nose. His big break in Hollywood was getting the part Jack Benny turned down in the Paramount film 'The Big Broadcast Of 1938'. The director Mitchell Leisen could not stand the star of the film, the ornery WC Fields, who would run off the movie set and come back too soused to do the required scenes, flub his lines and scream for his lawyer. Liesen found Hope much more cooperative, although he was a nervous ham in front of the camera. Desperate to be a more traditional leading man like Fred Macmurray, Hope begged Paramount to pay for a nose job but they refused. It was in this film he got to sing 'Thanks For The Memories' which along with his ski nose became Hope's trademarks. For his radio show when Hope found out that Jack Benny hired two writers for $'1
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