Bob Hope, the legendary comedian whose gift for breezy monologues and sharp one-liners earned him worldwide fame on radio, film and television, died of Pneumonia on July 27 at his home in Toluca Lake, California. He was 100.

He was born Leslie Townes Hope on May 29, 1903, in Eltham, England, the son of stonemason William Henry Hope and a Welsh concert singer, Avis Townes Hope. He was the fifth of seven brothers, and when he was four his family immigrated to America, where they settled with relatives in Cleveland. He became a U.S. citizen in 1920 and after high school he began taking dance lessons. Within a year, he was teaching dance classes, and decided to hit the stage. He teamed up with a friend, Lloyd Durbin, for a vaudeville duo, and they began developing their act in local bookings - earning their biggest coup when the Bandbox Theater hired them for the Fatty Arbuckle Show. They worked on refining their routines and began playing bigger venues in New York City.

After the untimely death of Durbin, Hope developed an act with a new partner, George Byrne. Their set consisted of singing, dancing, and comedy routines. They were moderately successful, but nothing in their performances seemed to indicate that Hope would develop the charisma to become a solo star. That all changed in 1927 when the duo secured a three-day engagement in a small theater in New Castle, Pennsylvania. On opening night Bob was asked to announce the next week's coming attractions to the audience. His gift for the ad-lib, coupled with his poise and delivery caught on with the crowd immediately. Encouraged by the theater manager, he expanded his routine to five minutes, and at the conclusion of the New Castle run, Hope was a solo act.

Hope went back to Cleveland for a year to work on his comedy style - relevant one-liners matched with a knowing side grin. The hard work and refinement he put into performances payed off when he was booked in Chicago at the Stratford Theatre. Here, he was scheduled for what was initially a three-day gig, yet his stand up routines were such a hit, that his run was extended for six months!

Buoyed by his success in Chicago, he headed back to Broadway, where he found only intermittent success until being cast in the wisecracking role of Huckleberry Haines Jerome Kern's musical Roberta (1933). The show was the toast of Broadway and Hope received rave reviews. His personal life also took an upturn when one of his co-performers in the musical, George Murphy, introduced him to a young singer, Dolores Reade. After a brief courtship, the couple married in February 1934.

He notched another major success in The Ziegfeld Follies of 1936, and matched that the following year with Ethel Merman and Jimmy Durante in Red, Hot and Blue. By now Bob was red hot, and it all came together in 1938 - his breakout year. He scored a Tuesday night radio show on NBC and made his first feature film, Mitchell Leisen's smooth The Big Broadcast of 1938. It was in this film that Hope got to sing a lovely ballad, the Oscar-winning Thanks for the Memory. It would be his signature song throughout the remainder of his career. Hope struck gold the following year, when he was cast with Paulette Goddard in Elliott Nugent's classic "old dark house" comedy The Cat and the Canary (1939). The film was a smash. Audiences loved Bob's engaging vitality and fresh, precise timing, and Paramount offered Hope a seven-year contract, which he duly signed.

The '40s were undeniably Hope's great period of film comedy. It's almost daunting to name his entire catalog of first-rate films that were both critical and commercial successes, but we will name a few: Victor Schertzinger's The Road to Singapore (1940), the first of the classic Road pictures co-starring Bing Crosby, and Dorothy Lamour; re-teaming with Goddard twice again with George Steven's The Ghost Breakers (1940); and Nugent's Nothing but the Truth (1941); Sidney Lanfield's wonderful spy romp My Favorite Blonde (1942) opposite Madeleine Carroll; Hal Walker's Road to Utopia (1946), by far the best "Road" film complete with zany songs, hellzapoppin' sight gags, non-sequiturs and various camera tricks; and Norman Z. McLeod's The Paleface (1948). In between his film career, Hope kept busy with his radio shows and entertaining servicemen at U.S. bases around the world, gestures that only solidified his national popularity.

The '50s showed a slight slide in Hope's film career, so he wisely took a break from his cowardly wiseguy persona expanded his range with some "serious" parts. He was effective as Eddie Foy Sr. in Melville Shavelson's The Seven Little Foys (1955), injecting sympathy in an otherwise maudlin script; and gave a nicely nuanced performance as former NYC mayor Jimmy Walker in Shavelson's Beau James (1957).

Sadly, by the '60s, Hope's run of good material would peter out. Norman Panama's The Road to Hong Kong (1962) the final "Road" picture with Crosby; and Don Weis' Critic's Choice, (1963) co-starring Lucille Ball, were passable; but films like Frederick De Cordova's teen comedy I'll Take Sweden (1965), with Frankie Avalon; George Marshall's labored farce Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number (1966), opposite Phyllis Diller; and Panama's dreadful generation gap comedy How to Commit Marriage (1969), were beyond the pale.

By the mid-'70s, Hope walked away from films, but he still kept active with numerous television specials, talk shows and USO tours. A consummate professional, Hope was acting well into his eighties in shows like The Golden Girls, Roseanne, and a brilliant cameo lampooning his political monologues on the The Simpsons. One of the great things about Hope's longevity, was that he was still alive to receive numerous awards and honors for his contributions to entertainment. Apart from four honorary Academy Awards, he became in 1997, at the age of 94, the first American designated by Congress as an "Honorary Veteran of the United States Armed Forces! " for his nearly 50 year service of entertaining the Armed Forces; and the following year, Queen Elizabeth II recognized the native Briton' service of British troops during World War II by granting him a knighthood that was officially presented to him at the British Embassy in Washington DC. He is survived by Roberta; his sons Anthony and Kelly; daughters Linda Hope and Nora Somers; and four grandchildren.