The past is the past, he says with quiet firmness.īut he’s never forgotten, he adds in a voice that’s a hint thicker - the girl he so loved, the family he so adored. He wasn’t fond of Capote and gets irritated by reporters nosing into his private life. In 45 years, Rupp, now 61, hasn’t publicly discussed the book or the murders, despite hundreds of interview requests from around the world. The murders are chronicled in Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood,” in which Rupp - the last person to see the Clutter family alive - is cast as a heartbroken young man who, in his grief, closes himself to all but one or two confidantes. But the young couple’s romance ended in tragedy when Nancy, her parents and her 15-year-old brother were brutally murdered in their Holcomb farmhouse on Nov. Until her murder at age 16, Nancy Clutter was everyone’s friend.Īnd she was Bob Rupp’s first love. She was in 4-H, went to church every Sunday and made top grades. She had an easy laugh, and there wasn’t a mean bone in her body. Brown hair, curled at the ends, sparkling eyes, a wide, girlish smile. “You know,” he says, slowly and quietly, “Nancy was really pretty.”Īnd she was. The teenage sweethearts fill their small Holcomb kitchen with unspoken memories as they nudge their thumbs along the wooden frames and smile. Then she stands and walks to the counter. From the kitchen table, his wife, Coleen, waves a dismissive hand. “See? I used to have hair,” he jokes, rolling his eyes toward the thin, white patches that remain. They’ve weakened his hearing, slowed his walk and loosened his face, creasing it with wrinkles. But he admits that 40 years have taken their toll. The jaw is still strong, the lips still full. Standing at the counter, the man silently studies the photos as he sips water from a Dixie cup.
It’s his junior college picture, his wife’s engagement portrait. The other photo shows a girl, smiling tentatively and brushing her smooth face with a white-gloved hand.
One contains a black-and-white photograph of a young man, with dark hair, a strong jaw and a full lower lip. Much of the films' immediate and enduring popularity results from the chemistry between Hope and Crosby: their relaxed comfort with one another their playful competitiveness and the natural, improvisational feel to their repartee.Gently, without words, he props the picture frames on the kitchen countertop, so close they’re touching. The settings were always exotic locales, and the plots were burlesques of stock adventure melodramas. In each of the seven Road pictures made between 19, Hope and Crosby portrayed second-rate show business troupers who were also third-rate con men.
It is for this film and the subsequent series of Road pictures with Crosby and Lamour that Bob Hope is best known and still appreciated as a movie star.
Paramount Studios signed Hope for additional films, and by the end of the 1940s, he was one of the country's highest-grossing motion picture stars.īob Hope's success in The Big Broadcast of 1938 and resultant starring film roles brought him the opportunity to team with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour in The Road to Singapore (1940).
His role was fifth-billed but it featured Hope introducing the song “Thanks for the Memory.” The song was an immediate hit and provided Hope with a professional boost and a career-long theme song. In 1937, when Hope had three radio series as well as musical theater experience behind him, he was cast as a cruise ship's master of ceremonies in The Big Broadcast of 1938. Although they were moderately successful, they did not guarantee a major motion picture career for Hope. Among the many other variety artists who made early sound films was Bob Hope.Īfter his success on stage in the musical Roberta (1933), Bob Hope was cast in two series of short films made between 19.
For example, it was vaudevillian Al Jolson who guaranteed the success of The Jazz Singer, the first feature film to include songs and dialogue. At the same time, sound films provided a new venue for many variety stars. In one sense, sound films stole the attention of the vaudeville audience, thus contributing to the end of the heyday of live variety shows. In the late 1920s the success of motion pictures was closely related to vaudeville.