A Friendship and a Stage for Bob Hope-

Comedian’s Legacy Honored in Stockton

The official logo of the Bob Hope Theatre in Stockton, CA. Image: BobHopeTheatre.com

While younger people may have never heard of him, to millions of Americans the name Bob Hope conjures up laughs and lightheartedness.

Earlier generations recall the television specials and the comedian entertaining military troops at Christmastime from years ago.

The Central Valley holds the distinction of being home to a performing arts venue named in honor of the beloved entertainer. Thanks to the generosity of the late Stockton developer Alex Spanos, the Hope name lives on in that city of over a quarter-million people about seventy-five miles north of Merced.

The Bob Hope Theatre opened in the early 2000s in a refurbished Fox Theatre in downtown Stockton.

The building was almost lost to the wrecking ball when Spanos stepped forward with an idea to honor his friend, and a checkbook.

Alex Spanos was good friends with Bob Hope. Here, the pair performed a soft-shoe dance routine for a charity function. Photo: AGSpanos.com

As I first wrote about the Bob Hope Theater.in my book 9 From 99, Experiences in California’s Central Valley, Spanos was primarily known as the owner of the National Football League's San Diego Chargers.

The Chargers are now based in Los Angeles, In the City of Stockton, Alex Spanos was a property developer and community philanthropist.

He passed away in 2018.

The Spanos name graces high school football fields, a college performing arts center, hospital wings, and other places throughout the City of Stockton. In addition, there are scholarship endowments, charity golf tournaments, and art exhibits that have been underwritten by the Spanos family.

The company website has a special section on the Spanos lifetime commitment to charitable giving not only in the Central Valley, but up and down the state of California and into the state of Nevada.

Around the turn of the new century, Alex Spanos was able to mesh his desire to give more to the City of Stockton with a symbol of his then thirty-year friendship with comedian Bob Hope.

Bob Hope was a frequent visitor to the owner’s box at San Diego Chargers games.

He gave a half-million dollar gift to the organization handling the rehabilitation of a former vaudeville theater and asked that the building be named after his friend.

That’s how the Bob Hope Theatre in downtown Stockton got its’ name. Bob Hope and Alex Spanos became friends following a charity golf function in 1969.

"Bob and I teamed up against Bing Crosby and his partner and we beat them,” Spanos said in an interview with television station KCRA in Sacramento well over a decade ago, “From that day onward, Bob and I played golf practically every week.”

The friendship grew over the years with Hope participating in charity events alongside Spanos.

The comedian was an occasional visitor to the owner’s box at Charger games in San Diego. Bob Hope died in 2003 at the age of 100.

A plaque inside the Bob Hope Theatre lists the elected leaders and key players in the reconstruction project. Photo: 9 From 99- Experiences from California’s Central Valley by Steve Newvine.

The theater site started as the T & D Photoplay in 1916, hosting vaudeville and other entertainment acts.

It was renamed the California five years later. The building was torn down at the start of the Great Depression.

The Fox California opened on the site in 1930. During the 1930’s, big stars such as Al Jolson and the Marx Brothers performed there. As vaudeville was replaced by radio as America’s primary source of entertainment, the Fox California relied on moviegoers as a primary source of revenue.

In 1973, the theater closed. The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in the late 1970’s. The City and its’ Redevelopment Agency included the theater in a revitalization plan in the early 1990’s.

By the early 2000’s, a combination of the Spanos donation and government funds saved the project and resulted in the renovation that residents and others enjoy today.

While writing 9 From 99, I found a tribute to both Bob Hope’s gift of entertaining audiences and Alex Spanos legacy of charitable giving. On the company website at that time, there was special section on the site where a video of a soft-shoe dance routine with Spanos and Hope was featured.

It is not too often you see a world reknown entertainer alongside one of California’s most generous philantropists take to a stage to wow an audience.

You can find a brief section of the video on YouTube. It is no longer available on the AGSpanos.com site. Alex Spanos carried himself pretty well as a soft-shoe dancer, while Bob Hope showed that he still had the goods in his late eighties at the time of the video (circa 1980).

The comedian likely knew his friend was responsible for the renaming of the theater. Bob Hope passed away a year before the official grand opening. According to the theatre website, the comedian never performed there during his years as a vaudeville entertainer.

The chandelier inside the Bob Hope Theatre in Stockton, California. Photo from 9 From 99, Experiences in California’s Central Valley.

The Bob Hope Theatre was among the first California entertainment venues to reopen after the worst of the COVID pandemic. Audiences that assemble beneath the ornate chandelier inside the historic building may not know that much about the comedian’s legacy.

But thanks to the half-million dollar gift from his friend AG Spanos, and the vision of community members who would not let the wrecking ball take down the building, the Hope name remains part of the history of the Central Valley.

Steve Newvine lives in Merced.

He first wrote about the Bob Hope Theatre in his book 9 From 99, Experiences in California’s Central Valley.

Olympic Memories-

Lapel pins and a beer can offer tributes to the games

My collection representing over forty years as a working professional include these Olympic themed pins.  Photo:  Newvine Personal Collection

The Olympics have been dominating our television sets and the social media outlets this summer.  

It happens every other year since the summer and winter games moved to an alternating schedule in 1994.  For a few months before the games, and during the sixteen days of competition, it seems everyone is talking about the athletes, the new records, the brewing controversies, and the uniforms.

I need not look any further than to my collection of lapel pins collected over four decades of work.  Each of the near two hundred pins was worn on my suit lapel at least one time.

Part of the news team I worked with thirty years ago. I’m the guy in the white shirt, tie, and dark hair.   Inset: a special pin made in anticipation of the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France.  Photo: Newvine Personal Collection

One pin stands out from 1992. 

I was working for the CBS affiliate at a television station in Rochester, New York. 

The station was carrying the winter games.  That was the year of Kristi Yamaguchi and the US Women’s Figure Skating team.

My job then was as an executive producer in the station’s news department.

Our general manager determined that if we worked really hard we might be able to maximize the lead-in from those winter games on CBS to move our third place late newscast to second place. 

The manager gave us pins that displayed the Olympic rings, the CBS logo and our station call letters. The pins helped keep my focus on the big prize.

We succeeded, and at least for that particular local rating period, our late news made the jump in the ratings.

The years I worked in Rochester were linked to the Olympic games because of three major companies in the area. Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch & Lomb were all official sponsors of the games.  

They were really big companies back in the nineties. But success does not last forever.  Tech giants such as Apple and Microsoft dominate the Dow Jones Average today. 

While most people will remember the US Hockey team’s win over the Soviet team when thinking about the 1980 Winter Olympics, I have a much different memory from the year the games were held in Lake Placid, New York.  

1979 was the first year I was working as a television news reporter. 

The games would start in early 1980 so Olympic fever was high throughout upstate New York.

I was earning a decent paycheck so I wanted to give extra special Christmas presents for my family.  I forget what I got for other relatives, but I do remember getting my sister an Olympic ski cap with images from Lake Placid on it.  

The Winter Olympic Snow can, sold as a novelty during the 1980 Lake Placid games. Photo: Newvine Personal Collection.

Also acquired that year was a special beer can. 

There was no beer in it, but rather a unique souvenir of the Lake Placid games.  Printed on the back of the can of “Lake Placid Snow” was a message from the manufacturer saying that sealed inside the can, there was a small packet of moisture guaranteed to be 1979 Lake Placid snow. 

I took their word for it and never opened the can.

The can has been sitting on a shelf in my den or stashed away in a keepsake box wherever I lived for over forty years.

Steve Newvine lives in Merced. 

He wrote about his experiences as a television reporter in 1979 and 1980 in his book Stand By Camera One.  The book is available at BarnesandNoble.com, Amazon, and at Lulu.com