Mr. Hope's persona as a cowardly wise-craker was well known to the public from a string of wildly successful (and, for the time, innovatively extemporaneous) "Road" films with Bing Crosby and, later, a series of television specials which saw him warbling and cutting up with the latest stars of the moment. Mr. Hope was famous for his ready stream of one-liners and retorts, supplied by an unseen, but notorious team of joke men kept in his employ. He delivered each quip with a sheepish grin, clenched jaw and ski-slope nose thrust out, his slicked-back hair seemingly gleaming with flop sweat, and often milked a second laugh out of the crowd by squirming under the supposed failure of the first joke. He did not create characters, but was always Bob Hope, and, according to a John Lahr New Yorker profile, the self-preserving, hustling personality he presented on stage was not far from his own, faults and all.