HAVE TUX, WILL TRAVEL

Another entry from the Saturday Evening Post -- Simon & Schuster stable (see Crosby's Going My Way) is a fast performance from a glib performer. Hope tours all circuits -- from his first singing in Cleveland, to tab shows, to the long road that lead to the Palace; from musical comedy to radio to moving pictures to TV; he describes his kicks from off beat doings; he analyzes how to get audiences to buy an act; he lets you know the gimmicks in shilling for a product; he loads his story with a gaggle of gags. Along the way are all the people from show biz, Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour, Madeleine Carroll -- on and on, actors, directors, writers, producers, agents, from all the media; the people, too, in politics, society, government, who have come his way; and there is the real stuff from his USO wartime travels as he spent his time in Europe, Alaska and the Pacific, in hospitals and aboard planes, where GI's counted more than the big brass; the warm receptions the English give their native Leslie Townes Hope and the wonder of it all -- his wife Dolores and their four adopted children. From corn to caviar, this is an impish autobiography, bursting with energy and balanced by underplaying. Good box office.