It's difficult to start a new career at any age. But to launch a new singing and recording career in your 80s takes more talent, drive and chutzpah than most octogenarians can muster.
Dolores Hope, wife of comedian Bob Hope, is the exception to the rule. At 84, Hope took a 60-year-old dream off the shelf and recorded her first album. Now, at 88, the still trim and lovely singing grandmother is busy promoting her fourth and latest album, "That's Love." And she shows no signs of stopping."Isn't it wonderful that I can still sing at my age?" Hope asked in her low, husky voice. "My friends and family say I'm singing better than ever. God is good!"
Hope talked by telephone from New York, where she was appearing for two weeks at Rainbow and Stars, New York's "cabaret in the sky," with the great pop singer Rosemary Clooney.
A proud Bob Hope, 94, was in the audience opening night quipping that his wife "finally has steady work." Also there to cheer her were the couple's four children and three of their four grandchildren.
Dolores Hope said the support of her family and a network of persuasive friends like Clooney and composer-arranger Nick Perito prompted her to pursue a recording career at a rather advanced age.
"One friend gave me a pillow at Christmas that I just love," said Hope, an avid golfer like her husband. "It says, `I'm not over the hill. I'm on the back nine.' "
Dolores Hope's dream of becoming a recording artist dates back to the early 1930s when the then Dolores Reade, a stage-struck girl from the Bronx, began singing on the New York nightclub circuit. But in 1933 she met and married the upstart vaudeville comedian, Bob Hope - and left the clubs and dreams of a record contract behind.
The Hopes performed together on the vaudeville circuit for a few years. But once they started a family, she opted for the role of wife, mother, homemaker and volunteer worker.
"I didn't want her to be overexposed," Bob Hope jokes.
Dolores Hope never really deserted the stage, however. She was always a part of the cast - "the Hope diamond" - when the Bob Hope show played to U.S. troops around the world. She was the only woman allowed to perform in Saudi Arabia when Hope took his show there in 1991, during Operation Desert Storm.
Over the years she kept her voice in shape by singing lullabies to her children and grandchildren, performing in benefits, singing at private parties and appearing on 18 of Hope's NBC television specials.
She also gave up smoking. "I used to smoke a lot, but I haven't smoked since 1946, and I think that's an asset.
"I was always singing," she continued. "I play the piano a little bit and when I was alone - when the children were in bed and Bob was working - I'd be playing the piano and singing to myself."
Friends and family often urged her to make an album, but she was too involved with family and community work. For one thing, Dolores Hope served 18 years as president and chairman of the board of the Eisenhower Medical Center in Palm Desert, Calif.
"Finally, one day, my daughter, Linda, said, `Mom, we've talked about an album long enough. Now let's do it."'
Dolores Hope made her first album, "Now and Then," in 1993. She released her second album, "Somewhere in Time: The Songs and Spirit of World War II," in 1994 and followed with the 1995 Christmas album she made with her husband, titled "Hopes for the Holidays."
On "That's Love," which was released this May to coincide with her appearance at Rainbow and Stars, Hope performs 14 standards by great songwriters such as Harold Arlen, Ira and George Gershwin, and Johnny Mercer.
She doesn't sound like a 25-year-old on this disc, but she doesn't sound like an 80-something grandmother either.
Backed by a wonderful nine-piece orchestra and equipped with arrangements by Perito (Perry Como's conductor), Hope comes across as a mature and charming stylist. Her phrasing and timing are perfect and she can still give a sultry twist to a lyric.
The songs she sings to Bob, she said, tongue-in-cheek, are "Why Can't You Behave?" and "Teach Me Tonight." She also imparts special warmth to "I Wish You Love."
Hope would be pleased, she said, if her recording ventures inspired other "late starters" to pursue their dreams.
"If we are fortunate enough to have good health mentally, physically and spiritually, what should stop us?" she asked.
Nothing, obviously, is stopping Dolores Hope, who looks forward to cutting more albums. "I suppose one day I'll wake up and there won't be a singing voice, but as long as I've got it, I'll use it."
For information about ordering "That's Love," call (800)-BOB-HOPE.