Comedian’s Legacy Honored in Stockton

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.

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.

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.

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 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.