Stand Up and Cheer for the National Football League’s Sixtieth Year

Elizabeth appeared on her very first Bob Hope special, Stand Up and Cheer for the National Football League’s Sixtieth Year, in 1981. (Between 1950 and 1996, the legendary Hope hosted more than 250 variety specials on NBC.) Other guests on the two-hour show that was billed as “An All-Star Comedy Salute to America’s #1 Spectator Sport!” were Olivia Newton-John, Susan Anton, and Barbara Mandrell.

Hope believed that this was the first time that he had worked with Elizabeth, but she reminded him that she was a guest on his radio show decades earlier. While plugging the special on The Tonight with Johnny Carson, Hope shared that Elizabeth asked to be on the show. “Hell, I hate to see a woman beg like that,” he joked. “No, she’s divine. We’re so thrilled.” Hope also revealed that Elizabeth was supposed to have been on a recent special filmed at West Point, but had to withdraw due to illness. In Stand Up and Cheer for the National Football League’s Sixtieth Year, she plays the Commissioner of the National Football League in a sketch that also featured NFL quarterback Joe Nameth. “My how you’ve changed, Mr. Rozelle,” says Nameth, referring to then-commissioner Pete Rozelle, which drew a huge laugh.

Also appearing in the sketch was O. J. Simpson. Years later, Dominick Dunne, the producer of Elizabeth’s 1973 film Ash Wednesday, covered Simpson’s trial for Vanity Fair. “During the O. J. Simpson trial, I used to go to her house in Bel Air almost every Sunday for lunch,” Dunne later wrote. “I loved talking to her.”

Elizabeth would grace two more Hope specials: Bob Hope’s Star-Studded Spoof of the New TV Season, which aired the following year, and Bob Hope’s High-Flying Birthday (1986).