Thanks for the memories . . .

Bob Hope turns 100 next week. That does seem remarkable, of course, but Hope has always been pretty remarkable.

He is probably best remembered today as a fixture on NBC television, starring in several "specials" each year for nearly five decades — variety shows with big-ticket guests, ranging from movie stars to TV stars to sports stars to politicians of the day.

And perhaps for the catch-phrase that turned up frequently during his monologues, "But I wanna tell ya. . . . "

Before that, Hope was also quite big on radio, where his wise-cracking persona fit perfectly with the audio-entertainment format.

Then there were all those overseas trips, as Hope and friends entertained the troops during times of war, which were also often highlighted on his TV shows.

Those who know Hope strictly from his TV work, however — especially toward the end of his career, when he was reduced to introducing clips from past programs — only know half the story. Hope was also a major movie star from the late 1930s through the early 1960s, often making several pictures a year, many of them major box-office hits. (In 1948, his West-ern spoof "The Paleface" was the No. 3 film of the year.)

Just about every stand-up comic from the 1940s to the present owes something to Hope's example of timing and how to set up a joke. And his movie work was equally influential. Woody Allen freely acknowledges that when he began making movies, he stole Hope's cowardly, womanizing movie persona as his own.

To acknowledge Hope on his hundredth, Universal Home Video has reissued a batch of his vintage movies on DVD, many of them double-feature discs, and R2 Entertainment has in stores a new three-disc set of collected clips that span Hope's TV career.

THE MOVIES ARE all Paramount pictures on the Universal Home Video label. Each disc retails at $14.98 and all are full-frame (having been made before widescreen lenses).

Some of the discs have extras — vintage newsreels, mini-documentaries about Hope's movies and overseas tours, etc. — and some of those extras are duplicated on various discs.

The best and most popular of Hope's films today are without question the "Road" movies he did with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour. There are seven, all are available on DVD — but only the first four are here (sold separately or in a four-pack box set for $39.98).