Hope’s lampooning of national life on his radio show led to an appearance at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in 1944, where he left President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) roaring with laughter. FDR particularly liked Hope’s joke that compared the likelihood of locating a room to rent in wartime Washington with that of finding his wife Eleanor’s newspaper column, “My Day,” in the Chicago Tribune, a paper owned by the anti-New Deal isolationist Robert R. McCormick (1880–1955). Hope’s performance at the dinner prompted columnist Richard Wilson (1905–1981) to call him “another Will Rogers” and predict that “from now on he will be sought in Washington to provide that extra touch at the capital’s lavish public functions.” Wilson proved to be prophetic.

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