Humor & Life Quote by Rich Little

Nostalgia can be a kind of canon-making, and Rich Little is doing it in real time: building a Mount Rushmore of old-school showbiz and then crowning Bob Hope. On the surface, it reads like backstage bench-racing among comics. Underneath, it’s a careful defense of a disappearing craft tradition: the touring, monologue-driven, camera-friendly comedian who could deliver clean, rapid-fire laughs for middle America and still seem effortless.

Little’s comparisons aren’t random. George Burns is praised for thinking “on the spot,” a nod to improvisational timing and the old vaudeville skill of surviving anything the room throws at you. Steve Allen gets “marvelous,” a word that signals variety-show versatility: hosting, writing, playing, ad-libbing. Then Little repeats Burns’s name, a small verbal stumble that actually adds authenticity. This is how comics talk when they’re not polishing a bit: looping, qualifying, feeling their way toward the real point.

And the real point is hierarchy. “Not too many people are - were as good” catches time itself mid-sentence, as if Little momentarily forgets whether he’s speaking about living peers or a completed era. That slip matters. It frames Hope not just as an individual talent, but as a standard now mostly in the past. Calling him “king” isn’t only flattery; it’s a bid to preserve a lineage where joke economy, broad appeal, and relentless professionalism counted more than confessional honesty or edgy provocation. In today’s comedy ecosystem, that’s practically a manifesto.