History is full of people who reinvented themselves. Some change careers. Some move to another country. Some adopt a new philosophy, discover a hidden talent, or finally accept that the hairstyle they had at 17 was never going to survive middle age.

Then there are the people who become so thoroughly associated with a new identity that history practically forgets they ever had another one.

Consider two boys born ten years apart in the early twentieth century. One arrived in England in 1903. The other was born in Nebraska in 1913. Their childhoods were very different, their careers would take them down wildly different paths, and there was no obvious reason anyone would ever mention them in the same sentence.

They did, however, have something rather unexpected in common.

They were two boys named Leslie.

Neither would be remembered that way.

The First Leslie Arrives in England

Our first Leslie was born on May 29, 1903, in Eltham, England, then a village southeast of London. He was the fifth of seven sons born to an English stonemason and his Welsh wife, an aspiring concert singer.

The family did not remain in England for long. Before Leslie’s fifth birthday, they crossed the Atlantic and settled in Cleveland, Ohio, where life was not particularly easy. Money was scarce, and Leslie learned fairly early that if he wanted spending money, he would have to acquire it himself.

Like many boys of his era, he sold newspapers. He delivered meat for an uncle. He worked as a soda jerk and shoe salesman. He hustled pool. He entered amateur contests.

In other words, his résumé at an age when most children are primarily occupied with avoiding homework already suggested that conventional employment might have difficulty holding him.

There were also early indications that Leslie liked an audience.

His mother encouraged him to sing. He danced, performed impersonations, and discovered that making people laugh was considerably more enjoyable than delivering meat. In 1915, he even won a Charlie Chaplin impersonation contest at Cleveland’s Luna Park and reportedly used the prize money to buy his mother a stove.

This was thoughtful, practical, and considerably more useful than what most twelve-year-olds would purchase after unexpectedly coming into money.

The Second Leslie Arrives in Nebraska

Ten years after the first Leslie was born, another entered the world on July 14, 1913, in Omaha, Nebraska.

His arrival did not produce a happy family story.

The marriage of his parents was deeply troubled. Just over two weeks after his birth, his mother took her infant son and left Nebraska. She eventually settled with her parents in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and divorced the child’s father before the year was over.

The baby retained his birth name, but not for practical purposes for very long.

A few years later, his mother married a Grand Rapids businessman who became the father the boy actually knew. The child began using his stepfather’s name, although no formal adoption took place and his original name remained his legal one for years.

Thus, before either Leslie had reached adulthood, both were already moving away from the names they had been given at birth.

For one, the change would eventually become a matter of show business.

For the other, it was something much more personal.

One Leslie Tried Boxing. This Was Not His Calling.

The English-born Leslie left school at sixteen and sampled occupations with the enthusiasm of someone determined to make certain none of them accidentally turned into a permanent career.

For a brief time, he tried boxing.

This required yet another name. He climbed into the ring as “Packy East,” which certainly sounded tougher than Leslie. Unfortunately, changing his name did nothing to improve his ability to remain upright while other men punched him.

He later joked that he abandoned boxing because he was not merely being carried out of the ring; eventually he had to be carried into it.

Fortunately, he was considerably better at dancing.

He took lessons, became good enough to teach others, and began performing professionally. Somewhere along the way, Leslie officially became Lester. Lester then joined other performers on the vaudeville circuits, where audiences could spend an evening watching singers, dancers, comedians, acrobats, trained animals, novelty acts, and occasionally performers whose talents defied classification and probably should have remained that way.

Lester initially worked as part of a dancing team. Before long, however, he discovered something important.

People laughed when he talked.

For certain people, this can be a troubling discovery. For a vaudeville performer, it is career advice.

He began incorporating comedy into his act and eventually went solo. He played the Palace Theatre in New York—the pinnacle of American vaudeville—in 1931 and again in 1932.

By then, Leslie was already gone. Lester was beginning to disappear as well.

Another first name was taking its place.

The Other Leslie Became Very Good at Football

Meanwhile, the Nebraska-born Leslie was growing up in Grand Rapids under the name of his stepfather.

He was an excellent student, became an Eagle Scout, and developed into a formidable athlete. At South High School, he earned honors on the football field before enrolling at the University of Michigan.

There he played center for the Wolverines.

And he was not merely filling out the roster.

Michigan went undefeated and won national championships in 1932 and 1933. In 1934, his senior season, Leslie’s team struggled badly, but he was nevertheless voted its most valuable player. Professional football teams showed interest in him after graduation.

He chose another path.

He went to Yale, where he coached football while pursuing the education that eventually led him to law.

So at approximately the same stage of life, one former Leslie was discovering that audiences would pay to hear him tell jokes, while the other was discovering that he could snap a football between his legs accurately enough to interest professional teams.

If you had been asked at the time which one would eventually spend more time around the White House, the available evidence would not have been especially helpful.

Two Names Disappear

The second Leslie finally made his new identity official on December 3, 1935.

He was 22 years old.

The change did not represent an attempt to create a more marketable name. Quite the opposite. He simply adopted legally the identity he had already used for most of his life—the name of the man who had raised him.

The first Leslie’s transformation was different.

After becoming Lester, he eventually began using yet another first name professionally. By the early 1930s, that new name was appearing on theater marquees. In 1933, he received significant attention for his performance in the Broadway musical Roberta.

Radio followed. Then movies. Then television.

The boy who had once hustled pool in Cleveland was rapidly becoming one of the most recognizable entertainers in America.

The other Leslie, meanwhile, entered military service during World War II and then moved into politics.

Neither man was going back.

One Leslie Discovers That Laughter Is Serious Business

For the English-born Leslie, humor became more than entertainment. It became the organizing principle of an extraordinarily long career.

He mastered the rapid-fire topical monologue, learning to take whatever happened in the news that week and transform it into material. Presidents, politicians, celebrities, military officers, foreign leaders, Hollywood stars, and the entertainer himself were all potential targets.

Importantly, he also understood that humor worked best when the man telling the joke was willing to be one of its victims.

That quality would serve him particularly well during World War II.

In 1941, he performed his radio program before military personnel at March Field in California. The response convinced him that servicemen and women were a special kind of audience. He began taking his programs to military installations and eventually overseas.

For nearly fifty years, through World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf era, he traveled to entertain American troops.

The circumstances were sometimes dangerous and almost always exhausting, but the basic principle remained beautifully simple: people who were frightened, homesick, exhausted, or far from everything familiar could use a laugh.

He became very good at providing one.

The Other Leslie Discovers That Politics Could Use a Sense of Humor Too

The second Leslie returned from World War II and entered politics. In 1948, he won a seat in Congress.

Then he won again.

And again.

And again.

He remained there for nearly a quarter-century, developing a reputation for decency, reliability, and an ability to work with people who disagreed with him. These are admirable political qualities, although history suggests they have never been mandatory entrance requirements.

His career eventually carried him into leadership. Then a remarkable series of events suddenly propelled him much closer to the center of national power than he had ever expected to be.

It happened without his ever campaigning nationally for the job.

In fact, no one before or since has reached the same position in quite the same way.

That is a fairly substantial clue.

Both Leslies Discovered Golf

By adulthood, another curious similarity had emerged.

Both men became passionate about golf.

For our entertainer, golf became almost a second profession. He played constantly, participated in celebrity tournaments, incorporated a golf club into his stage persona, and eventually became so closely associated with the sport that an important professional tournament carried his name.

He once observed that golf was really his racket and entertainment merely paid the green fees. He even carried one of his golf clubs onstage during his overseas tours, where it functioned almost like the cane of an old vaudeville performer.

The other Leslie was also devoted to the game.

His golf swing was not always famous for the reasons he might have preferred.

He could drive the ball a considerable distance. Unfortunately, on certain highly publicized occasions, the ball apparently regarded the fairway as more of a general suggestion than a binding commitment.

Spectators learned to pay attention.

This is where the two Leslies’ stories finally began to overlap.

The Entertainer and the Politician Become Friends

Eventually, these two men not only knew each other; they became friends.

They played golf together repeatedly.

The comedian found the politician’s occasionally adventurous golf game irresistible. He developed an entire collection of jokes about it, suggesting that his friend’s shots posed hazards to spectators, wildlife, and possibly neighboring ZIP codes. He quipped that when his friend yelled, “Fore!” it was less of a warning and more of a prediction about how many people he expected to hit.

The politician’s response was instructive.

He laughed.

That may seem like a small thing, but there is something revealing about a powerful person who can take a joke—particularly when the joke is being told to millions of people.

Our second Leslie had already endured a national reputation for clumsiness that bore little resemblance to the accomplished athlete he actually was. Television comedians exaggerated every stumble and errant golf shot until a former University of Michigan football player who had been voted his team’s most valuable player had somehow become a national symbol for falling down.

He could have resented it.

Instead, he learned to play along.

He once joked that he knew his golf game was improving because he was hitting fewer spectators. He was also perfectly capable of returning the favor. He noted that a highway had been named after the other Leslie: “It goes straight about 200 yards and then curves off into the woods.”

The first Leslie had made a career from understanding the value of a good sense of humor. The second discovered that a good sense of humor was sometimes the best defense against becoming someone else’s punchline.

It was one more thing they had in common.

One Leslie Became Part of American Entertainment

By the middle of the twentieth century, the first Leslie was practically unavoidable.

He starred on radio. He made more than fifty feature films. He became a television fixture. He hosted the Academy Awards repeatedly. He entertained presidents and troops. He traveled so extensively that generations of American servicemen came to associate his arrival with Christmas almost as reliably as Santa Claus.

Presidents enjoyed his company partly because of the way he was willing to make fun of them.

He developed relationships with presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt through Bill Clinton. His approach was affectionate rather than vicious: puncture the presidential ego enough to get a laugh, but not enough to require diplomatic intervention.

He understood something that many public figures never quite master: dignity and humor are not enemies.

The Other Leslie Ended Up in the White House

The second Leslie’s route was even stranger.

After decades in Congress, he was suddenly selected for an office whose previous occupant had resigned in scandal. Less than a year later, another resignation elevated him again.

On August 9, 1974, the boy born Leslie in Omaha stood in the East Room of the White House and took an oath no one had expected him to take.

He had never been elected to the office.

He had never even been elected to the office immediately below it.

Yet there he stood, becoming the 38th President of the United States.

If that sentence has finally given away his identity, congratulations. We have kept you waiting approximately 1,800 words, which is surely sufficient punishment.

Meet One of the Boys Named Leslie

The second Leslie was Leslie Lynch King Jr.

You know him better as Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr.

Ford was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. on July 14, 1913, to Dorothy Gardner King and Leslie Lynch King Sr. His mother left the marriage shortly after his birth and eventually married Gerald R. Ford Sr., the Grand Rapids businessman who raised the boy as his own.

Young Leslie began using his stepfather’s name and finally made it legal in 1935.

We have previously explored the peculiar significance of that change in the story of how Leslie Lynch King effectively gave up the name “King” to become Gerald Ford.

The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library records the transformation from Leslie Lynch King Jr. to Gerald R. Ford Jr., along with the improbable route that eventually brought him to the presidency.

His arrival in that office offered another example of how abruptly history can change names. When Richard Nixon left Washington on August 9, 1974, the aircraft carrying him took off as Air Force One but changed its call sign in midair after Ford took the oath of office—creating the one occasion when Air Force One took off but never landed.

It is difficult to find a better illustration of how quickly history can change names.

Meet the Other Boy Named Leslie

The other Leslie was Leslie Townes Hope.

You know him as Bob Hope.

His transformation was more gradual. Leslie became Lester Hope, the name he used during his early dancing and vaudeville career. Only after he had achieved substantial success onstage did he begin performing under the name that would become famous around the world.

As for why he chose “Bob,” there was no elaborate strategy behind it. He later explained that it simply “sounded chummier.”

The Library of Congress’s Bob Hope collection documents those early identities, including Lester Hope’s days as a dancer and his brief, ill-advised experiment with boxing as Packy East.

The name Bob Hope would eventually appear in movie credits, radio schedules, television listings, theaters, USO programs, golf tournaments, an airport, streets, schools, a Navy ship, and enough other places to make “Leslie Townes Hope” seem like the answer to a trivia question someone made unnecessarily difficult.

Which, admittedly, is essentially what we have just done.

The Two Leslies Finally Share a Fairway

The most satisfying part of the story is that Gerald Ford and Bob Hope eventually became genuine friends.

Hope wrote that, of all the presidents he knew, Ford was the one he could call a “pal.” They lived near one another in California’s desert communities after Ford left office and played golf together many times. Hope relentlessly mocked Ford’s tendency to send golf balls toward portions of the landscape that course designers had not intended to be involved in the game.

Ford took it with good humor.

That friendship produced a wonderfully improbable historical scene: two elderly men walking a golf course together, one a former president and the other perhaps America’s most famous comedian.

Both had become internationally recognizable.

Both had spent decades near presidents and the White House.

Both loved golf.

Both understood the usefulness of being able to laugh at yourself.

And they started life as two boys named Leslie.

Whatever Happened to Leslie?

Names are funny things. They seem permanent because we use them as shorthand for identity, but sometimes they are among the least permanent parts of a person’s story.

“Bob Hope” sounds inevitable now. It seems impossible that the man carrying a golf club onto stages from Hollywood to Vietnam could have been called anything else.

“Gerald Ford” sounds equally fixed in history. It belongs on presidential libraries, highways, aircraft carriers, biographies, and lists of presidents. Even his reputation as the reassuringly ordinary Midwesterner who arrived at the White House after Watergate seems somehow fitted to the name.

Yet neither name was there at the beginning.

One boy arrived in England as Leslie Townes Hope and spent several years becoming Lester before finally becoming Bob.

The other arrived in Nebraska as Leslie Lynch King Jr. and grew up under the name of the man who chose to be his father.

One became one of the most famous comedians of the twentieth century.

The other became President of the United States.

Eventually, they became friends and went golfing together.

History remembers Bob and Jerry.

But once upon a time, they were just two boys named Leslie.

---