United Service Organizations
Encyclopedia
The United Service Organizations Inc. (USO) is a private, nonprofit organization that provides morale and recreational services to members of the U.S. military
, with programs in 160 centers worldwide. Since 1941, it has worked in partnership with the Department of Defense
(DOD), and has provided support and entertainment to U.S. armed forces, relying heavily on private contributions and on funds, goods, and services from DOD. Although congressionally
chartered, it is not a government agency.
During World War II
, the USO became the G.I.'s "home away from home" and began a tradition of entertaining the troops that continues today. Involvement in the USO was one of the many ways in which the nation had come together to support the war effort, with nearly 1.5 million Americans having volunteered their services in some way. After it was disbanded in 1947, it was revived in 1950 for the Korean War
, after which it also provided peacetime services. During the Vietnam War
, USOs were sometimes located in combat zones.
The organization became particularly famous for its live performances called Camp Shows, through which the entertainment industry helped boost the morale of its servicemen and women. Hollywood in general was eager to show its patriotism, and many famous celebrities joined the ranks of USO entertainers. They entertained in military bases both at home and overseas, often placing their own lives in danger by traveling or performing under hazardous conditions.
Today the USO has over 160 locations around the world in 14 countries (including the U.S.) and 27 states. In 2009, USO centers served 7.7 million visitors. In 2008, Sloan Gibson became the 22nd President and CEO. Brigadier General (Retired) John I. Pray
, Jr., joined the USO in 2009 as Senior Vice President of Entertainment and Programs. In 2010, Rear Admiral Frank Thorp IV (USN, ret.) joined the organization as the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications.
to provide morale and recreation services to U.S. uniformed military personnel. Roosevelt was elected as its honorary chairman. This request brought together six civilian organizations: the Salvation Army
, Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), National Catholic Community Service
, National Travelers Aid Association and the National Jewish Welfare Board
. They were brought together under one umbrella to support U.S. troops. Roosevelt said he wanted "these private organizations to handle the on-leave recreation of the men in the armed forces." According to historian Emily Yellin, "The government was to build the buildings and the USO was to raise private funds to carry out its main mission: boosting the morale of the military."
The first national campaign chairman was Thomas Dewey
, who raised $16 million in the first year. The second chairman was Prescott Bush
, a future senator and father to one future president, and the grandfather to another. The USO was incorporated in New York February 4, with the first facility erected in DeRidder, Louisiana,1941. More USO centers and clubs opened around the world as a “Home Away from Home” for GIs. The USO club was a place to go for dances and social events, for movies and music, for a quiet place to talk or write a letter home, or for a free cup of coffee and an egg.
The USO also brought Hollywood celebrities and volunteer entertainers to perform for the troops. According to movie historian Steven Cohan, "most of all ... in taking home on the road, it equated the nation with showbiz. USO camp shows were designed in their export to remind soldiers of home." They did this, he noted, by "nurturing in troops a sense of patriotic identification with America through popular entertainment." An article in Look magazine at the time, stated, "For the little time the show lasts, the men are taken straight to the familiar Main Street that is the goal of every fighting American far away from home." Maxene Andrews wrote, "The entertainment brought home to the boys. Their home." Actor George Raft
stated at the beginning of the war, "Now it's going to be up to us to send to the men here and abroad real, living entertainment, the songs, the dances, and the laughs they had back home."
USO promotional literature stated its goals:
After being formed in 1941 in response to World War II, "centers were established quickly... in churches, barns, railroad cars, museums, castles, beach clubs, and log cabins." Most centers offered recreational activities, such as holding dances and showing movies. And there were the well-known free coffee and doughnuts. Some USO bases provided a haven for spending a quiet moment alone or writing a letter home, while others offered spiritual guidance and made childcare available for military wives.
But the organization became mostly known for its live performances called Camp Shows, through which the entertainment industry helped boost the morale of its servicemen and women. At its high point in 1944, the USO had more than 3,000 clubs, and curtains were rising on USO shows 700 times a day. From 1941 to 1947, the USO presented more than 400,000 performances, featuring entertainers such as Bing Crosby
, Judy Garland
, Bette Davis
, Humphrey Bogart
, Lauren Bacall
, Frank Sinatra
, Marlene Dietrich
, Hattie McDaniel
, Eubie Blake
, Ann Sheridan
, Laurel and Hardy
, The Marx Brothers, Jack Benny
, Larry Adler
, Zero Mostel
, James Cagney
, James Stewart
, Gary Cooper
, Doraine and Ellis
, Lena Horne
, Danny Kaye
, The Rockettes
, Al Jolson
, Fred Astaire
, Curly Joe DeRita
, The Andrews Sisters
, Joe E. Brown
, Joe E. Lewis
, Ray Bolger
, Lucille Ball
, Glenn Miller
, Martha Raye
, Mickey Rooney
, Betty Hutton
, Dinah Shore
, and most famously, Bob Hope
.
The USO's fundraising efforts were not without controversy. An MGM film, Mr. Gardenia Jones, created to assist the USO in its fundraising campaign, was nearly withdrawn from theaters due to objections by the War Department. The objections were centered around scenes showing soldiers jumping with joy at the opportunity to shower in canteens and rest in overstuffed and comfortable USO chairs. The Army, noted the New York Times, "feels this is not good for morale as it implies that there are no showers or other comforts for soldiers in military camps." The film starred Ronald Reagan
, who was then a captain in the Army.
Fundraising was also aided by private entertainment groups. Songwriter Irving Berlin
took the entire 100-person, all-soldier cast of his Broadway production “This Is the Army
,” on tour in Europe in 1942, raising nearly $10 million for the Army Emergency Relief
Fund. The following year the show was made into a film by the same title, again starring Ronald Reagan. One of the highlights of the film was its introduction of Berlin's song, "God Bless America
," considered one of the nation's most patriotic songs.
War correspondent Quentin Reynolds, in an article for Billboard magazine in 1943, wrote, "Entertainment, all phases of it -- radio, pictures and live -- should be treated as essential. You don't know what entertainment means to the guys who do the fighting until you've been up there with the men yourself. . . . You can quote me as saying that we should use entertainment as an essential industry so long as it's for the boys in service. Anybody who has been there would insist on it. . . . Hell, you should have seen how happy the G.I.'s were when they heard the ballplayers were coming over. And John Steinbeck
, just back from a chore as war correspondent, . . . also applauded show business as part of the war effort and its importance as a morale builder."
Looking back after the war
According to historian Paul Holsinger, between 1941 and 1945, the USO did 293,738 performances in 208,178 separate visits. Estimates were that more than 161 million servicemen and women, in the U.S. and abroad, were entertained. The USO also did shows in military hospitals, eventually entertaining more than 3 million wounded soldiers and sailors in 192 different hospitals. There were 702 different USO troupes that toured the world, some spending up to six months per tour. In 1943, a United States
Liberty ship
named the SS U.S.O.
was launched. She was scrapped in 1967.
Twenty-eight performers died in the course of their tours, from plane crashes, illness, or diseases contracted while on tour. In one such instance in 1943, a plane carrying a U.S.O. troupe crashed outside Lisbon
, killing singer and actress Tamara Drasin
, and severely injuring Broadway singer Jane Froman
. Froman returned to Europe on crutches in 1945 to again entertain the troops. She later married the co-pilot who saved her life in that crash, and her true story was made into the 1952 film With a Song in My Heart
, with Froman providing the actual singing voice. Others, such as Al Jolson
, the first entertainer to go overseas in World War II, contracted malaria, resulting in the loss of his lung, cutting short his tour.
In 1942, about seven months after the war began, CBS
went on the air with a weekly radio variety show called Stagedoor Canteen. The show remained on the air for the duration of the war and became one of the nation's most popular. In 1943, United Artists
released a reality-style movie about the USO called Stage Door Canteen
, and the following year Warner Brothers produced a similar movie, called Hollywood Canteen
. In 1991, 20th Century Fox
produced the film, For the Boys
, which told the story of two USO performers, and starred Bette Midler
and James Caan. It covered a 50-year timespan, from the USO's inception in 1941 through Operation Desert Storm, in 1991. Another movie was planned in 1950 but never made. Just 10 days after Al Jolson
returned from entertaining troops in Korea, he agreed with RKO producers to star in a new movie, Stars and Stripes for Ever, about a U.S.O. troupe in the South Pacific during World War II. Unfortunately, he died a week later as a result of physical exhaustion from his tour.
By the war's end, Steven Cohan concludes that "the USO amounted to the biggest enterprise American show business has ever tackled. The audience was millions of American fighting men, the theatre's location: the world, the producer: USO camp shows"
African American women scrambled to rally the community around the soldiers and create programs for them. By 1946, hostesses had served more than two thousand soldiers a day while also providing facilities for the wounded and convalescent who were on leave. They went to black businesses and fraternal organizations in order to find sponsorship for their USO group, and later expanded to fulfill the needs of soldiers during the Korean war. Moreover, they worked to merge black and white USOs into one desegregated unit. As black historian Megan Shockley noted, "Their work for the desegregation of USOs had begun during World War II, and it finally paid off."
Women were also key entertainers who performed at shows. Stars such as Marlene Dietrich
, Judy Garland
, Betty Grable
and Rita Hayworth
had traveled over a million miles. Yellin notes that on one tour, Hayworth visited six camps, gave thousands of autographs, and "came back from Texas with a full-fledged nervous breakdown from over-enthusiasm!" Opera singer Lily Pons
, after she had performed a "serious" opera song to troops in Burma, "an applause erupted that stunned even the most seasoned performers." She later wrote in a letter, "Every woman back home wears a halo now, and those who represent her had better keep theirs on, too."
Author Joeie Dee pointed out that "for women entertainers, traveling with the USO made it possible to be patriots and adventurers as well as professionals." She adds, however, that the G.I.s in the USO audiences "tended to see these women in a different light - as reminders of and even substitutes for their girls back home, as a reward for fighting the war, as embodiments of what they were fighting for." Edward Skvarna remembers 1943, when he met Donna Reed
at a U.S.O. canteen and asked her to dance. "I had never danced with a celebrity before, so I felt delighted, privileged even, to meet her. . . . But I really felt she was like a girl from back home." Jay Fultz, author of her biography, states that soldiers "often wrote to her as if to a sister or the girl next door, confiding moments of homesickness, loneliness, privation and anxiety."
Singer and dancer Ann Miller
described performing for badly wounded soldiers. She did forty-eight shows for "broken soldiers," who were mostly lying on stretchers in the lobbies of hotels, watching as she entertained them. Yellin writes, "During her last show she collapsed and had to be taken home on an Army airplane." Afterwards, Miller described the experience:
and Secretary of the Navy Francis Matthews
requested that the USO be reactivated "to provide support for the men and women of the armed forces with help of the American people" According to war historian Paul Edwards, Between 1952 and 1953, not a day went by without the USO providing services somewhere in Korea. At home or overseas, in 1952 it was serving 3.5 million in the armed forces using much the same methods of operation as it did in World War II.
Many stars, both well-known and new, came to perform, including Bob Hope
, Errol Flynn
, Debbie Reynolds
, Donald O'Connor
, Piper Laurie
, Jane Russell
, Paul Douglas
, Terry Moore
, Marilyn Monroe
, Danny Kaye
, Rory Calhoun
, Mickey Rooney
, Jayne Mansfield
, Al Jolson and many others. Jolson notably was the first to volunteer and traveled to Korea at his own expense (he was also the first to entertain troops during World War II.). Hispanic-American soldiers were entertained by artists such as Pérez Prado's Show featuring Evita Muñoz as his invited mambo
dancer.
Veterans have recalled many of the USOs events, sometimes in vivid detail:
Author Linda Granfield in describing the show, writes, "For two hours, the men could forget they were soldiers at war. After the show, they returned to the fighting in the hills. Some in that audience never made it back." By the end of the war, over 113,000 American USO volunteers were working at 294 centers at home and abroad." And 126 units had given 5,422 performances to servicemen in Korea and the wounded in Japan
before the first combat troops arrived, with the first USO club opened in Saigon in April, 1963. The 23 centers in Vietnam and Thailand
served as many as a million service members a month, and the USO presented more than 5,000 performances during the Vietnam War
featuring stars such as John Wayne
, Ann-Margret
, Sammy Davis Jr., Phyllis Diller
, Martha Raye
, Joey Heatherton
, Wayne Newton
, Jayne Mansfield
, Redd Foxx
, Rosey Grier
, Anita Bryant
, Nancy Sinatra
, Jimmy Boyd
, Lola Falana
, and Bob Hope
. Even Philip Ahn, the first actor of Korean descent to become a Hollywood star, became the first Asian American USO performer to entertain troops in Vietnam.
In addition, the USO operated centers at major U.S. airports to provide a lounge and place to sleep for American servicemen between their flights. Vietnam historian James Westheider noted that the USO "tried to bring a little America to Vietnam." Volunteer American civilians, who did 18-month tours, staffed the clubs. According to Westheider, "The young women wore miniskirts - no slacks were allowed." Each club had a snack bar, gift shops, a barbershop, photo developing, overseas phone lines, and hot showers.
When providing entertainment, the USO did its best to attract known stars from back home to help relieve the stresses of war. Even Senator John Kerry
recalled how important this kind of diversion would become. He remembered a "Bob Hope Follies" USO show, which included actress Ann Margret, Miss America, football star Rosey Grier
, and others. According to Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley, "When the Swift finally made it back to the My Tho River, the crew confronted the heartbreaking sight of a huge Navy landing craft ferrying the troops back. The USO show was over." Kerry later wrote, "The visions of Ann Margret and Miss America and all the other titillating personalities who would have made us feel so at home hung around us for a while until we saw three Chinook helicopters take off from the field and presumed that our dreams had gone with them."
But for GIs who saw the show, it was worth it: "We turned to watch Ann perform, and for about two minutes of American beauty, the war was forgotten. Everyone fully understood just what was really worth fighting for. . . . The show was fantastic, but the escape the Bob Hope tour provided us in expectation for days before, and after, helped us keep in touch with what we were there for -- God, Country, apple pie ... and Ann-Margret!"
The visits by the stars meant a lot to the men and women in Vietnam. "It was not just the entertainment; it meant that they were not forgotten that far away from home," writes Westheider. He adds that the tours made a "deep impression" on the stars as well. Singer and actress Connie Stevens
remembered her 1969 tour with Bob Hope, when she decided to go despite the fact she had two children both under the age of two. Today, she claims that "veterans were still stopping her and thanking her for visiting Vietnam over 30 years later."
, Iraq
, Kuwait
and Qatar
. USO centers number more than 130 around the world. Recently, the USO opened the Rocky Mountain USO Center at Denver International Airport
, a third center in Kuwait and its first center in Iraq at Balad Air Base. The USO provides a variety of programs and services, including orientation programs, family events, travel assistance, free Internet and e-mail access, and recreation services. A new program called "USO in a Box," delivers program materials ranging from DVD players and videos to musical instruments to remote forward operating bases in Afghanistan and Iraq.
U.S. military personnel and their families visit USO centers more than five million times each year.
From June 8 to 11, 2009, T.V. personality Stephen Colbert
traveled to Iraq to film his show The Colbert Report for four days in a USO sponsored event.
Other entertainers who have traveled to the Middle East to perform include Al Franken
(who made six USO tours in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan before being elected a United States Senator from Minnesota), Craig Ferguson
, Gary Sinise
, Zac Brown, Carrie Underwood
, Drowning Pool
, Toby Keith
, Montgomery Gentry
, Kellie Pickler, Carlos Mencia
, O.A.R., Dave Attell, Trace Adkins, Louis C.K.
, Dane Cook
, Lewis Black
, Third Day, Colin Quinn
, and Neil McCoy.
The USO is also providing services for the annual "Tribute to the Troops" special of World Wrestling Entertainment
. They have aired WWE RAW from Afghanistan and Iraq every Christmas in the United States in a pre-taped show from the combat zone.
by declaring him the "first and only honorary veteran of the U.S. armed forces." According to Hope biographer William Faith, his reputation has become ingrained in the "American consciousness" because he had flown millions of miles to entertain G.I.s during both wartime and peace. His contribution to the USO began in 1941 and ended with Operation Desert Shield in 1991. He was always treated as "an asset to the U.S. Government with his willingness to entertain whenever they needed him." After WWII was declared over, the USO had sent out an "impassioned bulletin" asking entertainers not to abandon the GIs now that the war was over. Hope was among the first to say "yes." The Military Order of the Purple Heart notes that "his contributions to the USO are well known: they are legend."
As a result of his non-stop entertainment to both the civilian population and the military, he received numerous other honors over the years: a C-17 Air Force plane
was named The Spirit of Bob Hope; a naval vessel was named the USNS Bob Hope; and streets, schools, hospitals, and a golf tournament were also named in his honor. A Senate resolution declared him "a part of American folklore." The Guinness Book of Records called him the most honored entertainer ever. And during his 1993 televised birthday celebration, when he turned 90, General Colin Powell saluted Hope "for his tireless USO trouping", which was followed by onstage tributes from all branches of the armed forces. General William Westmoreland spoke about his loyalty to the GI throughout the gritty Vietnam years. And bandleader Les Brown
, who was with him during many of his tours, mentioned that his band "had seen more of Hope's ass in the last forty years than any of Hope's immediate family."
War correspondent Quentin Reynolds wrote in 1943, "He and his troupe would do 300 miles in a jeep, and give four shows... One of the generals said Hope was a first rate military target since he was worth a division; that that's about 15,000 men. Presumably the Nazis appreciated Hope's value, since they thrice bombed towns while the comic was there."
During the Vietnam war years he gave a number of high-rating television specials and sensed that the media had given him a broad endorsement for continuing on his GI mercy missions. Soon after his Christmas show in Saigon in 1967, he learned that the Vietcong had planned a terrorist attack at his hotel against him and his entire troupe, missing him by ten minutes. He was later "mystified," writes Faith, "and ... increasingly intolerant of the pockets of dissent. Draft-card burning
s on college campuses angered him..." "Can you imagine," Hope wrote in a magazine article, "... that people in America are burning their draft cards to show their opposition and that some of them are actually rooting for your defeat?" In the spring of 1973, Hope began writing his fifth book, The Last Christmas Show, which was dedicated to "the men and women of the armed forces and to those who also served by worrying and waiting." He signed over his royalties to the USO.
His final Christmas show was during Operation Desert Shield in 1990. The show was not easy, notes Faith. "There were so many restrictions. Hope's jokes were monitored by the State Department to avoid offending the Saudis... and the media was restricted from covering the shows... Because in Saudi Arabia national custom prescribes that women must be veiled in public, Ann Jillian
, Marie Osmond
, and the Pointer Sisters
were left off Hope's Christmas Eve show."
In 2009, Stephen Colbert
performing his last episode of week-long taping in Iraq for his The Colbert Report show, carried a golf club on stage and dedicated it to Bob Hope
's service for the USO.
The following information is based on USO's audited financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2006:
United States armed forces
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. They consist of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard.The United States has a strong tradition of civilian control of the military...
, with programs in 160 centers worldwide. Since 1941, it has worked in partnership with the Department of Defense
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...
(DOD), and has provided support and entertainment to U.S. armed forces, relying heavily on private contributions and on funds, goods, and services from DOD. Although congressionally
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
chartered, it is not a government agency.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the USO became the G.I.'s "home away from home" and began a tradition of entertaining the troops that continues today. Involvement in the USO was one of the many ways in which the nation had come together to support the war effort, with nearly 1.5 million Americans having volunteered their services in some way. After it was disbanded in 1947, it was revived in 1950 for the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
, after which it also provided peacetime services. During the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, USOs were sometimes located in combat zones.
The organization became particularly famous for its live performances called Camp Shows, through which the entertainment industry helped boost the morale of its servicemen and women. Hollywood in general was eager to show its patriotism, and many famous celebrities joined the ranks of USO entertainers. They entertained in military bases both at home and overseas, often placing their own lives in danger by traveling or performing under hazardous conditions.
Today the USO has over 160 locations around the world in 14 countries (including the U.S.) and 27 states. In 2009, USO centers served 7.7 million visitors. In 2008, Sloan Gibson became the 22nd President and CEO. Brigadier General (Retired) John I. Pray
John I. Pray
Brigadier General John I. Pray, Jr. is the Senior Vice President of Entertainment/Programs for the United Service Organizations where he is responsible for leading the USO’s world-famous entertainment activities as well as a variety of other efforts that lift the spirits of hundreds of thousands...
, Jr., joined the USO in 2009 as Senior Vice President of Entertainment and Programs. In 2010, Rear Admiral Frank Thorp IV (USN, ret.) joined the organization as the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications.
Mission and goals
The USO was founded in 1941 in response to a request from President Franklin D. RooseveltFranklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
to provide morale and recreation services to U.S. uniformed military personnel. Roosevelt was elected as its honorary chairman. This request brought together six civilian organizations: the Salvation Army
Salvation Army
The Salvation Army is a Protestant Christian church known for its thrift stores and charity work. It is an international movement that currently works in over a hundred countries....
, Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), National Catholic Community Service
National Catholic Community Service
The National Catholic Community Service was formed in the United States in 1940 and ceased operations in 1980. Its purpose was to serve the spiritual, social, educational, and recreational needs of Catholic military personnel and civilian defense workers and their families...
, National Travelers Aid Association and the National Jewish Welfare Board
National Jewish Welfare Board
The National Jewish Welfare Board was formed on April 9, 1917, three days after the United States declared war on Germany. The organization was charged with recruiting and training rabbis for military service, as well as providing support materials to these newly commissioned chaplains...
. They were brought together under one umbrella to support U.S. troops. Roosevelt said he wanted "these private organizations to handle the on-leave recreation of the men in the armed forces." According to historian Emily Yellin, "The government was to build the buildings and the USO was to raise private funds to carry out its main mission: boosting the morale of the military."
The first national campaign chairman was Thomas Dewey
Thomas Dewey
Thomas Edmund Dewey was the 47th Governor of New York . In 1944 and 1948, he was the Republican candidate for President, but lost both times. He led the liberal faction of the Republican Party, in which he fought conservative Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft...
, who raised $16 million in the first year. The second chairman was Prescott Bush
Prescott Bush
Prescott Sheldon Bush was a Wall Street executive banker and a United States Senator, representing Connecticut from 1952 until January 1963. He was the father of George H. W. Bush and the grandfather of George W...
, a future senator and father to one future president, and the grandfather to another. The USO was incorporated in New York February 4, with the first facility erected in DeRidder, Louisiana,1941. More USO centers and clubs opened around the world as a “Home Away from Home” for GIs. The USO club was a place to go for dances and social events, for movies and music, for a quiet place to talk or write a letter home, or for a free cup of coffee and an egg.
The USO also brought Hollywood celebrities and volunteer entertainers to perform for the troops. According to movie historian Steven Cohan, "most of all ... in taking home on the road, it equated the nation with showbiz. USO camp shows were designed in their export to remind soldiers of home." They did this, he noted, by "nurturing in troops a sense of patriotic identification with America through popular entertainment." An article in Look magazine at the time, stated, "For the little time the show lasts, the men are taken straight to the familiar Main Street that is the goal of every fighting American far away from home." Maxene Andrews wrote, "The entertainment brought home to the boys. Their home." Actor George Raft
George Raft
George Raft was an American film actor and dancer identified with portrayals of gangsters in crime melodramas of the 1930s and 1940s...
stated at the beginning of the war, "Now it's going to be up to us to send to the men here and abroad real, living entertainment, the songs, the dances, and the laughs they had back home."
USO promotional literature stated its goals:
- "The story of USO camp shows belongs to the American people, for it was their contribution that made it possible. It is an important part in the life of your sons, your brothers, your husbands, and your sweethearts."
World War II
But the organization became mostly known for its live performances called Camp Shows, through which the entertainment industry helped boost the morale of its servicemen and women. At its high point in 1944, the USO had more than 3,000 clubs, and curtains were rising on USO shows 700 times a day. From 1941 to 1947, the USO presented more than 400,000 performances, featuring entertainers such as Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....
, Judy Garland
Judy Garland
Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years and for her renowned contralto voice, she attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage...
, Bette Davis
Bette Davis
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...
, Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
, Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall is an American film and stage actress and model, known for her distinctive husky voice and sultry looks.She first emerged as leading lady in the Humphrey Bogart film To Have And Have Not and continued on in the film noir genre, with appearances in The Big Sleep and Dark Passage ,...
, Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
, Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...
, Hattie McDaniel
Hattie McDaniel
Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American actress to win an Academy Award. She won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind ....
, Eubie Blake
Eubie Blake
James Hubert Blake was an American composer, lyricist, and pianist of ragtime, jazz, and popular music. In 1921, Blake and long-time collaborator Noble Sissle wrote the Broadway musical Shuffle Along, one of the first Broadway musicals to be written and directed by African Americans...
, Ann Sheridan
Ann Sheridan
-Life and career:Born Clara Lou Sheridan in Denton, Texas on February 21, 1915, she was a student at the University of North Texas when her sister sent a photograph of her to Paramount Pictures. She subsequently entered and won a beauty contest, with part of her prize being a bit part in a...
, Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy were one of the most popular and critically acclaimed comedy double acts of the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema...
, The Marx Brothers, Jack Benny
Jack Benny
Jack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...
, Larry Adler
Larry Adler
Lawrence "Larry" Cecil Adler was an American musician, widely acknowledged as one of the world's most skilled harmonica players. Composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold, Darius Milhaud and Arthur Benjamin composed works for him...
, Zero Mostel
Zero Mostel
Samuel Joel “Zero” Mostel was an American actor of stage and screen, best known for his portrayal of comic characters such as Tevye on stage in Fiddler on the Roof, Pseudolus on stage and on screen in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Max Bialystock in the original film version...
, James Cagney
James Cagney
James Francis Cagney, Jr. was an American actor, first on stage, then in film, where he had his greatest impact. Although he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances, he is best remembered for playing "tough guys." In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth...
, James Stewart
James Stewart (actor)
James Maitland Stewart was an American film and stage actor, known for his distinctive voice and his everyman persona. Over the course of his career, he starred in many films widely considered classics and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one in competition and receiving one Lifetime...
, Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper
Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...
, Doraine and Ellis
Doraine and Ellis
Doraine and Ellis were an American husband and wife vaudeville and variety singing team of the twentieth century, who often billed themselves as "The Singing Sweethearts" or "America's Foremost Singing Team".Touring with the USO for hundreds of performances during World War II at the behest of Bob...
, Lena Horne
Lena Horne
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the...
, Danny Kaye
Danny Kaye
Danny Kaye was a celebrated American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian...
, The Rockettes
The Rockettes
The Rockettes are a precision dance company performing out of the Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan, New York City. During the Christmas season, the Rockettes have performed five shows a day, seven days a week, for 77 years...
, Al Jolson
Al Jolson
Al Jolson was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer"....
, Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute...
, Curly Joe DeRita
Curly Joe DeRita
Joe DeRita , born Joseph Wardell, was an American comedian who is best known as Curly-Joe DeRita, the "sixth" member of the Three Stooges.-Early life:...
, The Andrews Sisters
The Andrews Sisters
The Andrews Sisters were a highly successful close harmony singing group of the swing and boogie-woogie eras. The group consisted of three sisters: contralto LaVerne Sophia Andrews , soprano Maxene Angelyn Andrews , and mezzo-soprano Patricia Marie "Patty" Andrews...
, Joe E. Brown
Joe E. Brown (comedian)
Joseph Evans Brown was an American actor and comedian, remembered for his amiable screen persona, comic timing, and enormous smile. In 1902 at the age of nine, he joined a troupe of circus tumblers known as the Five Marvelous Ashtons which toured the country on both the circus and vaudeville...
, Joe E. Lewis
Joe E. Lewis
Joe E. Lewis , born Joseph Klewan in New York City, was an American comedian and singer.-Biography:...
, Ray Bolger
Ray Bolger
Raymond Wallace "Ray" Bolger was an American entertainer of stage and screen, best known for his portrayal of the Scarecrow and Kansas farmworker Hank in The Wizard of Oz.-Early life:...
, Lucille Ball
Lucille Ball
Lucille Désirée Ball was an American comedian, film, television, stage and radio actress, model, film and television executive, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life With Lucy...
, Glenn Miller
Glenn Miller
Alton Glenn Miller was an American jazz musician , arranger, composer, and bandleader in the swing era. He was one of the best-selling recording artists from 1939 to 1943, leading one of the best known "Big Bands"...
, Martha Raye
Martha Raye
Martha Raye was an American comic actress and standards singer who performed in movies, and later on television....
, Mickey Rooney
Mickey Rooney
Mickey Rooney is an American film actor and entertainer whose film, television, and stage appearances span nearly his entire lifetime. He has won multiple awards, including an Honorary Academy Award, a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award...
, Betty Hutton
Betty Hutton
Betty Hutton was an American stage, film, and television actress, comedienne and singer.-Early life:Hutton was born Elizabeth June Thornburg, daughter of a railroad foreman, Percy E. Thornburg and his wife, the former Mabel Lum . While she was very young, her father abandoned the family for...
, Dinah Shore
Dinah Shore
Dinah Shore was an American singer, actress, and television personality...
, and most famously, Bob Hope
Bob Hope
Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS was a British-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel...
.
The USO's fundraising efforts were not without controversy. An MGM film, Mr. Gardenia Jones, created to assist the USO in its fundraising campaign, was nearly withdrawn from theaters due to objections by the War Department. The objections were centered around scenes showing soldiers jumping with joy at the opportunity to shower in canteens and rest in overstuffed and comfortable USO chairs. The Army, noted the New York Times, "feels this is not good for morale as it implies that there are no showers or other comforts for soldiers in military camps." The film starred Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
, who was then a captain in the Army.
Fundraising was also aided by private entertainment groups. Songwriter Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin was an American composer and lyricist of Jewish heritage, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history.His first hit song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band", became world famous...
took the entire 100-person, all-soldier cast of his Broadway production “This Is the Army
This Is the Army
This Is the Army is a 1943 American wartime motion picture produced by Hal B. Wallis and Jack L. Warner, and directed by Michael Curtiz, and a wartime musical designed to boost morale in the U.S. during World War II, directed by Sgt. Ezra Stone...
,” on tour in Europe in 1942, raising nearly $10 million for the Army Emergency Relief
Army Emergency Relief
Army Emergency Relief , often referred to by the longer title Army Emergency Relief Fund, is a non-profit, charitable organization independent of, but closely associated with the United States Army, founded in 1942...
Fund. The following year the show was made into a film by the same title, again starring Ronald Reagan. One of the highlights of the film was its introduction of Berlin's song, "God Bless America
God Bless America
"God Bless America" is an American patriotic song written by Irving Berlin in 1918 and revised by him in 1938. The later version has notably been recorded by Kate Smith, becoming her signature song ....
," considered one of the nation's most patriotic songs.
War correspondent Quentin Reynolds, in an article for Billboard magazine in 1943, wrote, "Entertainment, all phases of it -- radio, pictures and live -- should be treated as essential. You don't know what entertainment means to the guys who do the fighting until you've been up there with the men yourself. . . . You can quote me as saying that we should use entertainment as an essential industry so long as it's for the boys in service. Anybody who has been there would insist on it. . . . Hell, you should have seen how happy the G.I.'s were when they heard the ballplayers were coming over. And John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...
, just back from a chore as war correspondent, . . . also applauded show business as part of the war effort and its importance as a morale builder."
Looking back after the war
According to historian Paul Holsinger, between 1941 and 1945, the USO did 293,738 performances in 208,178 separate visits. Estimates were that more than 161 million servicemen and women, in the U.S. and abroad, were entertained. The USO also did shows in military hospitals, eventually entertaining more than 3 million wounded soldiers and sailors in 192 different hospitals. There were 702 different USO troupes that toured the world, some spending up to six months per tour. In 1943, a United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Liberty ship
Liberty ship
Liberty ships were cargo ships built in the United States during World War II. Though British in conception, they were adapted by the U.S. as they were cheap and quick to build, and came to symbolize U.S. wartime industrial output. Based on vessels ordered by Britain to replace ships torpedoed by...
named the SS U.S.O.
SS U.S.O.
SS U.S.O was a Liberty ship of the United States during World War II, named after the United Service Organizations, an organization designed to provide morale to servicemen deployed all across the world....
was launched. She was scrapped in 1967.
Twenty-eight performers died in the course of their tours, from plane crashes, illness, or diseases contracted while on tour. In one such instance in 1943, a plane carrying a U.S.O. troupe crashed outside Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
, killing singer and actress Tamara Drasin
Tamara Drasin
Tamara Drasin , often credited as simply Tamara, was a singer and actress who introduced the song Smoke Gets in Your Eyes in the 1933 Broadway musical Roberta.-Early life:...
, and severely injuring Broadway singer Jane Froman
Jane Froman
Jane Froman was an American singer and actress. During her thirty-year career, Froman performed on stage, radio and television despite chronic injuries that she sustained from a 1943 plane crash...
. Froman returned to Europe on crutches in 1945 to again entertain the troops. She later married the co-pilot who saved her life in that crash, and her true story was made into the 1952 film With a Song in My Heart
With a Song in My Heart (film)
With a Song in My Heart is a 1952 biographical film which tells the story of actress and singer Jane Froman, who was crippled by an airplane crash on February 22, 1943, when the Boeing 314 Pan American Clipper flying boat she was on suffered a crash landing in the Tagus River near Lisbon, Portugal....
, with Froman providing the actual singing voice. Others, such as Al Jolson
Al Jolson
Al Jolson was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer"....
, the first entertainer to go overseas in World War II, contracted malaria, resulting in the loss of his lung, cutting short his tour.
In 1942, about seven months after the war began, CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
went on the air with a weekly radio variety show called Stagedoor Canteen. The show remained on the air for the duration of the war and became one of the nation's most popular. In 1943, United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
released a reality-style movie about the USO called Stage Door Canteen
Stage Door Canteen
Stage Door Canteen is a musical film produced by Sol Lesser Productions and distributed by United Artists. It was directed by Frank Borzage and features many cameo appearances by celebrities, and the majority of the film is essentially a filmed concert although there is also a storyline to the...
, and the following year Warner Brothers produced a similar movie, called Hollywood Canteen
Hollywood Canteen
The Hollywood Canteen operated at 1451 Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood, California between October 3, 1942 and November 22, 1945 as a club offering food, dancing and entertainment for servicemen, usually on their way overseas...
. In 1991, 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
produced the film, For the Boys
For the Boys
For the Boys is a 1991 film which tells the story of Dixie Leonard, a 1940s actress/singer who teams up with Eddie Sparks, a famous performer to entertain American troops. The film traces her life through 50 years. The original music score was composed by Dave Grusin.The film was adapted by...
, which told the story of two USO performers, and starred Bette Midler
Bette Midler
Bette Midler is an American singer, actress, and comedian, also known by her informal stage name, The Divine Miss M. She became famous as a cabaret and concert headliner, and went on to star in successful and acclaimed films such as The Rose, Ruthless People, Beaches, and For The Boys...
and James Caan. It covered a 50-year timespan, from the USO's inception in 1941 through Operation Desert Storm, in 1991. Another movie was planned in 1950 but never made. Just 10 days after Al Jolson
Al Jolson
Al Jolson was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer"....
returned from entertaining troops in Korea, he agreed with RKO producers to star in a new movie, Stars and Stripes for Ever, about a U.S.O. troupe in the South Pacific during World War II. Unfortunately, he died a week later as a result of physical exhaustion from his tour.
By the war's end, Steven Cohan concludes that "the USO amounted to the biggest enterprise American show business has ever tackled. The audience was millions of American fighting men, the theatre's location: the world, the producer: USO camp shows"
Women in the USO
According to Emily Yellin, many of the key foot soldiers in the USO's mission were women who were "charged with providing friendly diversion for U.S. troops who were mostly men in their teens and twenties." USO centers throughout the world recruited female volunteers to serve doughnuts, dance, and just talk with the troops. USO historian Julia Carson writes that this "nostalgic hour," designed to cheer and comfort soldiers, involved "listening to music - American style" and "looking at pretty girls, like no other pretty girls in the world - American girls."African American women scrambled to rally the community around the soldiers and create programs for them. By 1946, hostesses had served more than two thousand soldiers a day while also providing facilities for the wounded and convalescent who were on leave. They went to black businesses and fraternal organizations in order to find sponsorship for their USO group, and later expanded to fulfill the needs of soldiers during the Korean war. Moreover, they worked to merge black and white USOs into one desegregated unit. As black historian Megan Shockley noted, "Their work for the desegregation of USOs had begun during World War II, and it finally paid off."
Women were also key entertainers who performed at shows. Stars such as Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...
, Judy Garland
Judy Garland
Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years and for her renowned contralto voice, she attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage...
, Betty Grable
Betty Grable
Elizabeth Ruth "Betty" Grable was an American actress, dancer and singer.Her iconic bathing suit photo made her the number-one pin-up girl of the World War II era. It was later included in the LIFE magazine project "100 Photos that Changed the World"...
and Rita Hayworth
Rita Hayworth
Rita Hayworth was an American film actress and dancer who attained fame during the 1940s as one of the era's top stars...
had traveled over a million miles. Yellin notes that on one tour, Hayworth visited six camps, gave thousands of autographs, and "came back from Texas with a full-fledged nervous breakdown from over-enthusiasm!" Opera singer Lily Pons
Lily Pons
Lily Pons was a French-American operatic soprano and actress who had an active career from the late 1920s through the early 1970s. As an opera singer she specialized in the coloratura soprano repertoire and was particularly associated with the title roles in Léo Delibes' Lakmé and Gaetano...
, after she had performed a "serious" opera song to troops in Burma, "an applause erupted that stunned even the most seasoned performers." She later wrote in a letter, "Every woman back home wears a halo now, and those who represent her had better keep theirs on, too."
Author Joeie Dee pointed out that "for women entertainers, traveling with the USO made it possible to be patriots and adventurers as well as professionals." She adds, however, that the G.I.s in the USO audiences "tended to see these women in a different light - as reminders of and even substitutes for their girls back home, as a reward for fighting the war, as embodiments of what they were fighting for." Edward Skvarna remembers 1943, when he met Donna Reed
Donna Reed
Donna Reed was an American film and television actress.With appearances in over 40 films, Reed received the 1953 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as the tramp Lorene in the war drama From Here to Eternity. She is also noted for her role in the perennial Christmas...
at a U.S.O. canteen and asked her to dance. "I had never danced with a celebrity before, so I felt delighted, privileged even, to meet her. . . . But I really felt she was like a girl from back home." Jay Fultz, author of her biography, states that soldiers "often wrote to her as if to a sister or the girl next door, confiding moments of homesickness, loneliness, privation and anxiety."
Women entertainers
One female entertainer wrote about conditions while performing:- "We've played to audiences, many of them ankle deep in mud, huddled under the ponchos in the pouring rain (it breaks your heart the first two or three times to see men so hungry for entertainment.) We've played on uncovered stages, when we, as well as the audience, got rain-soaked. We've played with huge tropical bugs flying in our hair and faces; we've played to audiences of thousands of men, audiences spreading from our very feet to far up a hillside and many sitting in the trees. . . . We've played to audiences in small units of 500 or so, and much oftener to audiences of 8 to 10,000. Every night we play a different place."
Ann Miller
Johnnie Lucille Collier, better known as Ann Miller was an American singer, dancer and actress.-Early life:...
described performing for badly wounded soldiers. She did forty-eight shows for "broken soldiers," who were mostly lying on stretchers in the lobbies of hotels, watching as she entertained them. Yellin writes, "During her last show she collapsed and had to be taken home on an Army airplane." Afterwards, Miller described the experience:
- "We went from ward to ward to ward, singing and dancing and trying to boost the morale of these men. It was just hell. . . . I just fell apart and I think the shock of seeing those men with their arms and legs blown off - it was just frightening. But when you do it, you do it. You try to help them, try to sing and dance. You try to keep their spirits up. It's heartbreaking."
Korean War
In the 1940s the USO was disbanded due partly to lack of funds. However, in 1950, when the United States entered the Korean War, Secretary of Defense George MarshallGeorge Marshall
George Catlett Marshall was an American military leader, Chief of Staff of the Army, Secretary of State, and the third Secretary of Defense...
and Secretary of the Navy Francis Matthews
Francis Matthews
Francis Matthews may refer to:*Francis Matthews , British actor*Francis P. Matthews, 49th United States Secretary of the Navy and the 8th Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus...
requested that the USO be reactivated "to provide support for the men and women of the armed forces with help of the American people" According to war historian Paul Edwards, Between 1952 and 1953, not a day went by without the USO providing services somewhere in Korea. At home or overseas, in 1952 it was serving 3.5 million in the armed forces using much the same methods of operation as it did in World War II.
Many stars, both well-known and new, came to perform, including Bob Hope
Bob Hope
Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS was a British-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel...
, Errol Flynn
Errol Flynn
Errol Leslie Flynn was an Australian-born actor. He was known for his romantic swashbuckler roles in Hollywood films, being a legend and his flamboyant lifestyle.-Early life:...
, Debbie Reynolds
Debbie Reynolds
Debbie Reynolds is an American actress, singer, and dancer.She was initially signed at age 16 by Warner Bros., but her career got off to a slow start. When her contract was not renewed, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer gave her a small, but significant part in the film Three Little Words , then signed her to...
, Donald O'Connor
Donald O'Connor
Donald David Dixon Ronald O’Connor was an American dancer, singer, and actor who came to fame in a series of movies in which he co-starred alternately with Gloria Jean, Peggy Ryan, and Francis the Talking Mule...
, Piper Laurie
Piper Laurie
Piper Laurie is an American actress of stage and screen known for her roles in the television series Twin Peaks and the films The Hustler, Carrie, and Children of a Lesser God, all of which brought her Academy Award nominations...
, Jane Russell
Jane Russell
Jane Russell was an American film actress and was one of Hollywood's leading sex symbols in the 1940s and 1950s....
, Paul Douglas
Paul Douglas (actor)
Paul Douglas was an American actor, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as Paul Douglas Fleischer.-Career:...
, Terry Moore
Terry Moore (actress)
Helen Luella Koford , better known as Terry Moore, is an American actress. Terry Moore made her film debut at age 11 and grew up with all the icons of the Hollywood era that made Hollywood what it is today, also known as "The Golden Age of Hollywood". Moore is an Academy Award nominated actress...
, Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
, Danny Kaye
Danny Kaye
Danny Kaye was a celebrated American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian...
, Rory Calhoun
Rory Calhoun
Rory Calhoun was an American television and film actor, screenwriter and producer, best known for his roles in Westerns.-Early life:...
, Mickey Rooney
Mickey Rooney
Mickey Rooney is an American film actor and entertainer whose film, television, and stage appearances span nearly his entire lifetime. He has won multiple awards, including an Honorary Academy Award, a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award...
, Jayne Mansfield
Jayne Mansfield
Jayne Mansfield was an American actress working both in Hollywood and on the Broadway theatre...
, Al Jolson and many others. Jolson notably was the first to volunteer and traveled to Korea at his own expense (he was also the first to entertain troops during World War II.). Hispanic-American soldiers were entertained by artists such as Pérez Prado's Show featuring Evita Muñoz as his invited mambo
Mambo (dance)
Mambo .In the late 1940s, Perez Prado came up with the dance for the mambo music and became the first person to market his music as "mambo". After Havana, Prado moved his music to Mexico, where his music and the dance was adopted. The original mambo dance was characterized by freedom and...
dancer.
Veterans have recalled many of the USOs events, sometimes in vivid detail:
- "On that cold, overcast day, there were more than five thousand troops in the audience. They sat on the ground or up on the hillside. When everyone was settled, Danny KayeDanny KayeDanny Kaye was a celebrated American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian...
opened the show by going to the microphone, looking at his large audience, and shouting, "Who's holding back the enemy?" The GIs roared with laughter. We were thrilled to have Kaye and his entertainers in our area. We especially liked the young women in the show. Danny was okay, with his stories and jokes, but after all, we knew what American men looked like."
Author Linda Granfield in describing the show, writes, "For two hours, the men could forget they were soldiers at war. After the show, they returned to the fighting in the hills. Some in that audience never made it back." By the end of the war, over 113,000 American USO volunteers were working at 294 centers at home and abroad." And 126 units had given 5,422 performances to servicemen in Korea and the wounded in Japan
Vietnam War
The USO was in VietnamVietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
before the first combat troops arrived, with the first USO club opened in Saigon in April, 1963. The 23 centers in Vietnam and Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
served as many as a million service members a month, and the USO presented more than 5,000 performances during the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
featuring stars such as John Wayne
John Wayne
Marion Mitchell Morrison , better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height...
, Ann-Margret
Ann-Margret
Ann-Margret Olsson is a Swedish-American actress, singer and dancer whose professional name is Ann-Margret. She became famous for her starring roles in Bye Bye Birdie, Viva Las Vegas, The Cincinnati Kid, Carnal Knowledge, and Tommy...
, Sammy Davis Jr., Phyllis Diller
Phyllis Diller
Phyllis Diller is an American actress and comedian. She created a stage persona of a wild-haired, eccentrically dressed housewife who makes jokes about a husband named "Fang" while pretending to smoke from a long cigarette holder...
, Martha Raye
Martha Raye
Martha Raye was an American comic actress and standards singer who performed in movies, and later on television....
, Joey Heatherton
Joey Heatherton
Joey Heatherton is an American actress, dancer, and singer.-Early life:Christened Davenie Johanna Heatherton and nicknamed "Joey," she was raised in Rockville Centre, New York, a suburb of New York City. There she attended St. Agnes Cathedral School, a Catholic grade and high school...
, Wayne Newton
Wayne Newton
Wayne Newton is an American singer and entertainer based in Las Vegas, Nevada. He performed over 30,000 solo shows in Las Vegas over a period of over 40 years, earning him the nicknames The Midnight Idol, Mr. Las Vegas and Mr. Entertainment...
, Jayne Mansfield
Jayne Mansfield
Jayne Mansfield was an American actress working both in Hollywood and on the Broadway theatre...
, Redd Foxx
Redd Foxx
John Elroy Sanford , better known by his stage name Redd Foxx, was an American comedian and actor, best known for his starring role on the sitcom Sanford and Son.-Early life:...
, Rosey Grier
Rosey Grier
Roosevelt "Rosey" Grier is an American actor, singer, Christian minister, and former professional American football player. He was a notable college football player for Pennsylvania State University who earned a retrospective place in the National Collegiate Athletic Association 100th anniversary...
, Anita Bryant
Anita Bryant
Anita Jane Bryant is an American singer, former Miss Oklahoma beauty pageant winner, and gay rights opponent. She scored four Top 40 hits in the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including "Paper Roses", which reached #5...
, Nancy Sinatra
Nancy Sinatra
Nancy Sandra Sinatra is an American singer and actress. She is the daughter of singer/actor Frank Sinatra, and remains best known for her 1966 signature hit "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'"....
, Jimmy Boyd
Jimmy Boyd
Jimmy Boyd was an American singer, musician, and actor. He was best known for his recording of the novelty song "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus".-Early years:...
, Lola Falana
Lola Falana
Lola Falana is an American singer, dancer, and actress of Cuban and African American descent. Falana's father left Cuba to become a welder in the United States, where he met his wife...
, and Bob Hope
Bob Hope
Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS was a British-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel...
. Even Philip Ahn, the first actor of Korean descent to become a Hollywood star, became the first Asian American USO performer to entertain troops in Vietnam.
In addition, the USO operated centers at major U.S. airports to provide a lounge and place to sleep for American servicemen between their flights. Vietnam historian James Westheider noted that the USO "tried to bring a little America to Vietnam." Volunteer American civilians, who did 18-month tours, staffed the clubs. According to Westheider, "The young women wore miniskirts - no slacks were allowed." Each club had a snack bar, gift shops, a barbershop, photo developing, overseas phone lines, and hot showers.
When providing entertainment, the USO did its best to attract known stars from back home to help relieve the stresses of war. Even Senator John Kerry
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...
recalled how important this kind of diversion would become. He remembered a "Bob Hope Follies" USO show, which included actress Ann Margret, Miss America, football star Rosey Grier
Rosey Grier
Roosevelt "Rosey" Grier is an American actor, singer, Christian minister, and former professional American football player. He was a notable college football player for Pennsylvania State University who earned a retrospective place in the National Collegiate Athletic Association 100th anniversary...
, and others. According to Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley, "When the Swift finally made it back to the My Tho River, the crew confronted the heartbreaking sight of a huge Navy landing craft ferrying the troops back. The USO show was over." Kerry later wrote, "The visions of Ann Margret and Miss America and all the other titillating personalities who would have made us feel so at home hung around us for a while until we saw three Chinook helicopters take off from the field and presumed that our dreams had gone with them."
But for GIs who saw the show, it was worth it: "We turned to watch Ann perform, and for about two minutes of American beauty, the war was forgotten. Everyone fully understood just what was really worth fighting for. . . . The show was fantastic, but the escape the Bob Hope tour provided us in expectation for days before, and after, helped us keep in touch with what we were there for -- God, Country, apple pie ... and Ann-Margret!"
The visits by the stars meant a lot to the men and women in Vietnam. "It was not just the entertainment; it meant that they were not forgotten that far away from home," writes Westheider. He adds that the tours made a "deep impression" on the stars as well. Singer and actress Connie Stevens
Connie Stevens
Connie Stevens is an American actress and singer, best known for her roles in the television series Hawaiian Eye and other TV and film work.-Early life:...
remembered her 1969 tour with Bob Hope, when she decided to go despite the fact she had two children both under the age of two. Today, she claims that "veterans were still stopping her and thanking her for visiting Vietnam over 30 years later."
Afghanistan and Iraq
To support troops participating in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, USO centers opened in AfghanistanAfghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
, Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
, Kuwait
Kuwait
The State of Kuwait is a sovereign Arab state situated in the north-east of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south at Khafji, and Iraq to the north at Basra. It lies on the north-western shore of the Persian Gulf. The name Kuwait is derived from the...
and Qatar
Qatar
Qatar , also known as the State of Qatar or locally Dawlat Qaṭar, is a sovereign Arab state, located in the Middle East, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the northeasterly coast of the much larger Arabian Peninsula. Its sole land border is with Saudi Arabia to the south, with the rest of its...
. USO centers number more than 130 around the world. Recently, the USO opened the Rocky Mountain USO Center at Denver International Airport
Denver International Airport
Denver International Airport , often referred to as DIA, is an airport in Denver, Colorado. By land size, at , it is the largest international airport in the United States, and the third largest international airport in the world after King Fahd International Airport and Montréal-Mirabel...
, a third center in Kuwait and its first center in Iraq at Balad Air Base. The USO provides a variety of programs and services, including orientation programs, family events, travel assistance, free Internet and e-mail access, and recreation services. A new program called "USO in a Box," delivers program materials ranging from DVD players and videos to musical instruments to remote forward operating bases in Afghanistan and Iraq.
U.S. military personnel and their families visit USO centers more than five million times each year.
From June 8 to 11, 2009, T.V. personality Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Tyrone Colbert is an American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor. He is the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, a satirical news show in which Colbert portrays a caricatured version of conservative political pundits.Colbert originally studied to be an...
traveled to Iraq to film his show The Colbert Report for four days in a USO sponsored event.
Other entertainers who have traveled to the Middle East to perform include Al Franken
Al Franken
Alan Stuart "Al" Franken is the junior United States Senator from Minnesota. He is a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which affiliates with the national Democratic Party....
(who made six USO tours in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan before being elected a United States Senator from Minnesota), Craig Ferguson
Craig Ferguson
Craig Ferguson is a Scottish American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, and producer. He is the host of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, an Emmy Award-nominated, Peabody Award-winning late-night talk show that airs on CBS...
, Gary Sinise
Gary Sinise
Gary Alan Sinise is an American actor, film director and musician. During his career, Sinise has won various awards including an Emmy and a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1992, Sinise directed, and played the role of George Milton in the successful film adaptation of...
, Zac Brown, Carrie Underwood
Carrie Underwood
Carrie Marie Underwood is an American country singer-songwriter and actress who rose to fame as the winner of the fourth season of American Idol, in 2005...
, Drowning Pool
Drowning Pool
Drowning Pool is a four-piece alternative metal band from Dallas, Texas.-Early days :Drowning Pool rose to fame while playing along with Ozzy Osbourne during an Ozzfest tour. Their 2001 debut album, Sinner was certified platinum within six weeks...
, Toby Keith
Toby Keith
Toby Keith Covel , best known as Toby Keith, is an American country music singer-songwriter, record producer and actor. Keith released his first four studio albums — 1993's Toby Keith, 1994's Boomtown, 1996's Blue Moon and 1997's Dream Walkin, plus a Greatest Hits package for various divisions of...
, Montgomery Gentry
Montgomery Gentry
Montgomery Gentry is an American country music duo composed of vocalists Eddie Montgomery and Troy Gentry. The two began performing in the 1990s as part of a band which also included Eddie Montgomery's brother John Michael Montgomery, and founded the existing duo in 1999.Signed to Columbia Records,...
, Kellie Pickler, Carlos Mencia
Carlos Mencia
Carlos Mencia , born Ned Arnel Mencia, is a Honduran-born American comedian, writer, and actor. His style of comedy is often political and involves issues of race, culture, criminal justice, and social class...
, O.A.R., Dave Attell, Trace Adkins, Louis C.K.
Louis C.K.
Louis Szekely , known professionally as Louis C.K., is a stand-up comedian, television and film writer, actor, producer, and director...
, Dane Cook
Dane Cook
Dane Jeffrey Cook is an American stand-up comedian and film actor. He has released five comedy albums: Harmful If Swallowed; Retaliation; Vicious Circle; Rough Around The Edges: Live From Madison Square Garden; and Isolated Incident. In 2006, Retaliation became the highest charting comedy album...
, Lewis Black
Lewis Black
Lewis Niles Black is an American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor. He is known for his comedy style, which often includes simulating a mental breakdown, or an increasingly angry rant, ridiculing history, politics, religion, trends and cultural phenomena...
, Third Day, Colin Quinn
Colin Quinn
Colin Edward Quinn is an American stand-up comedian and writer best known for his five years in the cast of Saturday Night Live, as the sidekick/announcer of MTV's late 1980s gameshow Remote Control and as host of Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn on Comedy Central from 2002–2004.-Early years:Quinn was...
, and Neil McCoy.
The USO is also providing services for the annual "Tribute to the Troops" special of World Wrestling Entertainment
World Wrestling Entertainment
World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. is an American publicly traded, privately controlled entertainment company dealing primarily in professional wrestling, with major revenue sources also coming from film, music, product licensing, and direct product sales...
. They have aired WWE RAW from Afghanistan and Iraq every Christmas in the United States in a pre-taped show from the combat zone.
Honoring Bob Hope
In 1996, the U.S. Congress honored Bob HopeBob Hope
Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS was a British-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel...
by declaring him the "first and only honorary veteran of the U.S. armed forces." According to Hope biographer William Faith, his reputation has become ingrained in the "American consciousness" because he had flown millions of miles to entertain G.I.s during both wartime and peace. His contribution to the USO began in 1941 and ended with Operation Desert Shield in 1991. He was always treated as "an asset to the U.S. Government with his willingness to entertain whenever they needed him." After WWII was declared over, the USO had sent out an "impassioned bulletin" asking entertainers not to abandon the GIs now that the war was over. Hope was among the first to say "yes." The Military Order of the Purple Heart notes that "his contributions to the USO are well known: they are legend."
As a result of his non-stop entertainment to both the civilian population and the military, he received numerous other honors over the years: a C-17 Air Force plane
C-17 Globemaster III
The Boeing C-17 Globemaster III is a large military transport aircraft. Developed for the United States Air Force from the 1980s to the early 1990s by McDonnell Douglas, the C-17 is used for rapid strategic airlift of troops and cargo to main operating bases or forward operating bases throughout...
was named The Spirit of Bob Hope; a naval vessel was named the USNS Bob Hope; and streets, schools, hospitals, and a golf tournament were also named in his honor. A Senate resolution declared him "a part of American folklore." The Guinness Book of Records called him the most honored entertainer ever. And during his 1993 televised birthday celebration, when he turned 90, General Colin Powell saluted Hope "for his tireless USO trouping", which was followed by onstage tributes from all branches of the armed forces. General William Westmoreland spoke about his loyalty to the GI throughout the gritty Vietnam years. And bandleader Les Brown
Les Brown (bandleader)
Les Brown, Sr. and the Band of Renown are a big band that began in the late 1930s, initially as the group Les Brown and His Blue Devils that Brown led while a student at Duke University. He was the first president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences...
, who was with him during many of his tours, mentioned that his band "had seen more of Hope's ass in the last forty years than any of Hope's immediate family."
War correspondent Quentin Reynolds wrote in 1943, "He and his troupe would do 300 miles in a jeep, and give four shows... One of the generals said Hope was a first rate military target since he was worth a division; that that's about 15,000 men. Presumably the Nazis appreciated Hope's value, since they thrice bombed towns while the comic was there."
During the Vietnam war years he gave a number of high-rating television specials and sensed that the media had given him a broad endorsement for continuing on his GI mercy missions. Soon after his Christmas show in Saigon in 1967, he learned that the Vietcong had planned a terrorist attack at his hotel against him and his entire troupe, missing him by ten minutes. He was later "mystified," writes Faith, "and ... increasingly intolerant of the pockets of dissent. Draft-card burning
Draft-card burning
Draft-card burning was a symbol of protest performed by thousands of young American men as part of the opposition to the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War. Beginning in May 1964, some activists burned their draft cards at anti-war rallies and demonstrations. By May 1965 it was...
s on college campuses angered him..." "Can you imagine," Hope wrote in a magazine article, "... that people in America are burning their draft cards to show their opposition and that some of them are actually rooting for your defeat?" In the spring of 1973, Hope began writing his fifth book, The Last Christmas Show, which was dedicated to "the men and women of the armed forces and to those who also served by worrying and waiting." He signed over his royalties to the USO.
His final Christmas show was during Operation Desert Shield in 1990. The show was not easy, notes Faith. "There were so many restrictions. Hope's jokes were monitored by the State Department to avoid offending the Saudis... and the media was restricted from covering the shows... Because in Saudi Arabia national custom prescribes that women must be veiled in public, Ann Jillian
Ann Jillian
Ann Jillian is an American actress, who started acting at age 10. Her career reached its zenith in the 1980s, with her best-known role being that of waitress Cassie Cranston on the sitcom It's a Living.-Early life and career:...
, Marie Osmond
Marie Osmond
Olive Marie Osmond is an American singer, actress, doll designer, and a member of the show business family The Osmonds. Although she was never part of her family's singing group, she gained success as a solo country music artist in the 1970s and 1980s...
, and the Pointer Sisters
Pointer Sisters
The Pointer Sisters are an American pop/R&B recording act from Oakland, California that achieved mainstream success during the 1970s and 1980s. Spanning over three decades, their repertoire has included such diverse genres as pop, disco, jazz, bebop, blues, soul, funk, dance, country and rock.The...
were left off Hope's Christmas Eve show."
In 2009, Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Tyrone Colbert is an American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor. He is the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, a satirical news show in which Colbert portrays a caricatured version of conservative political pundits.Colbert originally studied to be an...
performing his last episode of week-long taping in Iraq for his The Colbert Report show, carried a golf club on stage and dedicated it to Bob Hope
Bob Hope
Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS was a British-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel...
's service for the USO.
Financials
The USO has a paid staff of approximately 240. Additionally, more than 30,000 USO volunteers provide an estimated 371,417 hours of service annually. As reported by the USO, the unpaid volunteer to paid employee ratio overseas is 20 to 1. Within the United States, the number is "significantly higher".The following information is based on USO's audited financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2006:
| Source of Funds | U.S. $ |
|---|---|
| In-kind contributions | 83,497,430 |
| Public appeals | 32,325,150 |
| USO center revenue | 13,660,792 |
| Corporate, foundation and individual giving | 8,748,594 |
| Investment income | 6,440,121 |
| Entertainment sponsorships | 2,593,504 |
| United Way, CFC and other federated | 1,040,528 |
| Rental and other income | 393,703 |
| Total Income | 148,699,822 |
| Expenses | U.S. $ |
|---|---|
| Program expenses | 124,008,404 |
| Fund raising expenses | 12,767,448 |
| Administrative expenses | 6,571,080 |
| Total expenses | 143,346,932 |
External links
- Other web site: USO Clubs in World War II
- Movie clips: Re-enacted WWII tour, from Jolson Sings Again (1949)
- USO World Gala, 2008: President Bush speech Text and video, Oct. 1, 2008