The photo shows USO girls wearing the jackets and posing by a bomber of the 90th Bomb Group in WWII. The USO was founded in 1941 in response to a request from President Franklin D. Roosevelt 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. 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. Camp Shows began in October 1941, and by that fall and winter 186 military theaters existed in the United States. Overseas shows began in November 1941 with a tour of the Caribbean. Within five months 36 overseas units had been sent within the Americas, the United Kingdom, and Australia, and during 1942 1,000 performed as part of 70 units. Average performers were paid $100 a week; top stars were paid $10 a day because their wealth let them contribute more of their talents. Camp Shows began in Normandy in July 1944, one month after Operation Overlord. Until fall 1944 overseas units contained five performers or fewer; The Barretts of Wimpole Street, using local theaters in France and Italy, was the first to use an entire theater company, including scenery. 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, Carole Landis, Martha Tilton, Jack Benny, Larry Adler, Adelaide Hall, Ossy Renardy, 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, John Wayneand most famously, Bob Hope. 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 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. Woman in the USO, according to Emily Yellin, many of the key foot soldiers in the USOs 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, 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.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 21:37:53 +0000
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