Warriors in Greasepaint
Sometimes Hollywood stars contributed to the war effort in other ways. Jimmy Stewart, Douglas Fairbanks, Clark Gable and others served in the armed forces, some with great distinction. Gable made training films as well as flying combat missions. The Victory Train made a tour of five thousand venues in over three hundred cities to sell War Bonds. Seven troupes of Hollywood stars raised over a billion dollars.
Morale, and the work the USO was doing, were considered to be so vital to the war effort that some stars were blocked from joining active service by direct presidential order.
Not all servicemen were accessible to live performers. The War Department created the Armed Forces Radio Service, shows were broadcast on short-wave radio or recorded live and shipped to various broadcast locations. These shows were exclusive to the armed forces, only one, the Christmas Eve show of 1942, was ever a public broadcast. Most of the shows were done by request. Men would write in to request certain songs or performers, personal messages would sometimes be included and the humor had a distinctly military bent. KP and food were popular targets, the bravest man in the army was defined as the mess cook who actually ate his own food. Bob Hope was fond of targeting the commanding officer of a camp, a ploy which invariably brought roars of laughter.
Bob Hope is probably the best known USO performer of all time. His contribution to the war ranged from the Victory Train to Broadway style shows in the Theater District of London but it is for his innumerable Camp Shows that he is best known and loved. These took place literally all over the world, starting out in Quonset huts in Alaska and coming under fire in Algiers. Hope recounts that he found the hospital visits the most difficult of all, but he still made the wounded men laugh.
By June, 1943 the USO boasted 739,000 volunteers, in 1944 it ran over three thousand recreational facilities. As the war ended and the process of demobilization began it extended nearly seventy thousand cases of travelers aid to the men and women who were returning home to civilian life.
In 1948 even the lengthy process of demobilization was coming to an end. The USO was dissolved. Its story, however, does not end there. With the outbreak of the Korean War the USO was revived, reorganized and expanded. It is now an integral
Latest Articles