A post-game interview with Hollywood star Marlene Dietrich (1901 – 1992) concerning all the many places throughout the European Theater of Operations that she performed before Allied audiences, at times performing very close to the German front line.
Marlene Dietrich's only daughter, Maria Riva Dietrich (b. 1924), wrote that her mother, feeling a deep sense of pity and gratitude, made love to a very large number of front line soldiers.
Click here to read about the woman who entertained the U.S. troops during the First World War.
Attached is a 1944 article from Click Magazine about the touring performers of the U.S.O. during the Second World War. Illustrated with eight photographs picturing many of the most devoted and well-loved of the Hollywood entertainers (Bob Hope, Martha Raye, Al Jolson, Jack Benny, Wini Shaw) the article, by celebrated newspaper critic Leonard Lyons, goes into some detail as to the deep sense of gratitude these show people felt and how happy they were to give some measure of payback. It was estimated that the U.S.O. performed 293,738 shows by the time the war reached an end.
Four years after his stellar performance as the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz (MGM, 1939), Hollywood actor and comedian Ray Bolger (1904 – 1987) was performing in many parts of the war-torn Pacific islands on a USO tour for thousands of very grateful GIs and Marines. Attached is a two page reminiscence about one particular Guadalcanal performance, the men he met and the Hell they paid in the years that followed
They're not with the U.S.O. but the barracks-happy GIs were delighted to see them just the same.
"Together [these entertainers] constitute the vast composite known as USO-Camp Shows, Inc. Organized in November, 1941 as this war's answer to the last one's mistakes (too little which came too late to too few), Camp Shows see to it that as much entertainment as possible reaches as many soldiers as possible - in contrast to the fact that the last war produced only an Elsie Janis (
You can read about her here)... The money to run Camp Shows comes from the National War Fund; the authority to use its services rests with the Army and Navy."
This is one of the more enjoyable reads on the site. Published during the Summer of 1945, with the war in Europe over and the Japanese capitulation only six weeks away, the Liberty editors saw fit to run an article that recalled the absolute devotion that so many USO performers displayed again and again in order to guarantee that American military personnel abroad was fully entertained and amused - no matter their proximity to the enemy.
This article said it all honestly and without flowery metaphors - plainly stating the facts that if American military personnel were not provided some wholesome distractions, they would simply loiter around barrooms and whorehouses during their leisure time and become a drag on society.
"Early in the year its board of directors had decided that since USO was a national defense and war-related organization, it should not continue in peacetime longer than December 31, 1947 [they were also broke]. The six-member agencies, that had brought USO into being and now arranged for its conclusion, were the Young Men's Christian Association, the National Catholic Community, The Salvation Army, the Young Women's Christian Association, the National Jewish Welfare Board, and the National Travelers Aid Association.
When the Korean War began five years later, Secretary of Defense George Marshall and Secretary of the Navy Francis P. Matthews requested that the USO step up again - and gave them all the money they needed.
