page_title: Frances Langford
section_title: World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Frances Langford / World War II
caption_attribution_description: English: From left to right: Hal Block, Bob Hope, Barney Dean, General George S. Patton, Frances Langford and Tony Romano. Sicily, August 21, 1943. Significance of photo: Bob Hope and his USO troupe arrived in Sicily three days after the Seventh Army took the key town of Messina. Patton asked Hope to tell his radio audience “that I love my men.” This was soon after Patton had slapped two hospitalized soldiers accusing them of cowardice. Patton was attempting to appear more compassionate during Hope's visit. - (from LOC description)
context_page_description: Julia Frances Langford was an American singer and actress who was popular during the Golden Age of Radio and made film appearances for over two decades.
  She was a forces sweetheart, who entertained troops touring often with Bob Hope.
context_section_description: From 1941, Langford was a regular singer on Bob Hope's The Pepsodent Show when he held his first military entertainment program at March Field in Riverside, California in 1941. The show was so positive, he continued broadcasting from training bases around the country and asked Langford to join him. During World War II, she joined Hope, Jerry Colonna, guitarist Tony Romano, and other performers on USO tours through Europe, North Africa, and the South Pacific, entertaining thousands of GIs throughout the world. During a USO tour in the Pacific theater, she was invited to take a ride in a P-38 fighter plane. During the flight, a Japanese ship was spotted and the joy ride was postponed until the pilot finished strafing the ship.
  In his memoir, Don't Shoot! It's Only Me!, Bob Hope recalled how Frances Langford got the biggest laugh he had ever heard. At a USO show in the South Pacific, Langford stood up on a stage to sing before a huge crowd of GIs. When Langford sang the first line of her signature song, "I'm in the Mood for Love," a soldier in the audience stood up and shouted, "You've come to the right place, honey!"
  Also, during the war, Langford wrote the weekly "Purple Heart Diary" column for Hearst Newspapers, in which she described her visits to military hospitals to entertain wounded GIs. She used the weekly column as a means of allowing the recovering troops to voice their complaints, and to ask for public support for making sure that the wounded troops received all the supplies and comforts they needed.
  
  Her association with Hope continued into the 1980s. In 1989 she joined him for a USO tour to entertain troops in the Persian Gulf.
caption: Hal Block, Bob Hope, Barney Dean, General George S. Patton, Langford and Tony Romano
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