FRANCES LANGFORD: THE GI NIGHTINGALE - PART TWO

Frances Langford was received in much the same way throughout all of her performances with Hope. It was often said that sailors, soldiers, airmen, or marines would put their arms around each other, or bow their heads and sometimes cry when they heard her sing a familiar melody. They were transported to a different place and time in different company, but only for a moment. “I’d sing a song, and I could just see the guys getting this faraway expression. I knew they were going home in their minds.”

Her showstoppers with Hope were “Embraceable You,” “You Made Me Love You,” and “I’ll Be Seeing You.” There was always lots of jostling and lots of wolf-whistling when Langford appeared, but when she began singing everyone went completely still and silent. Hope said, “She knows just how much sex to pour and still be dignified.”

Langford and Hope’s troupe had some other close calls. In the summer of 1943, Hope brought his troupe to a very-recently liberated North Africa and Sicily through the USO Camp Shows Division, which was established to bring entertainment directly to those fighting overseas. The entertainers experienced what it was like to take cover in basements and in foxholes during bombing raids. After witnessing a harrowing Luftwaffe raid on Bizerte from a ditch outside of town, Hope joked that “When it was over, she helped me crawl out and get to the car. I don’t think she carried me, but knowing Frances, she probably tried.”

One columnist referred to Langford as a “one woman blitz” and said that she acted as a sort of “Fairy Godmother” to the GIs. Indeed she was called “Mother Langford” by Hope and by the other members of the troupe, even though she was ten years younger than Hope. In summer 1944, when the troupe toured the Pacific, they were joined by another female member, Patty Thomas. Langford took on the role of older sister and friend. They stayed very close for the remainder of their lives.

During the war, Langford, like Hope and Colonna, wrote about her travels. Purple Heart Diary was Langford’s column for Hearst newspapers, in which she recounted episodes from her visits to wounded troops in hospitals across the country. In 1951, the column was turned into a film, starring Langford. Even though Langford performed hundreds of shows during the war all over the world in a variety of settings, the bedside and wardroom performances in military hospitals became her signature appearances. Although emotionally taxing, this work was extremely gratifying. She often recounted how she would sneak away after a song to cry, always wanting to remain calm and cheerful to her audiences.

From 1946-1951, Langford starred with Don Ameche as part of the verbal sparring married duo, The Bickersons, a popular radio comedy. She later left Hollywood, returning to her native Florida, where she opened a Polynesian club and marina in Jensen Beach. When Langford married her third husband in 1994, Patty Thomas served as her Matron of Honor. Langford died in Florida on July 11, 2005 at age 92. Her voice would live on in the memories and imaginations of a million GIs....

THE END

MUSIC BREAK: FRANCES LANGFORD - OVER THE RAINBOW

MUSIC BREAK: FRANCES LANGFORD - TIME ON MY HANDS

RIP: HARRY BELAFONTE

Harry Belafonte, the "King of Calypso" who became one of America's endearing and enduring civil rights activists into his 10th decade, has died. He was 96.

Belafonte died Tuesday at his home in New York of congestive heart failure, representative Paula Witt said in a statement Tuesday.

Belafonte will be remembered as one of the most popular entertainers of the 20th century, as a singer, musician and actor. But his civil rights work in the 1960s and his anti-apartheid work in the 1980s will be just as enduring.

"I wasn't an artist who became an activist. I was an activist who became an artist," Belafonte wrote in his 2011 memoir. "Ever since my mother had drummed it into me, I'd felt the need to fight injustice wherever I saw it, in whatever way I could."

Belafonte was born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. in Harlem in 1927, the biracial son of biracial parents, both of whom were born in Jamaica. It made a difference to his musical influences and his later life as a social justice activist that he grew up shuttling between New York and Kingston, Jamaica, still struggling to overcome its colonial past, he said in his 2011 book, "My Song: A Memoir." 

No one who heard it in the mid-1950s could ever forget Belafonte's warm, slightly husky voice on "The Banana Boat Song," better known as "Day-O" for the opening lyrics of the Jamaican song he recorded in 1956 on his third record, "Calypso." (Composer Irving Burgie, who co-wrote “Day-O" and eight of the 11 songs on "Calypso," died Nov. 29 at the age of 95.)

"Day-O" was an instant hit and became Belafonte's signature song. Suddenly, America was mad for the lilting, rhythmic sound of the Caribbean islands. In virtually every live performance, Belafonte's audiences would enthusiastically join in the song's call-and-response melody and refrain. 

Even more impressive, "Day-O," once sung by Jamaican banana workers, helped make "Calypso" the first album to sell more than 1 million copies. Not bad for an entertainer who started out as a club singer in New York to pay for his acting classes.

"I was good as a singer, but I wasn't the best, and I'd known that from the start," Belafonte wrote in "My Song." "I had to rely on my acting. And in the end, I could make a case that I was the greatest actor in the world: I'd convinced everyone I could sing."

 Belafonte's pop music-turned-folk music career was interrupted by his civil rights activism, but he was still recording as late as 2017 when he released "When Colors Come Together," an anthology of some earlier recordings produced by his son David who wrote lyrics for an updated version of "Island In The Sun," featuring Belafonte's grandchildren Sarafina and Amadeus and a children's choir. 

"Now, let me say this about the songs of the Caribbean – almost all Black music is deeply rooted in metaphor," he told NPR in a 2011 interview promoting his memoir. "The only way that we could speak to the pain and the anguish of our experiences was often through how we codified our stories in the songs that we sang.

"And when I sing the 'Banana Boat Song,' the song is a work song. It's about men who sweat all day long, and they are underpaid, and they're begging the tallyman to come and give them an honest count – counting the bananas that I've picked, so I can be paid." But sometimes, they were paid only in rum, as the song's lyrics describe.

"People sing and delight and dance and love it, (but) they don't really understand unless they study the song that they're singing, a work song, that's a song of rebellion," Belafonte said.

He won three Grammys in the 1960s and won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. In 2022, he received an early influence award from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was awarded a Humanitarian Oscar in 2015. He was named a UNICEF goodwill ambassador in 1987, was a recipient of one of the 1989 Kennedy Center Honors for Performing Arts, and was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1994.

By the 1960s, he was just as famous for being on the front lines of civil rights marches as an early ally of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. By the 1980s, he helped organize the "We Are the World" recording that became the anthem for famine relief in Africa.

Belafonte didn't back down when it came to his politics.

In October 2002, he made remarks about then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, comparing him to a "house slave." Powell, a Republican, refused to inflame the situation, merely commenting that Belafonte's comparison was "unfortunate." (Powell died Oct. 18, 2021, at the age of 84.)

Nor did he slow down. More than a half-century after the March on Washington, Belafonte was an honorary co-chair of the Women's March on Washington on Jan. 21, 2017, the day after the inauguration of Donald Trump as president.

To the end, Belafonte wanted to change America and the world...

HEALTHWATCH: RICHARD LEWIS

For those wondering where he has been for the last few years, Richard Lewis has an answer.

The comedian, actor and writer posted a video Sunday on social media to celebrate his completion of filming the 12th season Larry David’s hit series, “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which Lewis described as “an amazing season.” One of my favorite appearances Lewis made was in the Mel Brooks movie Robin Hood: Men In Tights (1993). It's hard to believe that movie is 30 years old now.

Lewis said for more than three years, people have been wondering where he’s been. The actor said it’s been a “rocky” time for him. He’s undergone surgeries for his shoulder, back and hips, and has been dealing with another health challenge.

“Two years ago I started walking a little stiffly, I was shuffling my feet and I went to a neurologist and they gave me a brain scan and I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease,” Lewis, 75, said in his video. “Luckily, I got it late in life. And they say you progress very slowly, if at all. And I’m on the right meds, so I’m cool.”

Lewis said he’s “finished with standup,” instead “focusing on writing and acting.” He added that he is happy and doing well.

According to the Mayo Clinic, Parkinson’s “is a progressive disorder that affects the nervous system and the parts of the body controlled by the nerves.”

Other celebs who are also living with Parkinson’s disease include singer Neil Diamond and actor Michael J. Fox...

FRANCES LANGFORD: THE GI NIGHTINGALE - PART ONE

In World War II, Bob Hope became the unofficial ambassador to American troops, traveling around the globe to bring entertainment directly to those in service. Some of the most memorable moments of Hope’s shows were due to the female performers in the troupe. To assemble his traveling cast, he leaned on regulars from his radio performances and also called on new talent.

Frances Langford was a core member of Hope’s troupe. She joined him on his first performance for troops at March Field in California in May 1941, then toured with him on his initial long overseas tour in the summer of 1943, and then again in 1944.

By the time Langford joined up with Hope, she was already an established star and vocalist. Langford was born in Florida in 1913. Like Hope, she began her career in vaudeville and then followed it up with radio performances. Her rich tone was perfectly suited for love songs, including her signature, “I’m in the Mood for Love.” She debuted the tune in the 1935 film comedy, Every Night at Eight, in which she plays a young singer working with a bandleader, Tops Cardona.

In 1942, Hope assembled a troupe to undertake a tour for those he called “God’s Frozen People,” in Alaska and the Aleutians. Langford was always at the top of the list. Flying in military transports was risky, accommodations spartan, and they weren’t quite sure what to expect when they arrived at their destinations, but she was game.

On the first trip to Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, Frances was the only female member of the group. At some of the larger stops, like Fairbanks, Frances would bunk in the nurses' quarters. But at other places along the tour, there were no accommodations for women and these had to be improvised. Frances showed an adventurous streak on this Alaskan trip as well. The flights were often through ice and snow storms. During one flight from Cordova to Anchorage, the pilot ordered everyone to put on their parachutes and lifebelts. Frances wrote, “This thrilled me more than anything for I’ve always had a desire to make a parachute jump and it really looked like the time had come. Bob and Jerry [Colonna] were really surprised when they saw how excited I was. They thought I would be scared to death and probably pass out completely.” Although the pilot successfully landed the plane, Langford described it as one of the most thrilling experiences of her life...

TO BE CONTINUED...

A TRIBUTE TO ROBERT MORSE - ONE YEAR LATER

Another great star has been gone for one year now. It's hard to believe...