Frances Langford of Lakeland Wrote a Column From the Front Lines

Frances Langford toured with Bob Hope’s USO shows through World War II, and on the road she wrote a column for the Hearst papers about the wounded servicemen she met. She called it Purple Heart Diary. It became a book and, in 1951, a movie.

Lakeland

She was born in Lakeland on April 4, 1913. She trained as a soprano until a tonsil operation changed her voice into the low contralto that made her a star. Her first film, Every Night at Eight (1935), gave her the song that stayed with her, “I’m in the Mood for Love.”

Jensen Beach

After the war she came back to Florida. In 1955 she married Ralph Evinrude, heir to the outboard motor company, and they ran the Outrigger resort in Jensen Beach. She gave land near Jensen Beach to Martin County for a park and supported the Florida Oceanographic Society on Hutchinson Island. She died at home in Jensen Beach on July 11, 2005, at 92.