A Hot Nightspot : Bob Hope Helps Open USO Club in Historic Building

A Navy man spent most of a recent Friday night watching a horror movie and eating popcorn. A friend downstairs shot pool while another tested his skill at video games. And a fourth spent much of the evening chatting with a female volunteer over Cokes and candy bars.

“This is a nice place,” said Kenny Lattin, 30, one of the four sailors. “It’s a homey place to relax and feel comfortable.” Lattin, a hospital corpsman from Lawton, Okla., is stationed aboard the USS Mount Vernon, an amphibious assault vessel, in Long Beach.

Welcome to the newest nightspot in town. Nearly two years behind schedule, the famed Bob Hope Hollywood USO Club has finally reopened, with a slightly revised name, in a historic building in downtown Long Beach.

Earlier this week, the grand old comedian himself was on Pine Avenue to participate in the hoopla surrounding the facility, renamed the Long Beach Bob Hope USO Club. “I think it’s marvelous,” he said Monday. “This is a very hot spot for the USO. This is where the Navy is.”

Among other things, Hope announced that he would be traveling to the Persian Gulf soon to stage Christmas shows for U.S. troops there, although he will have to change his act to make it acceptable to Arab censors.

“How am I going to go without the girls?” he said, referring to the platoon of starlets that usually accompany his tours. “I’d hate to think I was the only pretty face there.”

Hope’s career as one of the country’s best-known funny men is inexorably tied to the history of the USO, which stands for United Services Organization. Founded in 1941, the Hollywood club became a model for the chain of USO clubs chartered by Congress to serve the needs of the nation’s military by providing drop-in centers around the world and traveling shows such as those featuring Hope.

The first of its kind in the nation, the Hollywood club reached its zenith during World War II when young soldiers and sailors showed up there by the thousands to rub elbows with famous movie stars serving as entertainers, coffee servers and dance partners.

Then the war ended and the neighborhood began to change. With the proliferation of other entertainment facilities throughout the region, fewer and fewer military people--most of whom were based near Long Beach or in Orange County--were willing to make the trek to Hollywood. By the 1980s, the Hollywood club shared a block with a club featuring nude dancers, and began to lose its reputation for providing a wholesome environment capable of attracting a new generation of military people.

In September, 1988, the Greater Los Angeles Area USO announced that it was closing shop in Hollywood and moving to the Pacific Coast Club building, formerly a Masonic Temple, in downtown Long Beach. The move, they said, would make the club readily accessible to the estimated 30,000 military personnel stationed at the several major military installations in the greater Long Beach area.

But the reopening has been a long time coming. USO officials faced unexpected delays in obtaining required permits from the city, difficulties in finding a contractor and a pay dispute with the architect hired to draw the plans. Officials initially had hoped to open in December, 1988, but the opening was postponed repeatedly.

As a result, the organization recorded a 45% decline in contributions--a major source of financial support. Officials said they feared the nonprofit organization’s future was in jeopardy.

This month’s opening, however, seems to have put a light at the end of the tunnel.

“We’re back in the swing of things,” said Dewey Smith, the organization’s president. With the club now open, he said, would-be donors feel more confident in supporting the USO’s work. “Our financial situation is better. We have fund-raisers scheduled and donations coming in. We’re visible now and the word is getting out.”

To help lure people to the club, USO officials say they have added a number of services more relevant to the needs of today’s military personnel. Compared to their counterparts of World War II, the officials say, the new generation of military recruits tends to be older, better educated, less transient and more likely to be married.

The new features include a special telephone “warm line” for latchkey military children, an employment resource center to help find jobs, and a reference service for such things as child care, counseling and entertainment.

Capitalizing on the public’s renewed interest in military matters since the Persian Gulf crisis, the USO recently conducted areawide campaigns that brought in thousands of letters, shampoo bottles and paperback books for U.S. forces stationed in Saudi Arabia. It also distributed hundreds of copies of a coloring book explaining the deployment to the children of military people involved.

But the heart of the local organization remains its drop-in club, a three-story 5,100-square-foot facility that is open free of charge to anyone bearing a military ID. Surrounded by decor of red, white or blue, young soldiers and sailors can watch television, drink nonalcoholic beverages, eat homemade cookies, read magazines, shoot pool, play video games or just hang out and relax with their friends.

The club, at 230 Pine Ave., is open Monday through Friday from 2 to 10 p.m., and on Saturdays from 6 to 10 p.m.

Special theme nights include televised football on Mondays, checkers Tuesdays and movies with popcorn every Wednesday. The club also features Bart Simpson night on Thursdays, during which patrons watch the popular television program and eat Butterfinger candy bars. Friday is “chips ahoy” poker night. In addition, the USO is planning special dances and parties for Halloween, Oktoberfest and Christmas.

Since opening Oct. 1, said Marsha Goodale, club director, the facility has attracted an average of 10 to 15 service people a night, or about 90 a week. Once word of the new club spreads, she said, she hopes to serve as many as 350 a week.

That number is far short of the 2,000-per-week predicted by USO officials when they first announced the move two years ago, a fact Smith, the president, now attributes to the inflated projections of a former director. “People get (overly) optimistic sometimes,” he said. “The director at that time probably felt that the club would be larger.”

Numbers, however, seemed of little concern to the handful of sailors gathered for an evening at the club last Friday.

“I come to get away from the stress (of Navy life),” said Donald Ostling, 22, a boatswain’s mate on the battleship Missouri. “I come to relax and think so that I can plan (my future.)”

Said Aaron Thompkins, 29, a hospital corpsman from New York City: “I think (the club is) good. It helps guys who are new to the area get into something besides trouble.”