On February 16, 1954 – 70 years ago – Marilyn began her whistle-stop tour of U.S. Army bases across South Korea. One of the many G.I.s who encountered her during the trip was future country music star Leroy Van Dyke. Still performing at 94, the singer known for hits like ‘The Auctioneer’ and ‘Walk On By’ shared his memories of Marilyn in a recent interview for the Cowboy Channel.
“I’ve known a lot of the great entertainers, Red Skelton and all those people, all the people that played in Las Vegas. I was in Korea, I was a special agent in the army counterintelligence and the Assistant Reginald Commander came to camp and said, ‘I want you to do me a favour’ and I said, ‘What?’ and he said, ‘We have a USO show coming to town and we wondered if you would bring your guitar and open the show for her, maybe 15 minutes’ and I said, ‘Yeah I’ll do that…by the way, who’s coming in?’ he said, ‘Marilyn Monroe’ and I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me, you want me to go out there in from of 30,000 G.I.’s while they’re waiting for her to come out there?’ and it worked out alright, she was good to me, they were good to me, and I became the only country act to ever open a show for Marilyn Monroe.”
Marilyn’s visit wasn’t technically a USO tour but had been arranged directly with US Army officials who met with her and husband Joe DiMaggio in Japan. You can watch Marilyn singing ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,’ ‘Bye Bye Baby’, and a very racy ‘Do It Again’ here.
A short documentary about Marilyn’s journey was created for the ARTE Channel’s Mysteries in the Archives series.
Among the more detailed accounts of this period are Liesl Bradner’s 2019 article for Military History Quarterly, ‘When Marilyn Monroe Interrupted Her Honeymoon to Go to Korea’; and bandmate Al Guastefeste’s memoir, A Different Side of Marilyn.
And finally, you can read more posts on Marilyn in Korea – featuring rare photos, tributes and personal reminiscences – here and at The Marilyn Archive.
The Marilyn Report 