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United Service Organizations

The United Service Organizations Inc. (USO) is an American nonprofit-charitable corporation that provides live entertainment, such as comedians, actors and musicians, social facilities, and other programs to members of the United States Armed Forces and their families. Since 1941, it has worked in partnership with the Department of War, and later with the Department of Defense (DoD), relying heavily on private contributions and on funds, goods, and services from various corporate and individual donors. Although it is congressionally chartered, it is not a government agency.

Founded during World War II, the USO sought to be the GI's "home away from home" and began a tradition of entertaining the troops and providing social facilities. Involvement in the USO was one of the many ways in which the nation had come together to support the war effort, with nearly 1.5 million people having volunteered their services in some way. The USO initially disbanded in 1947, but was revived in 1950 for the Korean War, after which it continued, also providing peacetime services. During the Vietnam War, USO social facilities ("USOs") were sometimes located in combat zones.

The organization became particularly known for its live performances, called "camp shows", through which the entertainment industry helps boost the morale of servicemen and women. In the early days, Hollywood was eager to show its patriotism, and many celebrities joined the ranks of USO entertainers. They went as volunteers to entertain, and celebrities continue to provide volunteer entertainment in military bases in the U.S. and overseas, sometimes placing their own lives in danger by traveling or performing under hazardous conditions. In 2011, the USO was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

The USO has over 200 locations around the world in 14 countries (including the U.S.) and 27 states. During a gala marking the USO's 75th anniversary in 2016, retired Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the chairman of the USO Board of Governors, estimated that the USO has served more than 35 million Americans over its history.

Mission and goals

The USO was founded on February 4, 1941 by Mary Ingraham in response to a request from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to provide morale and recreation services to U.S. uniformed military personnel. Roosevelt was elected as its honorary chairman. This request brought together six civilian organizations: the Salvation Army, YMCA, Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), National Catholic Community Service, National Travelers Aid Association and the National Jewish Welfare Board. They were brought together under one umbrella to support U.S. troops, as opposed to operating independently as some had done during the First World War. Roosevelt said he wanted "these private organizations to handle the on-leave recreation of the men in the armed forces." According to historian Emily Yellin, "The government was to build the buildings and the USO was to raise private funds to carry out its main mission: boosting the morale of the military."

The first national campaign chairman was Thomas Dewey, who raised $16 million in the first year. The second chairman was future senator Prescott Bush. The USO was incorporated in New York on February 4, with the first facility erected in DeRidder, Louisiana, 1941. More USO centers and clubs opened around the world as a "Home Away from Home" for GIs. The USO club was a place to go for dances and social events, for movies and music, for a quiet place to talk or write a letter home, or for a free cup of coffee and an egg.

The USO also brought Hollywood celebrities and volunteer entertainers to perform for the troops. According to movie historian Steven Cohan, "most of all ... in taking home on the road, it equated the nation with showbiz. USO camp shows were designed in their export to remind soldiers of home." They did this, he noted, by "nurturing in troops a sense of patriotic identification with America through popular entertainment." An article in Look magazine at the time, stated, "For the little time the show lasts, the men are taken straight to the familiar Main Street that is the goal of every fighting American far away from home." Maxene Andrews wrote, "The entertainment brought home to the boys. Their home." Actor George Raft stated at the beginning of the war, "Now it's going to be up to us to send to the men here and abroad real, living entertainment, the songs, the dances, and the laughs they had back home."

USO promotional literature stated its goals:

"The story of USO camp shows belongs to the American people, for it was their contribution that made it possible. It is an important part in the life of your sons, your brothers, your husbands, and your sweethearts."

In 2011, the USO was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama "for contributions to lifting the spirits of America's troops and their families through the arts".

World War II
After being formed in 1941, in response to World War II, "centers were established quickly ... in churches, barns, railroad cars, museums, castles, beach clubs, and log cabins." Most centers offered recreational activities, such as holding dances and showing movies. And there were the well-known free coffee and doughnuts. Some USO centers provided a haven for spending a quiet moment alone or writing a letter home, while others offered spiritual guidance and made childcare available for military wives.

But the organization became mostly known for its live performances called Camp Shows, through which the entertainment industry helped boost the morale of its servicemen and women. USO Camp Shows, Inc. began in October 1941, and by that fall and winter 186 military theaters existed in the United States. Overseas shows began in November 1941 with a tour of the Caribbean.

From Laurel and Hardy Central:

"The Flying Showboat, was the first revue. The troupe of show business professionals toured U.S. military bases in the Caribbean. It included comedians Chico Marx, Laurel and Hardy, singer Jane Pickens, dancer Ray Bolger, and actor John Garfield, who acted as master of ceremonies. These stars performed under some extremely trying conditions, as the weather was brutally hot and many of the camps were not equipped to host theatrical performances. Chico, whose 'shoot the keys' piano solos were the heart of his act, often had to do without a piano at all.  Thankfully, Laurel and Hardy's Driver's License sketch needed only a few simple props.  In any event, even the most ramshackle shows brought loud cheers from the troops, overjoyed that anybody had come to perform for them, let alone some of the finest talents Hollywood had to offer."

Within five months 36 overseas units had been sent within the Americas, the United Kingdom, and Australia, and during 1942 1,000 performed as part of 70 units. Average performers were paid $100 a week; top stars were paid $10 a day because their wealth let them contribute more of their talents.

These overseas shows were produced by the American Theatre Wing, which also provided food and entertainment for the armed services in their Stage Door Canteens. Funds from the sale of film rights for a story about the New York Canteen went toward providing USO tours of shows for overseas troops.

Following the Invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, Edward G. Robinson was the first movie star to travel to Normandy to entertain the troops. He had already been active back home selling war bonds, and donated $100,000 to the USO. During his show, he said, "This is the most privileged moment of my life, the opportunity to be here with you." The following month, Camp Shows began in Normandy.

Until fall 1944 overseas units contained five performers or fewer; The Barretts of Wimpole Street, using local theaters in France and Italy, was the first to use an entire theater company, including scenery. At its high point in 1944, the USO had more than 3,000 clubs, and curtains were rising on USO shows 700 times a day. The USO's fundraising efforts were controversial. An MGM film, Mr. Gardenia Jones, created to assist the USO in its fundraising campaign, was nearly withdrawn from theaters due to objections by the War Department, mainly because of scenes showing soldiers jumping with joy at the opportunity to shower in canteens and rest in overstuffed and comfortable USO chairs. The Army, noted The New York Times, "feels this is not good for morale as it implies that there are no showers or other comforts for soldiers in military camps." The film starred Ronald Reagan, then a captain in the Army Air Force.

Fundraising was also aided by non-USO entertainment groups. Soldier Shows, which troops – often experienced actors and musicians – organized and held their own performances, were common. The army formed a Special Services unit that organized such shows and supervised the USO, and the experience from the Soldier Shows led to Irving Berlin's Broadway show This Is the Army. Performers and writers from throughout the army were recruited for the production; they remained soldiers and continued drills. Berlin, who had written and produced the similar Yip, Yip, Yaphank during World War I, took the entire 165-person cast on tour in Europe in 1942, raising nearly $10 million for the Army Emergency Relief Fund. The following year the show was made into a film by the same title, again starring Ronald Reagan. The This Is The Army stage production toured worldwide until it closed in October 1945 in Honolulu. The USO was also supported by the National War Fund.

War correspondent Quentin Reynolds, wrote in an article for Billboard magazine in 1943, that "Entertainment, all phases of it – radio, pictures and live – should be treated as essential. You don't know what entertainment means to the guys who do the fighting until you've been up there with the men yourself. ... You can quote me as saying that we should use entertainment as an essential industry so long as it's for the boys in service. Anybody who has been there would insist on it. ... Hell, you should have seen how happy the G.I.s were when they heard the ballplayers were coming over. And John Steinbeck, just back from a chore as war correspondent, ... also applauded show business as part of the war effort and its importance as a morale builder."

According to historian Paul Holsinger, between 1941 and 1945, the USO did 293,738 performances in 208,178 separate visits. Estimates were that more than 161 million servicemen and women, in the U.S. and abroad, were entertained. The USO also did shows in military hospitals, eventually entertaining more than 3 million wounded soldiers and sailors in 192 different hospitals. There were 702 different USO troupes that toured the world, some spending up to six months per tour. In 1943, a United States Liberty ship named the SS U.S.O. was launched. She was scrapped in 1967.

Twenty-eight performers died in the course of their tours, from plane crashes, illness, or diseases contracted while on tour. In one such instance in 1943, a plane carrying a USO troupe crashed outside Lisbon, killing singer and actress Tamara Drasin, and severely injuring Broadway singer Jane Froman. Froman returned to Europe on crutches in 1945 to again entertain the troops. She later married the co-pilot who saved her life in that crash, and her story was made into the 1952 film With a Song in My Heart, with Froman providing the actual singing voice. Others, such as Al Jolson, the first entertainer to go overseas in World War II, contracted malaria, resulting in the loss of his lung, cutting short his tour.

One author wrote that by the end of the war "the USO amounted to the biggest enterprise American show business has ever tackled. The audience was millions of American fighting men, the theatre's location: the world, the producer: USO camp shows" Performances continued after the end of the war in 1945. 60 new units went to Europe after V-E Day, and 91 new units went to the Pacific after V-J Day. The USO dissolved in December 1947, after having spent $240 million in contributions on Camp Shows, canteens, and other services. Special Services productions grew in number as replacement.

In 1991, 20th Century Fox produced the film For the Boys, which told the story of two USO performers, and starred Bette Midler and James Caan. It covered a 50-year timespan, from the USO's inception in 1941 through Operation Desert Storm, in 1991. Another movie was planned in 1950 but never made. Just 10 days after Al Jolson returned from entertaining troops in Korea, he agreed with RKO producers to star in a new movie, Stars and Stripes for Ever, about a USO troupe in the South Pacific during World War II. Unfortunately, he died a week later as a result of physical exhaustion from his tour.

Segregation and women in the USO

According to Emily Yellin, many of the key foot soldiers in the USO's mission were women who were "charged with providing friendly diversion for U.S. troops who were mostly men in their teens and twenties." USO centers throughout the world recruited female volunteers to serve doughnuts, dance, and just talk with the troops. USO historian Julia Carson writes that this "nostalgic hour," designed to cheer and comfort soldiers, involved "listening to music – American style" and "looking at pretty girls, like no other pretty girls in the world – American girls."

African-American women scrambled to rally the community around the soldiers and create programs for them. By 1946, hostesses had served more than two thousand soldiers a day while also providing facilities for the wounded and convalescent who were on leave. They went to black businesses and fraternal organizations in order to find sponsorship for their USO group, and later expanded to fulfill the needs of soldiers during the Korean War. Moreover, they worked to merge black and white USOs into one desegregated unit. As black historian Megan Shockley noted, "Their work for the desegregation of USOs had begun during World War II, and it finally paid off."

Women were also key entertainers who performed at shows. Stars such as Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth had traveled over a million miles. Yellin notes that on one tour, Hayworth visited six camps, gave thousands of autographs, and "came back from Texas with a full-fledged nervous breakdown from over-enthusiasm!" Opera singer Lily Pons, after she had performed a "serious" opera song to troops in Burma, "an applause erupted that stunned even the most seasoned performers." She later wrote in a letter, "Every woman back home wears a halo now, and those who represent her had better keep theirs on, too."

Author Joeie Dee pointed out that "for women entertainers, traveling with the USO made it possible to be patriots and adventurers as well as professionals." She adds, however, that the G.I.s in the USO audiences "tended to see these women in a different light – as reminders of and even substitutes for their girls back home, as a reward for fighting the war, as embodiments of what they were fighting for." Edward Skvarna remembers 1943, when he met Donna Reed at a USO canteen and asked her to dance. "I had never danced with a celebrity before, so I felt delighted, privileged even, to meet her. ... But I really felt she was like a girl from back home." Jay Fultz, author of a biography of Reed, states that soldiers "often wrote to her as if to a sister or the girl next door, confiding moments of homesickness, loneliness, privation and anxiety."

Like much of American society and its World War II military, USOs were segregated. In Riverside, California a Negro USO was established to serve the March Field service population. Celebrities visiting this USO included Clarence Muse and the Mantan Moreland & Ben Carter duo.

Women entertainers

One female entertainer wrote about conditions while performing:

"We've played to audiences, many of them ankle deep in mud, huddled under the ponchos in the pouring rain (it breaks your heart the first two or three times to see men so hungry for entertainment.) We've played on uncovered stages, when we, as well as the audience, got rain-soaked. We've played with huge tropical bugs flying in our hair and faces; we've played to audiences of thousands of men, audiences spreading from our very feet to far up a hillside and many sitting in the trees. ... We've played to audiences in small units of 500 or so, and much oftener to audiences of 8 to 10,000. Every night we play a different place."

Singer-actress-dancer Ann Miller described performing for badly wounded soldiers. She did forty-eight shows for "broken soldiers," who were mostly lying on stretchers in the lobbies of hotels, watching as she entertained them. Yellin writes, "During her last show she collapsed and had to be taken home on an Army airplane." Afterwards, Miller described the experience:

"We went from ward to ward to ward, singing and dancing and trying to boost the morale of these men. It was just hell. ... I just fell apart and I think the shock of seeing those men with their arms and legs blown off – it was just frightening. But when you do it, you do it. You try to help them, try to sing and dance. You try to keep their spirits up. It's heartbreaking."

Korean War
In 1947, the USO was disbanded, due partly to lack of funds. In 1951, when the United States entered the Korean War, Secretary of Defense George Marshall and Secretary of the Navy Francis P. Matthews requested that the USO be reactivated "to provide support for the men and women of the armed forces with help of the American people." According to war historian Paul Edwards, between 1952 and 1953, not a day went by without the USO providing services somewhere in Korea. At home or overseas, in 1952 it was serving 3.5 million in the armed forces using much the same methods of operation as it did in World War II.

Many stars, both well-known and new, came to perform, including Bob Hope, Errol Flynn, Debbie Reynolds, Piper Laurie, Jane Russell, Paul Douglas, Terry Moore, Marilyn Monroe, Danny Kaye, Rory Calhoun, Mickey Rooney, Linda Coleman, Al Jolson, Pérez Prado, Evita Muñoz and many others. Jolson was the first to volunteer, but due to lack of USO funds traveled to Korea at his own expense (he was also the first to entertain troops during World War II).

Veterans have recalled many of the USOs events, sometimes in vivid detail:

"On that cold, overcast day, there were more than five thousand troops in the audience. They sat on the ground or up on the hillside. When everyone was settled, Danny Kaye opened the show by going to the microphone, looking at his large audience, and shouting, 'Who's holding back the enemy?' The GIs roared with laughter. We were thrilled to have Kaye and his entertainers in our area. We especially liked the young women in the show. Danny was okay, with his stories and jokes, but after all, we knew what American men looked like."

Author Linda Granfield in describing the show, writes, "For two hours, the men could forget they were soldiers at war. After the show, they returned to the fighting in the hills. Some in that audience never made it back." By the end of the war, over 113,000 American USO volunteers were working at 294 centers at home and abroad. And 126 units had given 5,422 performances to servicemen in Korea and the wounded in Japan.

Vietnam War
The USO was in Vietnam before the first combat troops arrived, with the first USO club opened in Saigon in April 1963. The 23 centers in Vietnam and Thailand served as many as a million service members a month, and the USO presented more than 5,000 performances during the Vietnam War featuring stars such as John Wayne, Ann-Margret, Sammy Davis Jr., Raymond Burr, Phyllis Diller, Martha Raye, Joey Heatherton, Wayne Newton, Jayne Mansfield, Redd Foxx, Rosey Grier, Anita Bryant, Nancy Sinatra, Jimmy Hawkins, Jimmy Boyd, Lola Falana, George Peppard and Bob Hope. Philip Ahn, the first actor of Korean descent to become a Hollywood star, became the first Asian American USO performer to entertain troops in Vietnam.

In addition, the USO operated centers at major U.S. airports to provide a lounge and place to sleep for American servicemen between their flights. Vietnam historian James Westheider noted that the USO "tried to bring a little America to Vietnam." Volunteer American civilians, who did 18-month tours, staffed the clubs. According to Westheider, "The young women wore miniskirts – no slacks were allowed." Each club had a snack bar, gift shops, a barbershop, photo developing, overseas phone lines, and hot showers.

When providing entertainment, the USO did its best to attract known stars from back home to help relieve the stresses of war. Senator John Kerry recalled how important this kind of diversion would become. He remembered a "Bob Hope Follies" USO show, which included actress Ann-Margret, Miss America, football star Rosey Grier, and others. According to Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley, "When the Swift finally made it back to the My Tho River, the crew confronted the heartbreaking sight of a huge Navy landing craft ferrying the troops back. The USO show was over." Kerry later wrote, "The visions of Ann Margret and Miss America and all the other titillating personalities who would have made us feel so at home hung around us for a while until we saw three Chinook helicopters take off from the field and presumed that our dreams had gone with them."

But for GIs who saw the show, it was worth it: "We turned to watch Ann perform, and for about two minutes of American beauty, the war was forgotten. Everyone fully understood just what was really worth fighting for. ... The show was fantastic, but the escape the Bob Hope tour provided us in expectation for days before, and after, helped us keep in touch with what we were there for – God, Country, apple pie ... and Ann-Margret!"

The visits by the stars meant a lot to the men and women in Vietnam. "It was not just the entertainment; it meant that they were not forgotten that far away from home," writes Westheider. He adds that the tours made a "deep impression" on the stars as well. Singer and actress Connie Stevens remembered her 1969 tour with Bob Hope, when she decided to go despite the fact she had two children both under the age of two. Today, she claims that "veterans were still stopping her and thanking her for visiting Vietnam over 30 years later."

Similarly, Ann-Margret during a book signing was approached by a veteran who asked her to sign a photo he took of her performing in Vietnam. Although the book's publishing representative for the signing event would not allow her to sign anything other than her book, the veteran's wife recalls:

"She took one look at the photo, tears welled up in her eyes, and she said, 'This is one of my gentlemen from Viet Nam and I most certainly will sign his photo. I know what these men did for their country and I always have time for 'my gentlemen.'"

In November–December 1968 the Sig Sakowitz troop from Chicago performed over 36 shows in South Vietnam with the USO in: Pleiku, Dalat, Danang, Cam Ran Bay, Phu Bai, Phu Loy, Hue, Natrang, Tan Son Nhut Airbase, Saigon and places in the boonies known only to military intelligence and the lonely soldiers yearning for a taste of home. The troop consisted of Doublemint Twins Terrie and Jennie Frankel, Gaslight Club singer Sara Sue, Comedian Tony Diamond and personality Sig Sakowitz. Shows were also performed with comedian Joey Bishop of the Rat Pack.

George Peppard, successful star of stage, TV and motion pictures, arrived in Vietnam for a USO HANDSHAKE TOUR in 1970 to visit the military in the hospitals and out in the "boonies."... He showed a keen interest in the men's mission while they were hungry for news of life back in the "World."... Polaroid pictures were taken by Mr. Peppard's escort officer, autographed, and given to the men.

Lebanese peacekeeping

In 1983, a bloody civil war was raging in Lebanon. In an effort to stop the violence in the region a Multinational Force of peacekeepers composed largely of U.S., Italian and French armed service members was created and sent to the region to attempt a restoration of order. As part of the multinational force the United States mobilized an expeditionary force composed of members of the United States Marine Corps and elements of the United States Sixth Fleet which operated out of the Mediterranean Sea.

Carrying on a tradition he had begun in World War II of spending Christmas with U.S. forces overseas, Bob Hope and his troupe of entertainers gave a show on board the battleship USS New Jersey (BB-62) on December 24, 1983. Four hundred Marines stationed in Beirut attended the show.

Italy
American troops have been deployed in Italy since the end of World War II. In 1988, a car bomb targeted the USO club in Naples, which killed five people including a U.S. Navy officer.

Gulf War
To support troops participating in Operation Desert Shield, USO centers opened in Saudi Arabia. Entertainers performing for the troops included Bob Hope, Jay Leno, Steve Martin, Delta Burke, Ann Jillian, Gerald McRaney, Marie Osmond, the Pointer Sisters, country singer Gina James, and Bob Hope on his final USO tour.

Afghanistan and Iraq
To support troops participating in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, USO centers opened in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar. USO centers number more than 160 around the world. In those years, the USO opened centers at Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Fort Riley, Kansas; Fort Bliss, Texas; Fort Carson, Colorado; and Afghanistan. The USO provides a variety of programs and services, including orientation programs, family events, free Internet and e-mail access, free drinks and snacks, free phone calls home and recreation services. One of the newer programs, called "USO in a Box," delivers program materials ranging from DVD players and videos to musical instruments to remote forward operating bases in Afghanistan.

U.S. military personnel and their families visit USO centers more than eight million times each year.

Bruce Willis visited Baghdad, Camp Kir Kush and Camp Caldwell, Iraq around December 2003. Mr. Willis visited military bases in Iraq during his visit in Iraq.

From June 8 to 11, 2009, TV personality Stephen Colbert traveled to Iraq to film his show The Colbert Report for four days in a USO sponsored event.

Other entertainers who have traveled to the Middle East to perform include Al Franken (who made six USO tours in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan before being elected a United States Senator from Minnesota), Robin Williams, Craig Ferguson, Gary Sinise, Zac Brown, Five Finger Death Punch, Artie Lange, Gary Dell'Abate, Nick DiPaolo, Jim Florentine, Jim Norton, Dave Attell, Avenged Sevenfold, Jessica Simpson, Carrie Underwood, Drowning Pool, Toby Keith (with special guest Gina James), Montgomery Gentry, Kellie Pickler, Mayra Veronica, Carlos Mencia, O.A.R., Trace Adkins, Kathleen Madigan, Louis C.K., Dane Cook, Lewis Black, Third Day, Colin Quinn, Kathy Griffin, and Neil McCoy.

The USO has provided services for the annual "Tribute to the Troops" special of World Wrestling Entertainment. They have aired WWE RAW from Afghanistan and Iraq every Christmas in the United States in a pre-taped show from the combat zone.

Services
The USO provides services to troops before, during, and after deployment through staffed and unstaffed USO centers inside and outside combat zones.

Operation Phone Home
USO centers in combat zones provide free phone calls home and internet access to service members through its private telephone network and high-speed internet.

Bob Hope Legacy Reading Program
The Bob Hope Legacy Reading program allows service members to record and send a video of themselves reading a book to their children at home.

USO Care Package Program
The organization sends toiletry and snack care packages to servicemen including travel-sized hygiene products of which 170,000 were shipped in 2019, healthy snacks, and drink mixes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization assembled thousands of care packages for troops in mandatory 14-day quarantine en-route home.

USO Special Delivery
The USO hosts baby showers for military parents-to-be. The baby showers allow pregnant military spouses to network and form a community while their spouses are deployed.

USO2GO
USO2GO is a service that provides customizable kits to military servicemen stationed in areas without a USO Center containing toiletries and snacks, furniture, electronics, and/or anything else they might need. Since 2008, the USO has shipped more than 2,000 kits to places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, and others.

Entertainment
The USO has hosted more than 8.1 million center celebrity visits across the world.

Honoring Bob Hope
In 1997, the U.S. Congress honored Bob Hope by declaring him the "first and only honorary veteran of the U.S. armed forces." According to Hope biographer William Faith, his reputation has become ingrained in the "American consciousness" because he had flown millions of miles to entertain G.I.s during both wartime and peace. His contribution to the USO began in 1941 and ended with Operation Desert Shield in 1991, spending 48 Christmases overseas with American service personnel. He was always treated as "an asset to the U.S. Government with his willingness to entertain whenever they needed him." After WWII was declared over, the USO had sent out an "impassioned bulletin" asking entertainers not to abandon the GIs now that the war was over. Hope was among the first to say yes. The Military Order of the Purple Heart notes that "his contributions to the USO are well known: they are legend."

As a result of his non-stop entertainment to both the civilian population and the military, he received numerous other honors over the years: a C-17 Air Force plane was named The Spirit of Bob Hope; a naval vessel was named the USNS Bob Hope; and streets, schools, hospitals, and a golf tournament were also named in his honor. A Senate resolution declared him "a part of American folklore." The Guinness Book of Records called him the most honored entertainer ever. And during his 1993 televised birthday celebration, when he turned 90, General Colin Powell saluted Hope "for his tireless USO trouping", which was followed by onstage tributes from all branches of the armed forces. General William Westmoreland spoke about his loyalty to the GI throughout the gritty Vietnam years. And bandleader Les Brown, who was with him during many of his tours, mentioned that his band "had seen more of Hope's ass in the last forty years than any of Hope's immediate family."

War correspondent Quentin Reynolds wrote in 1943, "He and his troupe would do 300 miles in a jeep, and give four shows ... One of the generals said Hope was a first rate military target since he was worth a division; that that's about 15,000 men. Presumably the Nazis appreciated Hope's value, since they thrice bombed towns while the comic was there."

During the Vietnam War, Hope produced a number of high-rated television specials and began to perceive that the U.S. media had given him a broad endorsement to continue on his work in Vietnam. Soon after his Christmas show in Saigon in 1967, he learned that the Viet Cong had planned to launch an attack at the hotel Hope's troupe was staying at, missing them by ten minutes. According to Faith, he was later "mystified and... increasingly intolerant of the pockets of dissent. Draft-card burnings on college campuses angered him". Hope wrote in a magazine article that "Can you imagine, that people in America are burning their draft cards to show their opposition and that some of them are actually rooting for your defeat?" In the spring of 1973, Hope began writing his fifth book, The Last Christmas Show, which was dedicated to "the men and women of the armed forces and to those who also served by worrying and waiting." He signed over his royalties to the USO.

His final Christmas show was during Operation Desert Shield in 1990. The show was not easy, notes Faith. "There were so many restrictions. Hope's jokes were monitored by the State Department to avoid offending the Saudis ... and the media was restricted from covering the shows... Because in Saudi Arabia national custom prescribes that women must be veiled in public, Ann Jillian, Marie Osmond, and the Pointer Sisters were left off Hope's Christmas Eve show."

In 2009, Stephen Colbert performing his last episode of weeklong taping in Iraq for his The Colbert Report show, carried a golf club on stage and dedicated it to Bob Hope's service for the USO.

Accountability
The USO has a paid staff of approximately 800. Additionally, more than 44,000 USO volunteers provide an estimated 371,417 hours of service annually. As reported by the USO, the unpaid volunteer to paid employee ratio overseas is 20 to 1. Within the United States, the number is "significantly higher."

The Charity Navigator gave the United Service Organizations a 3-star overall rating, a 2-star financial rating and a 4-star accountability and transparency rating.

In popular culture

 * In the 1979 Steven Spielberg comedy film 1941, a riot breaks out during a swing dance contest at USO Club in Hollywood.
 * Captain America is seen performing in a USO tour during World War II in Marvel's Captain America: The First Avenger.

title: United Service Organizations


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Dry (album)

Dry is the debut studio album by English singer-songwriter PJ Harvey, released on 30 March 1992 by Too Pure. The album was recorded at The Icehouse, a local studio in Yeovil, England, and the tracks were performed by Harvey's eponymous trio. The first 5000 LPs and first 1000 CDs included demo versions of the album's tracks and Dry was subsequently released in the United States on Indigo Records. Both versions were released in 1992. Dry was reissued on vinyl and CD in July 2020: an 11-track companion album collecting all of the demos titled Dry – Demos was also released on vinyl as a stand-alone record.

Background
Speaking to Filter magazine in 2004, Harvey said of her debut album: "Dry is the first chance I ever had to make a record and I thought it would be my last. So, I put everything I had into it. It was a very extreme record. It was a great joy for me to be able to make it. I never thought I'd have that opportunity, so I felt like I had to get everything on it as well as I possibly could, because it was probably my only chance. It felt very extreme for that reason."

Critical response
Upon its release Dry received critical acclaim. In a nine-out-of-ten review for NME, critic Andrew Collins called the album a collection of "clever, repetitive, low-slung guitar poems" and said "Polly dredges these sounds from the pit of her dissected soul and drags them out of her mouth with clenched fists." Chicago Tribune reviewer Greg Kot referred to Dry as "jagged, lacerating and sexy in a disorienting sort of way" and likened the album to Broken English (1979) by Marianne Faithfull and Horses (1975) by Patti Smith; Kot awarded the album three-and-a-half-out-of-four stars, further stating "the best band out of the U.K. at the moment isn't another My Bloody Valentine guitar clone". Writing for Entertainment Weekly, Bill Wyman described Dry as a "scorching portrait of the dark side of the female psyche" and an "uncompromising work of exhilarating, cauterizing beauty", awarding it an A+ rating. Los Angeles Times reviewer Robert Hilburn gave Dry a three-and-a-half-out-of-four-star rating, writing that it "falls somewhere in between … an instant classic [and] a seductive calling card that signals the arrival of an extraordinary new artist." Critic Robert Christgau in his Village Voice column described Dry as a "cloudy but essential feminist distinction between egoist bullroar and honest irrational outpouring", rating the album an A−.

Retrospective reviews of Dry have also been largely positive. AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine summarised the album as "a forceful collection of brutally emotional songs, highlighted by Harvey's deft lyricism and startling voice, as well as her trio's muscular sound" in a four-and-a-half-out-of-five-star review. Writing for Pitchfork, Laura Snapes said Dry "is a volcano and the scorched earth surrounding it, ripped with landsliding guitars, cowpunk mania, twisted blues, profound extremes, and power chords that hit like boulders dropped from on high." The fourth edition of The Rolling Stone Album Guide, published in 2004, awarded the album a three-and-a-half-out-of-five-star rating, with Christian Hoard writing that its songs equalled "anything the hair-flailing grunge boys could deliver."

Commercial performance
Dry peaked on the UK Albums Chart at number 11, remaining on the chart for a total of five weeks. A month prior to the album's release, its second single, "Sheela-Na-Gig", had peaked at number 69 on the UK Singles Chart. Despite Dry's critical success in the United States the album did not chart on any mainstream or independent Billboard chart, however, "Sheela-Na-Gig" peaked at number 9 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart in September 1992.

Dry was certified Silver by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) in March 2005 after shipments of 60,000 copies. According to Nielsen SoundScan, the album had sold 176,000 copies in the US as of December 2005.

Accolades
In 1992 Dry was featured in several publications' year-end best-of lists. It placed at number 12 in Selects list of the best albums of the year, number 18 in Spins "20 Best Albums of 1992" list, and was also featured in Q's "Recordings of the Year" feature.

Dry has since been featured on several best-of-all-time lists. It was ranked number 70 on Rolling Stones list of the "100 Best Debut Albums of All Time" and number 151 on NMEs "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list. Dry is also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Personnel
All personnel credits adapted from Dry's album notes.

PJ Harvey Trio
 * PJ Harvey – vocals, guitar, violin
 * Steve Vaughan – bass
 * Rob Ellis – drums, vocals, harmonium

Additional musicians
 * Ian Olliver – bass (3, 5)
 * Ben Groenevelt – double bass (3)
 * Mike Paine – guitar (9)
 * Chas Dickie – cello (9)

Technical personnel
 * Head – production, engineering
 * PJ Harvey – production
 * Rob Ellis – production, mixing (5)
 * Mark Vernon – production (3, 5)

Design personnel
 * Foothold – layout
 * Maria Mochnacz – photography

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Dry (album)


text:
Richard Alston Dance Company

The Richard Alston Dance Company was a medium size, British contemporary dance company that was formed in 1994 after the demise of the London Contemporary Dance Theatre, based at The Place in London.

title: Richard Alston Dance Company


text:
Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea

Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea is the fifth studio album by the English singer-songwriter PJ Harvey, released on 23 October 2000 by Island Records. Recorded during March to April 2000, it contains themes of love that are tied into Harvey's affection for New York City.

The album became the second major commercial success of her recording career, following her successful breakthrough To Bring You My Love (1995). Upon its release, the album received acclaim from most music critics and earned Harvey several accolades, including the 2001 Mercury Prize. It spent 17 weeks on the UK Albums Chart, and has been certified Platinum in the United Kingdom and Australia. It is generally regarded as one of her best works.

Background and music
In 1998, while shooting a film as an actress for Hal Hartley in New York, she felt inspired by the city and wrote several songs. Some of them ended up on the record. In 1999, she chose to live there for nine months. However, she insisted in interviews it was not "my New York album". Songs were also written while she was in London or at home in Dorset. Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea was then recorded at Linford Manor in Milton Keynes in March – April 2000. The record was co-produced by Mick Harvey, Rob Ellis and Harvey, and mixed by Victor Van Vugt at the Fallout Shelter. The album featured a duet with Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke on the track "This Mess We're In", as well as backing vocals and keyboards from Yorke on the songs "One Line" and "Beautiful Feeling". She had met Yorke in 1992 and they had stayed in contact. She said: "I'd long been interested in the idea of somebody else singing a whole song on a record of mine, to have a very different dimension brought in by somebody else's voice. It adds so much dynamic within the record to have this other character coming in".

She wanted the record to be more direct: "It's very different musically to the first couple of albums. It's very melodic, and it's much rounder and fuller. The earlier albums were very black and white in some sense, very extreme. Melodically, this is much more sophisticated than those records. It kind of feels like a combination of every album I've made so far rolled into one." The songs were also a musical departure from her previous dark material. Harvey told Q in 2001, "I wanted everything to sound as beautiful as possible. Having experimented with some dreadful sounds on Is This Desire? and To Bring You My Love - where I was really looking for dark, unsettling, nauseous-making sounds - Stories from the City... was the reaction. I thought, No, I want absolute beauty. I want this album to sing and fly and be full of reverb and lush layers of melody. I want it to be my beautiful, sumptuous, lovely piece of work." She did, however, concede jokingly that it was only "pop according to PJ Harvey, which is probably as un-pop as you can get according to most people's standards."

Pitchfork compared her voice on the lead single "Good Fortune" to that of the Pretenders's Chrissie Hynde, while the Los Angeles Times observed: "Her singing often recalls Patti Smith and Siouxsie Sioux, artists who, like Harvey, project a sexuality derived from—yet never bound by—rock's male sensibilities."

Release and commercial performance
The album was released on 24 October 2000, and promoted with a video for the lead single "Good Fortune", shot at night in streets of London. It reached number 23 on the UK Albums Chart. The album was certified Platinum in the UK, with sales over 300,000 copies. The album debuted at number 42 on the US Billboard 200 chart. As of 2003, it has sold 357,000 copies in United States according to Nielsen SoundScan. It has also been certified Gold in France, and has sold 1 million copies worldwide.

The album was reissued on vinyl in February 2021 as part of a comprehensive reissue campaign of Harvey's back catalogue. A collection of unreleased demos, titled Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea – Demos, was also released.

Critical reception
Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea received critical acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 88, based on 25 reviews. NME hailed it as "a magnificent, life-affirming opus" by Harvey. Robert Christgau called it "the best album of her career" in his review for Rolling Stone.

Other critics rated it as only average. Spencer Owen of Pitchfork viewed the album as lacking in distinction, saying "the sheen gets slicker and her music gets duller". The publication later, however, ranked it at number 124 in their "The Top 200 Albums of the 2000s" list in 2009. In 2021, they included it in their "Rescored" list, saying that they wished to change their original score of 5.4 to an 8.4.

Accolades
The album earned Harvey Brit Award nominations as Best British Female Artist for two years running, as well as two Grammy Award nominations for Best Rock Album and Best Female Rock Performance for the single "This Is Love".

For the album, Harvey was nominated for the 2001 Mercury Prize for the third time (her previous nominations were for Rid of Me and To Bring You My Love). The award ceremony was held on 11 September 2001. Harvey was in Washington, D.C., on that day and witnessed the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon from her hotel room window. She was announced as the winner and accepted her award by phone, saying "It has been a very surreal day. All I can say is thank you very much, I am absolutely stunned." The win made Harvey the first female solo artist to receive the Mercury Prize in the award's history.

The album was ranked number eight on Rolling Stone's list of the 50 Essential "Women in rock" Albums. In 2002, Q magazine named Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea the Greatest Album of All-Time by a Female Artist. In 2006, the album was chosen by Time as one of the 100 best albums of all time. In 2009, Pitchfork named the album the 124th Top Album of the 2000s. In 2009, NME also placed the album inside their Top 100 Greatest Albums of the Decade, at number six. The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Rolling Stone named it the thirty-fifth best album of the decade. In 2019, the album was ranked 19th on The Guardian's 100 Best Albums of the 21st Century list. In the 2012 version of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, it was ranked at number 431, then in the 2020 update, it was moved up to number 313.

Singles and promo videos

 * "Good Fortune"
 * "A Place Called Home"
 * "This Is Love"/"You Said Something" (two versions)
 * "You Said Something"

Personnel
All personnel credits adapted from the album's liner notes.

Musicians
 * PJ Harvey – vocals, guitar (1–3, 5–11), bass (1), keyboards (3, 4, 8, 10), piano (12), djembe (12), maracas (6), e-bow (12), producer, engineer
 * Rob Ellis – drums (2, 3, 6–12), piano (2, 3, 7, 11, 12), tambourine (1, 8, 10), synthesizer (2), keyboards (12), bells (12), harpsichord (1), electric piano (2), vibraphone (4), background vocals (11, 12), producer
 * Mick Harvey – organ (12), bass (2–4, 6–12), drums (1, 4), percussion (3), harmonium (1), keyboards (7, 9, 10), accordion (4), background vocals (11, 12), producer

Guest musicians
 * Thom Yorke – vocals (4, 5, 7), keyboards (4)

Production
 * Victor Van Vugt – engineer, mixing (1–11)
 * Head – engineer, mixing (12)
 * Howie Weinberg – mastering

Design
 * Rob Crane – design
 * Maria Mochnacz – design, photography


text:
Penis enlargement

Penis enlargement, or male enhancement, is any technique aimed to increase the size of a human penis. Some methods aim to increase total length, others the shaft's girth, and yet others the glans size. Techniques include surgery, supplements, ointments, patches, and physical methods like pumping, jelqing, and traction.

Surgical penis enlargement methods can be effective; however, such methods carry risks of complications and are not medically indicated except in cases involving a micropenis. Noninvasive methods have received little scientific study, and most lack scientific evidence of effectiveness. However, limited scientific evidence supports some elongation by prolonged traction. Some quack products may improve penis erection, mistaken by consumers for penis enlargement.

Surgical methods
There are several surgical penis enlargement treatments, most of which carry a risk of significant complications. Procedures by unlicensed surgeons can lead to serious complications.

Surgical penis enlargement methods include penile augmentation and suspensory ligament release. Penile augmentation involves injecting fat cells into the penis or grafting fat cells onto the penis. Injecting fat cells into the penis can cause swelling and deformity; in some instances, removal of the penis may be necessary. Grafting fat cells onto the penis can be effective; however, the increase in size may disappear over time. Suspensory ligament release increases flaccid penis length, but does not increase the length of an erect penis and can create problems with sexual function.

The American Urological Association (AUA) and the Urology Care Foundation "consider subcutaneous fat injection for increasing penile girth to be a procedure which has not been shown to be safe or efficacious. The AUA also considers the division of the suspensory ligament of the penis for increasing penile length in adults to be a procedure which has not been shown to be safe or efficacious." Both statements were first published in January 1994 and re-affirmed ever since. Complications from penis enlargement procedures include scarring that may lead, ultimately, to penis shrinkage or erectile dysfunction.

Other surgical treatments include the injection of dermal fillers, silicone gel, or PMMA. Dermal fillers are also not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in the penis. Injectables such as hyaluronic acid and polyactic acid have shown some limited efficacy, however the Sexual Medicine Society of North America (SMSNA) "strongly recommends against" permanent fillers such as paraffins and silicone.

Because of great risk and uncertainty, medical professionals are generally skeptical of penile enlargement and avoid attempting it. A 2019 study in Sexual Medicine Reviews found that surgical methods of penis enlargement are typically ineffective and can be damaging to both physical and mental health. The authors found that such treatments are "'supported by scant, low-quality evidence... Injectables and surgery should remain a last option, considered unethical outside of clinical trials'". According to the study, "'overall treatment outcomes were poor, with low satisfaction rates and significant risk of major complications, including penile deformity, shortening, and erectile dysfunction'".

Medical doctors do treat micropenis with surgical procedures. In such cases, surgery can improve urinary or sexual function.

Supplements
Penis-enlargement pills, patches, and ointments are sold online. Such products are generally considered ineffective.

Physical techniques
Physical techniques involve extension devices, hanging weights, and vacuum pressure. There is also significant overlap between techniques intended to enlarge the penis and techniques intended to achieve other, related objectives, such as reversing impotence, extending the duration of erections, or enhancing sexual climax.

Pumping
Commonly called a "penis pump", a vacuum erection device, or VED, creates negative pressure that expands and thereby draws blood into the penis. Medically approved VEDs, which treat erectile dysfunction, limit maximum pressure, whereas the pumps commonly bought by consumers seeking penis enlargement can reach dangerous pressure, damaging penis tissue. To retain tumescence after breaking the device's airtight seal, one must constrict the penis' base, but constriction worn over 30 minutes can permanently damage the penis and cause erectile dysfunction. Although vacuum therapy can treat erectile dysfunction sufficiently to prevent penis deterioration and shrinkage, clinical trials have not found it effective for penis enlargement.

Jelqing
The latinized name "jelqing" is the corrupt form derived from the Persian jalq zadan ( جلق زدن ), jalq meaning "to masturbate" followed by an auxiliary verb zadan meaning "to strike, hit or throb". Performed on the halfway tumescent penis, jelqing is a manual manipulation of simultaneous squeezing and stroking the shaft from base to corona. Also called "milking", the technique has ancient Arab origins. Despite many anecdotal reports of success, medical evidence is absent. Journalists have dismissed the method as biologically implausible, or even impossible, albeit unlikely to seriously damage the penis. Still, if done excessively or harshly, jelqing could conceivably cause ruptures, scarring, disfigurement, and desensitization.

Traction
Traction is a nonsurgical method to lengthen the penis by employing devices that pull at the glans of the penis for extended periods of time. As of 2013, the majority of research investigating the use of penile traction focuses on treating the curvature and shrinkage of the penis as a result of Peyronie's disease, although some literature exists on the effects on men with short penises.

Scientific evidence supports some elongation by prolonged traction. There are also medical studies that indicate that the lengthening effects can be negligible.

Society and culture
Some doctors say that most men seeking penis enlargement have normal-sized penes, and many may experience penile dysmorphophobia by underestimating their own penis size while overestimating the average penis size.

Products purported to enlarge one's penis were frequently promoted via spam email in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In 2003, a log file from an e-commerce site used by one such spammer was accidentally exposed on the public Internet. It showed that they received around 6,000 orders for their herbal supplement product "Pinacle" [sic] in a period of four weeks, with most orders being for $100 worth of product. The US Federal Trade Commission said at the time that "there is no proof the pills work as advertised".

In 2013 in Vietnam, many Vietnamese men attempted to enlarge their penises by injecting liquid silicone into them. They were hospitalized for complications such as infections, necrosis, tumors, swelling, deformities, and sexual dysfunction.

title: Penis enlargement


text:
Hal Hartley

Hal Hartley (born November 3, 1959) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer and composer who became a key figure in the American independent film movement of the 1980s and '90s. He is best known for his films The Unbelievable Truth, Trust, Simple Men, Amateur and Henry Fool, which are notable for deadpan humour and offbeat characters quoting philosophical dialogue.

His films provided a career launch for a number of actors, including Adrienne Shelly, Edie Falco, James Urbaniak, Martin Donovan, Karen Sillas and Elina Löwensohn. Hartley frequently scores his own films using his pseudonym Ned Rifle, and his soundtracks regularly feature music by Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo and PJ Harvey.

Early life
Hartley was born in Lindenhurst, New York, the son of an ironworker. Hartley had an early interest in painting and attended the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, where he studied art and developed an interest in filmmaking. In 1980, he was accepted to the filmmaking program at the State University of New York at Purchase in New York, where he met a core group of technicians and actors who would go on to work with him on his feature films, including his regular cinematographer Michael Spiller.

Early feature films
Hartley shot The Unbelievable Truth in 1988. Made on a shoestring budget and filmed in his native Long Island, it was an unconventional love story about a suburban Long Island teenager (played by Adrienne Shelly, a soon-to-be Hartley regular) falling in love with a handsome mechanic with a criminal past (Robert John Burke, also a soon-to-be Hartley regular). The screenplay featured what have become Hartley's trademarks – deadpan humour, offbeat, stilted, pause-filled dialogue, and characters posing philosophical questions about the meaning of life, combined with a degree of stylization in acting, choreography and camera movement. The film received positive reviews and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival, establishing Hartley as a distinctive new talent in the burgeoning independent filmmaking movement.

Trust (1990) followed similar themes and style to The Unbelievable Truth, again an offbeat romantic comedy starring Adrienne Shelly as a Long Island teenager who forms a complex romantic relationship with a mysterious computer repairman (played by Martin Donovan, another Hartley regular). Trust won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival. Hartley followed this with the short feature Surviving Desire (1991), a romantic comedy about a college professor (Donovan) who has an affair with a student (Mary B. Ward). Simple Men (1992), a drama about two brothers (played by Burke and Bill Sage) who reunite to search for their anarchist father and encounter two women in a small town (Karen Sillas and Elina Löwensohn), was entered in competition at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival.

Amateur (1994) marked a change of pace for Hartley, exploring somber themes. Described as "a metaphysical thriller", it starred Isabelle Huppert as a former nun trying to write pornographic fiction who meets Thomas (Martin Donovan), a man suffering from amnesia, and Sophia (Elina Löwensohn), Thomas's wife and a porn star, who reveals that Thomas was a violent criminal and pornographer.

Hartley developed Flirt (1995) as an extension of his short film of the same name made in 1993. The film is a triptych of three separate characters involved in romantic entanglements in different cities – New York, Berlin and Tokyo – with each story using the same dialogue. The film stars Hartley regulars Bill Sage, Parker Posey, Martin Donovan, Dwight Ewell and the Japanese actress Miho Nikaido, whom Hartley married in 1996.

Later works
Hartley achieved his greatest commercial and critical success with Henry Fool (1997), a comic drama about a near-catatonic garbageman Simon Grim (James Urbaniak) and his sister Fay (Parker Posey), who meet Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan), a libertine and aspiring novelist who inspires Simon to write and seduces Fay and her depressed mother (Maria Porter). The film garnered positive reviews, and it was entered into competition at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, where Hartley won the Best Screenplay Award.

Hartley was invited to contribute the American entry to a series of films financed by French television to celebrate the 2000 millennium. His entry, a black comedy titled The Book of Life (1998) was shot entirely on digital video in New York in 1998. The story imagines Jesus (Martin Donovan) returning to Earth on the eve of the 2000 millennium to open the Book of Life (stored on an Apple Mac laptop), which will start the Apocalypse. Some sources state that William Burroughs is featured, but according to Hartley, this is actually a shot of the film's production manager doing a Burroughs impression (plus the fact that Burroughs died the previous year). The film screened on French television and had a limited commercial release in cinemas.

Hartley's next feature No Such Thing (2001) tells the story of Beatrice (Sarah Polley), a journalist whose fiancé is killed by a monster in Iceland. Beatrice's editor (Helen Mirren) orders Beatrice to go to Iceland to interview the monster (Robert John Burke), who is a sensitive philosopher. The film also stars Julie Christie as a doctor sympathetic to the monster's cause. The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.

The Girl from Monday (2005), filmed in New York City and Puerto Rico, is set in a future dystopia where people are encouraged to record their sexual encounters as an economic transaction and thus increase their consumer buying power. The film stars Bill Sage, Sabrina Lloyd and Tatiana Abracos. It premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and received a limited cinematic release, receiving mostly negative reviews.

In late 2005, Hartley moved from New York to Berlin and began preparing Fay Grim, an intended sequel to Henry Fool. The film, which starred Parker Posey, James Urbaniak and Thomas Jay Ryan reprising their roles from Henry Fool, was a comedy-drama in which Fay is coerced by a CIA agent (Jeff Goldblum) to try to locate notebooks that belonged to Henry (now a fugitive). The film was shot in 2006 in locations in Berlin, Paris, and Istanbul and premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival. It had a limited cinematic release in 2007 and received mixed reviews.

Since 1999, Hartley's films predominantly have been shot with digital cameras, including the features The Book of Life, The Girl from Monday, Fay Grim and Meanwhile (2011), in addition to his short films. His digital aesthetic is significantly different from that seen in the 1990s, and his films shot by Michael Spiller on 35mm film, which exhibit blurring of the image (due to a very low shutter speed), the use of freeze frames, and shifts between colour and black-and-white footage, also display a considerable divergence from the washed-out colours and straightforward cinematography of the Long Island films from the early 1990s. Meanwhile received its world premiere at the Camerimage festival in Bydgoszcz, Poland on 29 November 2011. The hour-long feature was released on DVD in 2012 following a successful funding campaign by Hartley using the Kickstarter website.

In November 2013, Hartley funded Ned Rifle, the third film in the trilogy that began with Henry Fool and Fay Grim, via a Kickstarter campaign. The film premiered on September 7, 2014, at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.

From 2015 to 2017, Hartley directed eight episodes of Red Oaks.

Short films
In addition to his feature work, Hartley has made a number of short films, many of which have been collected and re-released in DVD anthologies.

Theatre
Hartley's stage play Soon, a drama dealing with the confrontation at Waco, Texas, between the religious community known as the Branch Davidians and the U.S. federal government, was first produced at the Salzburg Festival and then later that year in Antwerp. It was also staged in the U.S. in 2001.

Awards
In 1996, Hartley was made Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters of the French Republic.

From 2001 through 2004, Hartley was a visiting lecturer at Harvard University while simultaneously editing No Such Thing, shooting The Girl from Monday and writing Fay Grim.

Hartley was awarded a fellowship by The American Academy in Berlin in late 2004, where he did research related to a proposed large-scale project concerning the life of French educator and social activist Simone Weil.

Personal life
In 1996, Hartley married the Japanese dancer and actress Miho Nikaido, one of the stars of his film Flirt.

Feature films

 * The Unbelievable Truth (1989)
 * Trust (1990)
 * Surviving Desire (1991)
 * Simple Men (1992)
 * Amateur (1994)
 * Flirt (1995)
 * Henry Fool (1997)
 * The Book of Life (1998)
 * No Such Thing (2001)
 * The Girl from Monday (2005)
 * Fay Grim (2006)
 * Meanwhile (2011)
 * Ned Rifle (2014)
 * Where to Land (2024)

Short films

 * Kid (1984)
 * The Cartographer's Girlfriend (1987)
 * Dogs (1988)
 * Ambition (1991)
 * Theory of Achievement (1991)
 * Flirt (1993)
 * Opera No. 1 (1994)
 * NYC 3/94 (1994)
 * Iris (1994)
 * The New Math(s) (2000)
 * Kimono (film) (2000)
 * The Sisters of Mercy (2004)
 * Regarding Soon (2004)
 * A/Muse (2010)
 * Implied Harmonies (2010)
 * The Apologies (2010)
 * Adventure (2010)
 * Accomplice (2010)

Streaming television

 * Red Oaks (2015–17)

title: Hal Hartley


text: Talk:Offside

title: Talk:Offside


text:
Lester Melrose

Lester Franklin Melrose (December 14, 1891 – April 12, 1968) was a talent scout who was one of the first American producers of Chicago blues records.

Career
Lester Franklin Melrose was born in Sumner, Illinois, the second of six children of Frank and Mollie Melrose, who owned a small farm. He relocated to Chicago around 1914 and tried out unsuccessfully as a catcher for the Chicago White Sox baseball team before starting work as a grocery salesman.

In 1918 (though some sources state 1922), he joined forces with his elder brother Walter and Marty Bloom (born Martin Blumenthal, 1893-1974) to form the Melrose Brothers Music Company, a publishing house and music store on the South Side of Chicago. In May 1923, he met Jelly Roll Morton at the store, and Morton became the company's chief songwriter and arranger. By the end of 1923, Walter Melrose moved the music publishing business downtown, while Lester continued for a while to operate the music store with a new partner.

In 1925, Lester Melrose sold his share of the store and became a freelance A&R man, combining the roles of talent scout and record producer. He started to promote many blues artists who became popular, recording them mainly in Chicago.

He worked for several record labels simultaneously in the 1930s, including RCA Victor and its subsidiary Bluebird. He also worked for Columbia and its Okeh subsidiary. Among the artists he recorded and brought to the world's attention were Joe "King" Oliver, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Boy Williamson, Memphis Minnie, Roosevelt Sykes, Lonnie Johnson, Big Joe Williams, Bukka White, Washboard Sam, Champion Jack Dupree, Jazz Gillum, Arthur Crudup, Victoria Spivey and Leroy Carr.

In many ways Melrose can be considered a founder of the Chicago blues, although he favored acoustic over electric performances. Most of his recordings were made with a small group of session musicians and had a similar sound overall. Muddy Waters, who was rejected when he auditioned for Melrose, called it "sweet jazz". The music was a mixture of black blues and vaudeville styles and material with newer swing rhythms. Melrose's chief contribution was to establish a sound with full band arrangements, ensemble playing and a rhythm section, which appealed to the increasingly urbanised black record-buying audience and prefigured the electric blues and R&B of the late 1940s and the small group sound that became dominant in rock and roll.

The Melrose sound dominated Chicago blues before World War II, but the arrival of large numbers of Southern African Americans in Chicago during and after the war brought Melrose's dominance to an end as a harder, deeper blues sound proved more popular with the new audience. However, Melrose continued to work into the 1950s. He then retired to Lake, Florida, and died there in April 1968.

Although he could not play or sing a note of music, he owned the copyright to over three thousand songs, mostly blues. As was the widespread custom at the time (and not just in blues music), Melrose often assigned composer credit and performance rights of the artists' songs to himself, paying the artists only for the recording session. His name appeared on "Reefer Head Woman", recorded by Jazz Gillum, and featuring 16-year-old electric guitarist George Barnes (the song was later recorded by Aerosmith), and "Me and My Chauffeur", recorded by Memphis Minnie (and later by Jefferson Airplane). His name also appeared on three Crudup songs recorded by Elvis Presley.

Melrose is a member of the Blues Hall of Fame.

Family members
His older brother Walter Melrose (1889 - 1973) was a music publisher who received songwriter credit for several songs identified with the Original Dixieland Jass Band, including the standards "High Society" and "Tin Roof Blues", both of which were hits as late as the 1950s.

A third brother, Franklyn Melrose (1907 - 1941), was a jazz pianist who also used stage names of Kansas City Frank and Broadway Rastus. He died after a fracas in a club.

title: Lester Melrose


text:
Ureter

The ureters are tubes composed of smooth muscle that transport urine from the kidneys to the urinary bladder. In an adult human, the ureters typically measure 20 to 30 centimeters in length and about 3 to 4 millimeters in diameter. They are lined with urothelial cells, a form of transitional epithelium, and feature an extra layer of smooth muscle in the lower third to aid in peristalsis. The ureters can be affected by a number of diseases, including urinary tract infections and kidney stone. is when a ureter is narrowed, due to for example chronic inflammation. Congenital abnormalities that affect the ureters can include the development of two ureters on the same side or abnormally placed ureters. Additionally, reflux of urine from the bladder back up the ureters is a condition commonly seen in children.

The ureters have been identified for at least two thousand years, with the word "ureter" stemming from the stem relating to urinating and seen in written records since at least the time of Hippocrates. It is, however, only since the 1500s that the term "ureter" has been consistently used to refer to the modern structure, and only since the development of medical imaging in the 1900s that techniques such as X-ray, CT, and ultrasound have been able to view the ureters. The ureters are also seen from the inside using a flexible camera, called ureteroscopy, which was first described in 1964.

Structure
The ureters are tubular structures, approximately 20–30 cm in adults, that pass from the pelvis of each kidney into the bladder. From the renal pelvis, they descend on top of the psoas major muscle to reach the brim of the pelvis. Here, they cross in front of the common iliac arteries. They then pass down along the sides of the pelvis and finally curve forward and enter the bladder from its left and right sides at the back of the bladder. The ureters are 1.5-6 mm in diameter and surrounded by a layer of smooth muscle for 1-2 cm near their ends just before they enter the bladder.

The ureters enter the bladder from its back surface, traveling 1.5–2 cm before opening into the bladder at an angle on its outer back surface at the slit-like ureteric orifices. This location is also called the vesicoureteric junction. In the contracted bladder, they are about 25 mm apart and about the same distance from the internal urethral orifice; in the distended bladder, these measurements may be increased to about 50 mm.

A number of structures pass by, above, and around the ureters on their path down from the kidneys to the bladder. In its upper part, the ureter travels on the psoas major muscle and sits just behind the peritoneum. As it passes down the muscle, it travels over the genitofemoral nerve. The inferior vena cava and the abdominal aorta sit to the midline of the right and left ureters, respectively. In the lower part of the abdomen, the right ureter sits behind the lower mesentery and the terminal ileum, and the left ureter sits behind the jejunum and the sigmoid colon. As the ureters enter the pelvis, they are surrounded by connective tissue, and travel backward and outward, passing in front of the internal iliac arteries and internal iliac veins. They then travel inward and forward, crossing the umbilical, inferior vesical, and middle rectal arteries. From here, in males, they cross under the vas deferens and in front of the seminal vesicles to enter the bladder near the trigone. In females, the ureters pass behind the ovaries and then travel in the lower midline section of the broad ligament of the uterus. For a short part, the uterine arteries travel on top for a short (2.5 cm) period. They then pass by the cervix, traveling inward towards the bladder.

Blood and lymphatic supply
The arteries which supply the ureter vary along its course. The upper third of the ureter, closest to the kidney, is supplied by the renal arteries. The middle part of the ureter is supplied by the common iliac arteries, direct branches from the abdominal aorta, and gonadal arteries; the gonadal arteries being the testicular artery in men and the ovarian artery in women. The lower third of the ureter, closest to the bladder, is supplied by branches from the internal iliac arteries, mainly the superior and inferior vesical arteries. The arterial supply can be variable, with arteries that contribute include the middle rectal artery, branches directly from the aorta, and, in women, the uterine and vaginal arteries.

The arteries that supply the ureters end in a network of vessels within the adventitia of the ureters. There are many connections between the arteries of the ureter, particularly in the adventitia, which means damage to a single vessel does not compromise the blood supply of the ureter. Venous drainage mostly parallels that of the arterial supply; that is, it begins as a network of smaller veins in the adventitia; with the renal veins draining the upper ureters, and the vesicular and gonadal veins draining the lower ureters.

Lymphatic drainage depends on the position of lymphatic vessels in the ureter. Lymph collects in submucosal, intramuscular and adventitial lymphatic vessels. Those vessels closer to the kidney drain into renal collecting vessels, and from here into the lateral aortic nodes near the gonadal vessels. The middle part of the ureter drains into the right paracaval and interaortocaval nodes on the right, and the left paraaortic nodes on the left. In the lower ureter, lymph may drain into the common iliac lymph nodes, or lower down in the pelvis to the common, external, or internal iliac lymph nodes.

Nerve supply
The ureters are richly supplied by nerves that form a network of nerves, the ureteric plexus that lies in the adventitia of the ureters. This plexus is formed from a number of nerve roots directly (T9–12, L1, and S2-4), as well as branches from other nerve plexuses and nerves; specifically, the upper third of the ureter receives nerve branches from the renal plexus and aortic plexus, the middle part receives branches from the upper hypogastric plexus and nerve, and the lower ureter receives branches from the lower hypogastric plexus and nerve. The plexus is in the adventitia. These nerves travel in individual bundles and along small blood vessels to form the ureteric plexus. Sensation supplied is sparse close to the kidneys and increases closer to the bladder.

Sensation to the ureters is provided by nerves that come from T11 – L2 segments of the spinal cord. When pain is caused, for example by spasm of the ureters or by a stone, the pain may be referred to the dermatomes of T11 – L2, namely the back and sides of the abdomen, the scrotum (males) or labia majora (females) and upper part of the front of the thigh.

Microanatomy
The ureter is lined by urothelium, a type of transitional epithelium that is capable of responding to stretches in the ureters. The transitional epithelium may appear as a layer of column-shaped cells when relaxed, and of flatter cells when distended. Below the epithelium sits the lamina propria. The lamina propria is made up of loose connective tissue with many elastic fibers interspersed with blood vessels, veins and lymphatics. The ureter is surrounded by two muscular layers, an inner longitudinal layer of muscle, and an outer circular or spiral layer of muscle. The lower third of the ureter has a third muscular layer. Beyond these layers sits an adventitia containing blood vessels, lymphatic vessels, and veins.

Development

The ureters develop from the ureteric buds, which are outpouchings from the mesonephric duct. This is a duct, derived from mesoderm, found in the early embryo. Over time, the buds elongate, moving into surrounding mesodermal tissue, dilate, and divide into left and right ureters. Eventually, successive divisions from these buds form not only the ureters, but also the pelvis, major and minor calyces, and collecting ducts of the kidneys.

The mesonephric duct is connected with the cloaca, which over the course of development splits into a urogenital sinus and the anorectal canal. The urinary bladder forms from the urogenital sinus. Over time, as the bladder enlarges, it absorbs the surrounding parts of the primitive ureters. Finally, the entry points of the ureters into the bladder move upwards, owing to the upward migration of the kidneys in the developing embryo.

Function
The ureters are a component of the urinary system. Urine, produced by the kidneys, travels along the ureters to the bladder. It does this through regular contractions called peristalsis.

Ureteral stones
A kidney stone can move from the kidney and become lodged inside the ureter, which can block the flow of urine, as well as cause a sharp cramp in the back, side, or lower abdomen. Pain often comes in waves lasting up to two hours, then subsides, called renal colic. The affected kidney could then develop hydronephrosis, should a part of the kidney become swollen due to blocked flow of urine. It is classically described that there are three sites in the ureter where a kidney stone will commonly become stuck: where the ureter meets the renal pelvis; where the iliac blood vessels cross the ureters; and where the ureters enter the urinary bladder, however a retrospective case study, which is a primary source, of where stones lodged based on medical imaging did not show many stones at the place where the iliac blood vessels cross.

Most stones are compounds containing calcium such as calcium oxalate and calcium phosphate. The first recommended investigation is a CT scan of the abdomen because it can detect almost all stones. Management includes analgesia, often with nonsteroidal antiinflammatories. Small stones (< 4mm) may pass themselves; larger stones may require lithotripsy, and those with complications such as hydronephrosis or infection may require surgery to remove.

Reflux
Vesicoureteral reflux refers to the reflux of fluid from the bladder into the ureters. This condition can be associated with urinary tract infections, particularly in children, and is present in up to 28–36% of children to some degree. A number of forms of medical imaging are available for diagnosis of the condition, with modalities including doppler urinary tract ultrasound.Factors that affect which of these are selected depends if a child is able to receive a urinary catheter, and whether a child is toilet trained. Whether these investigations are performed at the first time a child has an illness, or later and depending on other factors (such as if the causal bacteria is E. coli) differ between US, EU and UK guidelines.

Management is also variable, with differences between international guidelines on issues such as whether prophylactic antibiotics should be used, and whether surgery is recommended. One reason is most instances of vesicoureteral reflux improve by themselves. If surgery is considered, it generally involves reattaching the ureters to a different spot on the bladder, and extending the part of the ureter that it is within the wall of the bladder, with the most common surgical option being Cohen's cross-trigonal reimplantation.

Anatomical and surgical abnormalities
Blockage, or obstruction of the ureter can occur, as a result of narrowing within the ureter, or compression or fibrosis of structures around the ureter. Narrowing can result of ureteric stones, masses associated with cancer, and other lesions such as endometriosis tuberculosis and schistosomiasis. Things outside the ureters such as constipation and retroperitoneal fibrosis can also compress them. Some congenital abnormalities can also result in narrowing or the ureters. Congenital disorders of the ureter and urinary tract affect 10% of infants. These include partial or total duplication of the ureter (a duplex ureter), or the formation of a second irregularly placed ureter; or where the junction with the bladder is malformed or a ureterocoele develops (usually in that location). If the ureters have been resited as a result of surgery, for example due to a kidney transplant or due to past surgery for vesicoureteric reflux, that site may also become narrowed.

A narrowed ureter may lead to ureteric enlargement and cause swelling of the kidneys (hydronephrosis). Associated symptoms may include recurrent infections, pain or blood in the urine; and when tested, kidney function might be seen to decrease. These are considered situations when surgery is needed. Medical imaging, including urinary tract ultrasound, CT or nuclear medicine imaging is conducted to investigate many causes. This may involve reinserting the ureters into a new place on the bladder (reimplantion), or widening of the ureter. A ureteric stent may be inserted to relieve an obstruction. If the cause cannot be removed, a nephrostomy may be required, which is the insertion of a tube connected to the renal pelvis which directly drains urine into a stoma bag.

Cancer
Cancer of the ureters is known as ureteral cancer. It is usually due to cancer of the urothelium, the cells that line the surface of the ureters. Urothelial cancer is more common after the age of 40, and more common in men than women; other risk factors include smoking and exposure to dyes such as aromatic amines and aldehydes. When cancer is present, the most common symptom is blood in the urine; it may not cause symptoms, and a physical medical examination may be otherwise normal, except in late disease. Ureteral cancer is most often due to cancer of the cells lining the ureter, called transitional cell carcinoma, although it can more rarely occur as a squamous cell carcinoma if the type of cells lining the urethra have changed due to chronic inflammation, such as due to stones or schistosomiasis.

Investigations performed usually include collecting a sample of urine for an inspection for malignant cells under a microscope, called cytology, as well as medical imaging by a CT urogram or ultrasound. If a concerning lesion is seen, a flexible camera may be inserted into the ureters, called ureteroscopy, in order to view the lesion and take a biopsy, and a CT scan will be performed of other body parts (a CT scan of the chest, abdomen and pelvis) to look for additional lesions. After the cancer is staged, treatment may involve open surgery to remove the affected ureter and kidney if it is involved; or, if the lesion is small, it may be removed via ureteroscopy. Prognosis can vary markedly depending on the tumour grade, with a worse prognosis associated with an ulcerating lesion.

Injury
Injuries to the ureter can occur after penetrating abdominal injuries, and injuries at high speeds followed by an abrupt stop (such as a high speed car accident). The ureter can be injured during surgery to nearby structures. It is injured in 2 per 10,000 cases of vaginal hysterectomies and 13 per 10,000 cases of abdominal hysterectomies, usually near the suspensory ligament of the ovary or near the cardinal ligament, where the ureter runs close to the blood vessels of the uterus.

Imaging
Several forms of medical imaging are used to view the ureters and urinary tract. Ultrasound may be able to show evidence of blockage because of hydronephrosis of the kidneys and renal pelvis. CT scans, including ones where contrast media is injected intravenously to better show the ureters, and with contrast to better show lesions, and to differentiate benign from malignant lesions. Dye may also be injected directly into the ureters or renal tract; an antegrade pyelogram is when contrast is injected directly into the renal pelvis, and a retrograde pyelogram is where dye is injected into the urinary tract via a catheter, and flows backwards into the ureters. More invasive forms of imaging include ureteroscopy, which is the insertion of a flexible endoscope into the urinary tract to view the ureters. Ureteroscopy is most commonly used for medium to large-sized stones when less invasive methods of removal cannot be used.

Other animals
All vertebrates have two kidneys located behind the abdomen that produce urine, and have a way of excreting it, so that waste products within the urine can be removed from the body. The structure specifically called the ureter is present in amniotes, meaning mammals, birds and reptiles. These animals possess an adult kidney derived from the metanephros. The duct that connects the kidney to excrete urine in these animals is the ureter. In placental mammals, it connects to the urinary bladder, whence urine leaves via the urethra. In monotremes, urine flows from the ureters into the cloaca. The ureters are ventral to the vas deferens in male placental mammals, but dorsal to the vas deferens in marsupials.

History
The word "ureter" comes from the Ancient Greek noun οὖρον,, meaning "urine", and the first use of the word is seen during the era of Hippocrates to refer to the urethra. The anatomical structure of the ureter was noted by 40 AD. However, the terms "ureter" and "urethra" were variably used to refer to each other thereafter for more than a millennium. It was only in the 1550s that anatomists such as Bartolomeo Eustachi and Jacques Dubois began to use the terms to specifically and consistently refer to what are in modern English called the ureter and the urethra. Following this, in the 19th and 20th centuries, multiple terms relating to the structures such as ureteritis and ureterography, were coined. Kidney stones have been identified and recorded about as long as written historical records exist. The urinary tract including the ureters, as well as their function to drain urine from the kidneys, has been described by Galen in the second century AD.

The first to examine the ureter through an internal approach, called ureteroscopy, rather than surgery was Hampton Young in 1929. This was improved on by VF Marshall who is the first published use of a flexible endoscope based on fiber optics, which occurred in 1964. The insertion of a drainage tube into the renal pelvis, bypassing the ureters and urinary tract, called nephrostomy, was first described in 1941. Such an approach differed greatly from the open surgical approaches within the urinary system employed during the preceding two millennia.

The first radiological imaging of the ureters was by X-rays, although this was made more difficult by the thick abdomen, which the low power of the original X-rays could not penetrate enough to produce clear images. More useful images were able to be produced when Edwin Hurry Fenwick in 1908 pioneered the use of tubes covered in material visible to X-rays inserted into the ureters, and in the early 20th century when contrasts were injected externally into the urinary tract (retrograde pyelograms). Unfortunately, much of the earlier retrograde pyelograms were complicated by significant damage to the kidneys as a result of contrast based on silver or sodium iodide. Hryntshalk in 1929 pioneered the development of the intravenous urogram, in which contrast is injected into a vein and highlights the kidney and, when excreted, the urinary tract. Things improved with the development by Moses Swick and Leopold Lichtwitz in the late 1920s of relatively nontoxic contrast media, with controversy surrounding publication as to who was the primary discoverer. Side-effects associated with imaging improved even more when Tosten Almen published a ground-breaking thesis in 1969 based on the less toxic low-osmolar contrast media, developed based on swimming experiences in lakes with different salinity.

title: Ureter


text:
Talk:Matthew Shepard

Requested move 12 October 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not moved: no consensus to do so, and proposer verges on withdrawall of the proposition. (non-admin closure) Kevin McE (talk) 20:31, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Matthew Shepard → Murder of Matthew Shepard – WP:VICTIM: Shepard was not a notable person, he was the victim of a crime. The crime is what is notable, and the information about Shepard is background. HandsomeFella (talk) 07:26, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

 * For reference, such a proposal occurred here ten years ago, as included in this archive and its subsequent section. —ADavidB 09:35, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

 * Oppose. There is a lot of material out there now that focuses on Shepard himself and his life, not just his death. I also oppose for similar reasons we have an article titled "Emmett Till" rather than "Murder of Emmett Till." On a side note: I'll alert WP:LGBT to this move request. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 11:49, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose Plenty of sources document Matthew Shepard for who he was. His memory has gained heroic standing and lots of sources focus on him as representative of gay men in a certain historic era. His biography is unlike the cases to which Wikipedia editors usually apply WP:VICTIM.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  13:10, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment: Ok, I didn't know this. HandsomeFella (talk) 11:05, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Support per WP:VICTIM. His murder is what is notable. If he had simply died in a car accident instead of being murdered, he would have never met Wikipedia's notability guidelines. Rreagan007 (talk) 03:03, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment: Nor would his parents likely have attained notability under such a situation. Would the same logic suggest we prefix their article titles with "Murder victim parent"? —ADavidB 06:23, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
 * However, they have done notable things since. Matthew, unfortunately, never got the chance. --Khajidha (talk) 18:48, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

 * Oppose: While WP:VICTIM, which is being cited as support for renaming, included a section on article titles when it was a proposed guideline, it no longer does. If Shepard's notability is truly questioned per the current guideline, the article content should be considered for a merge with another article (or made a sub-article to it due to size), instead of being given simply a "murder of" naming prefix. —ADavidB 07:57, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Support - Matthew Shepard was not notable before being killed, his notability is solely as a murder victim. And I would also support a move for Emmett Till on the same grounds. --Khajidha (talk) 18:48, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose. It's often true that for people who are notable only for having been murdered, an event article about the murder is more appropriate than a biographical article about the person. However, there can be exceptions in certain circumstances — and Matthew Shepard, a person whose murder turned him into an international icon of human rights, who 20 years after his death is still more household-name hyperfamous than virtually any other not-already-notable-in-life murder victim in the entire history of human death, is legitimately one of those special circumstances. There's been a lot written in those intervening 20 years about his life before his murder, far, far more than most other murder victims have ever seen. And this has been proposed before, but failed for exactly this reason — it's not solely a question of whether he became notable by doing something or by having something done to him, in and of itself, but a question of where the reliable sources do or don't enable us to place the balance of content. And the sources do enable us to write a lot more about Matthew Shepard as a person than we can about most other murder victims, and his name is much more instantly and sustainably recognizable to the general public than the names of most other murder victims are. Matthew Shepard is a special case who can't simply be treated the same way as most others, because for one reason or another his notability as an article topic transcended the circumstances of how it was initially established in the first place — very few other murder victims can honestly claim to have become enduringly megafamous symbols of human rights in the way that Shepard has. Out of all the gaybashing deaths that happened before Matthew Shepard's, for whatever reason his was the one that made the world stop and really look at the fact that people were getting killed for being gay — his was the gaybashing death that changed history in a much deeper way than any other gaybashing death ever had before. That's why he's special: he transcended the circumstances of his death to become the ultimate symbol of the fact that nobody else should ever die this way again. Bearcat (talk) 17:26, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose. per Bearcat and also the fact that the Britannica, lists him under biography, so we're not establishing precedent here, it's just common sense. GuzzyG (talk) 03:00, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose. per Bearcat. MS's notability was triggered by his murder, and if this discussion was taking in the immediate aftermath of the murder then "Murder of MS" would be the appropriate title. But 2 decades, his life has been written about at least as much as his death. We can write a reliably-sourced encyclopedic article about his life, and we already have one. So no need to narrow the scope. -- Brown Haired Girl (talk) • (contribs) 04:45, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

"...two consecutive life sentences." ?
Early in the article is this confusing sentence:

"Both McKinney and Henderson were convicted of the murder, and each of them received two consecutive life sentences."

Later, referring only to McKinney, it twice states that he received "...two consecutive life sentences."

Since there was only a single murder, how would each defendant be sentenced to "two [my emphasis] consecutive life sentences"? Espaqu (talk) 01:24, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

 * I added a link to the back-to-back life sentences article, though it doesn't fully answer your question (which extends beyond the subject of Shepard). Clearly, multiple sentences are possible for single murders in the court's jurisdiction, even if it is unusual. Possibly related, in Henderson's case (tried first), the judge reportedly commented that the court did not believe Henderson truly felt remorse. —ADavidB 04:19, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

His murder had nothing to do with the fact that he was gay
He was killed during a robbery because he was a drug dealer 2600:8805:C08:7100:91F9:6E98:A1B8:C1CE (talk) 10:51, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

 * This view is already included in the article's "Subsequent reporting" section. —ADavidB 11:46, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

 * Not really. Most of the article implies otherwise.  And that is only mentioned described as an allegation by one person. North8000 (talk) 12:38, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * The "emperor had no clothes " statement is that there is no basis for the the widely accepted and broadly asserted Confirmation bias meme that it was because he was gay. The big story here is how widely it was accepted as fact (per Confirmation bias) despite having no basis. North8000 (talk) 00:55, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
 * These people create martyrs out of victims, they’re silly and low intelligence. 75.169.129.47 (talk) 23:58, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Curious: Who are "these people?" 2601:19E:4180:6D50:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 23:59, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Folks: Talk pages are a place to discuss changes to articles, not a platform for personal views on a topic.

The theory that this incident was about a drug deal is mentioned in the article and covered in the book promoting that theory. There's significant criticism of that book's theory.

I question the neutrality of an experienced Wikipedia editor would say "there is no basis for the the widely accepted and broadly asserted Confirmation bias meme that it was because he was gay." That assertion is easily refuted by a cursory read of the article. For example, the killer's defense asserted that he killed Shepard because he was gay while under a state of temporary insanity. Furthermore, the various reliable sources cited in the article present that his sexuality was related to his murder.

I sense that people have strong feelings about this and related topics, but I recommend stepping back and keeping WP:ADVOCACY and WP:NOTABOUTYOU in mind. Davidwbaker (talk) 16:27, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
 * My statement was about the widely accepted meme that the murder was because he was gay.  Not that it was unrelated. For example, that is how they lured him. "Related" is not "because".  Your added "because" was not in the article.    The only place where because was mentioned was a statement by the girlfriend which was later recanted. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 19:14, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

 * Just one example from the article: "McKinney's lawyer attempted to put forward a gay panic defense, arguing that McKinney was driven to temporary insanity by alleged sexual advances by Shepard."
 * That is a pretty clear causal relationship between the killing and the victim's sexual orientation. Your argument that there's no basis for this causal relationship is easily refuted. Davidwbaker (talk) 20:14, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I said what I have to say and stand by it. Not going to go in circles or repeat.  Wish you the best. North8000 (talk) 21:46, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

"He was killed because he was gay" is unsourced and not in the article. But that narrative was promoted and was and is still widely believed. It looks like more sources are starting to point all of that out. North8000 (talk) 21:20, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Mathew Sheppard
He was killed by people who he had sexual relations with in the past. Matthew used and sold meth, and its factually inaccurate to say he was killed for being gay. 2600:1005:B08D:F75F:F939:8239:4022:427F (talk) 22:42, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

 * You're going to need sources for those claims. DonIago (talk) 16:25, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Source to consider integrating in
https://www.thefp.com/p/the-story-of-matthew-shepards-murder-92b Pengortm (talk) 20:24, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Matthew Shepard