This Is The Army Collection, WWII 121

[Item name or title], [Box Numbers], [Folder Numbers], This Is The Army Collection, WWII 121, WWII Papers, Military Collection, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, N.C.

The collection documents the entirety of the international tour of American songwriter Irving Berlin's traveling U.S. Army play This Is The Army, which was performed from October 1943 through October 1945 during World War II. Developed from the 1942 Broadway musical play and the 1943 Hollywood film of the same name, This Is The Army (abbreviated by the cast and crew as "TITA") was initially designed to raise money for the war effort in the United States, and featured one of the most famous wartime songs of the 1940s "This Is The Army, Mister Jones." TITA became the biggest and best-known morale-boosting show of World War II in the U.S.

Beginning in October 1943, TITA left the U.S. for England, where it remained through February 1944. From there, they traveled to North Africa, Italy, Egypt, Iran, India, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Guam, Mogmog Island, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Hawaii, and numerous other locations in the Pacific Theater. The play traveled with makeshift stages that they set up on numerous locations and U.S. military installations/camps. The play's cast played to hundreds of thousands of U.S. service individuals, including women's bases and camps such as the Women's Army Corps (WAC) camps in the Pacific. They traveled by troop transport ships, rented cargo ships, and landing crafts.

This Is The Army was the only full-integrated military unit in the U.S. Armed Forces during WWII, with African American men eating, performing, and traveling with their fellow white cast and crew members. Many of the men were not just performers before the war, but also recruited to perform in the cast from the U.S. Army ranks in 1943. The cast was all-male, which required the men to dress as women in drag for the women sketches in the play. In all, the play would prove to be the beginning of the eventual desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces under President Harry S. Truman's 1948 Executive Order 9981.

This particular collection of photographs was mostly taken by singer and later celebrity photographer Zinn Arthur. Arthur would select and send these roughly 400 photographs to singer Robert Summerlin of Tarboro, N.C., who added and improved descriptions of the photographs based on a list of the majority of the photographs sent to Summerlin by Arthur at some point after WWII. Although Arthur is credited with taking most of the photographs, although some of the photographs may have been copied and printed from other photographers in what was called the TITA Camera Club. At the very least, the photographs are attributed to Zinn Arthur based on the original list he created and numbered the photographs in, whether he printed or took the photographs.

The collection also has six original programs and flyer for the play, particularly during its time in Italy and the Pacific Theater in 1944 and 1945. These programs were collected by Robert Summerlin while he was with the cast of the play. There are also collectible Italian postcards Summerlin picked up while in Italy with TITA. The collection includes newspaper clippings documenting the play and Summerlin's role in it during WWII. This collection of the This Is The Army photographs is the only known publically-available collection of these images in the United States.

The collection is arranged by format, then chronologically where possible within folders.

Robert Wesley Summerlin was born on December 20, 1918, in the town of Pinetops in Edgecombe County, N.C., to Robert and Mary Emma Dupree Summerlin. Mary Dupree originally married William B. Harrell on October 15, 1902, and the couple had several children together. William Harrell died in November 1912, leaving Mary as a widow. She would remarry to Robert Summerlin on March 14, 1915, in Edgecombe County. Robert Summerlin (Sr.) died on June 12, 1926, leaving Mary to be a widow once again. By 1930, the Summerlin family had come to live in the city of Tarboro, N.C., where Mary's older children and son-in-law supported her and her youngest child Robert.

Robert Summerlin attended and graduated from Tarboro High School. He would end up later traveling to Los Angeles, California, to study professional dancing. Summerlin attended the Ernest Belcher School of Dancing in Hollywood. He would go through dancing training at several Hollywood dance studios, and participated in amateur shows in Los Angeles. Summerlin was a member and dance instructor at the Hollywood Athletic Club for the two years before his military service.

Summerlin was inducted for active military service in the U.S. Army for World War II on May 7, 1942, at Fort McArthur, California. He was sent for training to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, where he held the rank of Private. Summerlin was sent overseas to the European Theater, arriving in England on July 18, 1942. He was sent to North Africa in February 1943, where he served in an Army engineering unit as a Corporal. The engineering unit distinguished itself in the North Africa campaigns against the Germans. Summerlin moved with his unit to Italy in November 1943 in the invasion of Italy.

While in Italy at a U.S. Army rest camp around April or May 1944, Summerlin was connected somehow with songwriter Irving Berlin, who discovered Summerlin's dancing skills. At the time, Berlin needed replacements for parts of his cast of the traveling U.S. military play This Is The Army (TITA), and Summerlin joined the show in May 1944. The play had been in England, Ireland, and Scotland, from October 20, 1943, when the cast left the United States for Liverpool, England, until the end of February and first of March 1944, when the play traveled to North Africa for a period in Algeria before Italy.

Summerlin's first performance with the cast of TITA was in Rome, Italy, where he had his rank lowered back to Private now that he was with the U.S. Army's This Is The Army Detachment (Detachment number 0665-A). Ironically, Summerlin was described in the cast of the play as a singer, though he also danced. The play was in Italy from March through July 1944. Summerlin traveled with the cast and crew of TITA to Egypt, Iran, India, Australia, Papua New Guinea, and throughout the Pacific Theater from August 1944 to September 1945. In October 1945, the play sailed into the harbor at Honolulu, Hawaii, arriving back on U.S. soil for the first time in two years.

Robert Summerlin remained in the U.S. Army until being discharged from active service on October 17, 1945, after completing performances in Hawaii in the first half of October. Little is known about Summerlin's life after his World War II service. He would come to live again in North Carolina by the late 1980s or early 1990s, living in Tarboro, N.C., with his half-sister Mattie Ricks Harrell Jackson living in the same city. It is unknown if Summerlin ever married. Robert W. Summerlin died on August 13, 1993, in Greenville, N.C.

The international tour of American songwriter Irving Berlin's traveling U.S. Army play This Is The Army was performed from October 1943 through October 1945 during World War II. Developed from the 1942 Broadway musical play and the 1943 Hollywood film of the same name, This Is The Army (abbreviated by the cast and crew as "TITA") was initially designed to raise money for the war effort in the United States, and featured one of the most famous wartime songs of the 1940s "This Is The Army, Mister Jones." TITA became the biggest and best-known morale-boosting show of World War II in the U.S.

After the film of the same name came out in 1943, the plan for the traveling play-at first-was for the TITA company to play throughout England for three months, after which TITA would be disbanded for good. The company reassembled at Camp Upton, New York, on September 5, 1943. The men of the cast and crew--all who were members of the U.S. Army--received carbines and took target practice in and around their tap dance and minstrel routines, in order to stay in military shape in case of enemy attacks in the field. Organizationally, the play's cast and crew served during WWII in the U.S. Army as detached soldiers in the This Is The Army Detachment (Detachment number 0665-A). Some regular soldiers were attached to the unit to make it a legitimate military force. The cast and crew was reduced from the pre-touring numbers to 150 men for the international tour.

Beginning in October 1943, TITA left the U.S. for England, where it remained through February 1944. From there, they traveled to North Africa, Italy, Egypt, Iran, India, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Guam, Mogmog Island, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Hawaii, and numerous other locations in the Pacific Theater. The play traveled with makeshift stages that they set up on numerous locations and U.S. military installations/camps. The play's cast played to hundreds of thousands of U.S. service individuals, including women's bases and camps such as the Women's Army Corps (WAC) camps in the Pacific. They traveled by troop transport ships, rented cargo ships, and landing crafts.

This Is The Army was the only full-integrated military unit in the U.S. Armed Forces during WWII, with African American men eating, performing, and traveling with their fellow white cast and crew members. Many of the men were not just performers before the war, but also recruited to perform in the cast from the U.S. Army ranks in 1943. The cast was all-male, which required the men to dress as women in drag for the women sketches in the play. In all, the play would prove to be the beginning of the eventual desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces under President Harry S. Truman's 1948 Executive Order 9981.

The materials in the collection were received by the Military Collection at the State Archives of North Carolina from Clayton Jackson of Cary, N.C. (believed to be Robert W. Summerlin's nephew), in November 2001, with the donation completed in July 2003.