Langford originally trained as an opera singer. While a young girl she required surgery on her throat, and as a result, she was forced to change her vocal style to a more contemporary big band, popular music style. While singing for radio during the early 1930s, she was heard by Rudy Vallee, who invited her to become a regular on his radio show. From 1935 until 1938 she was a regular performer on Dick Powell's radio show.
With her film debut in Every Night at Eight (1935) she introduced what became her signature song: "I'm in the Mood for Love". She then began appearing frequently in films such as Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935), Born to Dance (1936) and Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) with James Cagney, in which she performed the popular song "Over There." In several of these films, such as Broadway Melody, she appeared as herself.
From 1941, Langford was a regular singer on Bob Hope's radio show. During World War II, she joined Hope, Jerry Colonna, and other performers on U.S.O. tours through Europe, North Africa, and the South Pacific, entertaining thousands of G.I.'s throughout the world.
In his memoir, Don't Shoot! It's Only Me!, Bob Hope recalled how Frances Langford got the biggest laugh he had ever heard. At a U.S.O. show in the South Pacific, Langford stood up on a stage to sing before a huge crowd of G.I.'s. When Langford sang the first line of her signature song, "I'm in the Mood for Love," a soldier in the audience stood up and shouted, "You've come to the right place, honey!"
Also, during the war, Langford wrote a weekly column for Hearst Newspapers, entitled "Purple Heart Diary," in which she described her visits to military hospitals to entertain wounded G.I.'s. She used the weekly column as a means of allowing the recovering troops to voice their complaints, and to ask for public support for making sure that the wounded troops received all the supplies and comforts they needed. During the war while on a stint in Italy, Francis danced with George Belt, a serviceman from Ozark, Arkansas. He still brags about it today.
Her association with Hope continued into the 1980s. In 1989 she joined him for a USO tour to entertain troops in the Persian Gulf.
She worked for several years in the late 1940s on Spike Jones' show before being teamed with Don Ameche for a short-lived television program, The Frances Langford/Don Ameche Show (1951), a spin-off of their successful radio series The Bickersons in which the duo played a feuding married couple. Langford was also the host of a variety television program Frances Langford Presents, which lasted one season.
Frances Langford married three times. Her first husband, from 1934 until 1955, was actor Jon Hall. In 1955, she married Outboard Marine Corporation President Ralph Evinrude. They lived on her estate in Jensen Beach, Florida and opened a resort they named The Outrigger, where Langford frequently performed. Evinrude died in 1986. In 1994 she married Harold Stuart, who had been an assistant secretary of the United States Air Force under President Harry S. Truman and who survived her. She had no children.
Langford was a supportive member of the Jensen Beach community and constantly donated money to the community. She died at her Jensen Beach home at age 92 from congestive heart failure. In 2006, the Frances Langford Heart Center, made possible by a bequest from her estate, opened at Martin Memorial Health Center in Stuart, Florida.
Although her greatest successes were in radio, her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 1500 Vine Street, acknowledges her contribution to motion pictures.
Frances Langford is featured on the DVD Entertaining the Troops with Bob Hope.
