[msb-alumni] Vera Lynn, Singer Whose Wartime Ballads Cheered Britain, Is Dead at 103 on June 18, 2020
- From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2020 16:32:52 -0400
BlankVera Lynn, Singer Whose Wartime Ballads Cheered Britain, Is Dead at 103.
By
Lawrence Van Gelder.
Known as the "Forces' Sweetheart," Ms. Lynn performed sentimental songs that
captured
the affection of troops abroad and Britons at home.
Vera Lynn, who sang the songs that touched the hearts and lifted the spirits of
Britons from the bomb-blitzed streets of London and Coventry to the sands of
North
Africa and the jungles of Burma during World War II, died on Thursday at her
home in
Sussex, England. She was 103.. Her death was confirmed by her representative,
Andrew
Gordon. In those wartime years, Ms. Lynn became known as the 'Forces'
Sweetheart,'
and long afterward the melodies lingered on: 'We'll Meet Again,' '(There'll Be
Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover,' 'A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley
Square.
Indeed, to the end of her life the veterans were her 'boys,' still misty-eyed
when
she sang, 'We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when. 'Churchill
didn't
beat the Nazis,' the British comedian Harry Secombe once said. 'Vera sang them
to
death. Ms. Lynn herself once said: 'People used to say that my singing gave
them
courage and hope. I think that is a great compliment. At a time when American
fighting men plastered their barracks with pinups of Betty Grable, Lana Turner
and
Rita Hayworth, it was Ms. Lynn and her simple, sentimental ballads that
captured the
affections of British troops. 'I always believed what I was singing,' she once
said.
'My songs reminded the boys what they were really fighting for -- precious
personal
things rather than ideologies. [Video: Watch on YouTube.] Without losing the
common
touch, she had come a long way from East Ham, the London neighborhood where she
was
born Vera Welch on March 20, 1917. Her father, Bertram, was a plumber. Her
mother,
Annie, fostered her daughter's performing career. Vera led a local dance troupe
and
was allowed to sing at the end-of-term school show because her mother had made
the
costumes. At 7, Vera was singing in workingmen's clubs in East Ham. At 11, she
left
school to join a traveling variety troupe. At 18, having adopted her
grandmother's
maiden name as her surname, Vera Lynn was singing with popular big bands. And
at 20,
she became the resident singer with the bandleader Bert Ambrose, whose weekly
radio
program made her a household name. At 22, in 1939, Ms. Lynn won The Daily
Express
newspaper's 'Forces' Sweetheart' poll in a landslide. In 1940, she began her
own BBC
radio show, 'Sincerely Yours,' which was beamed to troops around the world on
Sunday
nights right after the news. 'Winston Churchill was my opening act,' Ms. Lynn
once
said. She read letters from the girlfriends, wives and mothers the troops had
left
behind. She sang her sentimental songs, 'We'll Meet Again' being the most
popular. In
the blitz that sent the Luftwaffe on nightly bombing raids over London in 1940,
she
sometimes slept in the theater until the all-clear sounded, then drove home
through
the rubble. 'The shows didn't stop if a raid started,' she said. 'We just used
to
carry on. Often, it seemed, Luftwaffe bombers droned over London just as Ms.
Lynn
sang 'A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,' which became the theme song of
the
blitz. 'A nice, quiet, gentle song; then the siren would go, and you kept on
singing
till the show was finished,' she said. 'Then we used to have a bit of a party
afterward. The powerful emotional content of her singing prompted concern at
the
highest levels of the BBC and among members of Parliament that such sentiment
might
sap the troops' will to fight. As thousands of fan letters poured in, an
internal BBC
memo noted, 'Sincerely Yours' deplored but popularity noted. The show went on.
Even
in Nazi-occupied Europe, where death was the penalty for listening to the BBC,
Ms.
Lynn had her fans. 'The Dutch used to listen to my programs in haystacks and
hide
themselves away,' she said. 'They'd listen to the 9 o'clock news on Sunday
night. It
was their only link to the outside world. Ms. Lynn toured Burma (now Myanmar)
for
three months in 1944, earning the enduring affection of the so-called Forgotten
Army,
which battled the Japanese in jungle combat there. She started her journey with
chiffon ball gowns, and when they fell apart, she finished in shorts. (They
wound up
as an exhibit in the Imperial War Museum in London.) Just before the war began,
Ms.
Lynn had met a saxophonist and clarinet player named Harry Lewis, who performed
with
the Ambrose band. They married in 1941, and Mr. Lewis devoted his life to
managing
his wife's career. But when the war ended, she said she was retiring. Their
only
child, Virginia, was born in 1946, and the family settled down to life outside
Ditchling, a village in East Sussex. She is survived by her daughter, Virginia
Lewis-Jones. Mr. Lewis died in 1998. In truth, Ms. Lynn was far from retired.
She had
success on television; she toured the world; she appeared onstage and in films
and
sang before British royalty in command performances. In 1951, she became the
first
British singer to top the charts in the United States, with 'Auf Wiederseh'n,
Sweetheart. 'We'll Meet Again' enjoyed an ironic second life in 1964 when it
was
heard over scenes of nuclear devastation at the end of Stanley Kubrick's dark
satire
'Dr. Strangelove. Ms. Lynn's popularity endured well into the 21st century. In
August
2009, she became the oldest living artist to reach the British Top 20 album
chart
when her collection 'We'll Meet Again' was reissued to coincide with the 70th
anniversary of Britain's declaration of war on Germany. A month later, the
album
reached No. 1. Ms. Lynn was made a dame commander of the Order of the British
Empire
in 1975. The Netherlands made her a commander of the Order of Orange-Nassau.
Though
the decades passed and she drifted out of the entertainment mainstream, she
remained
the Forces' Sweetheart -- evoking nostalgia with her old hits, appearing at
reunions
of veterans' organizations, rallying support for soldiers' widows and charities
that
helped Britain's wartime generation. Oddly enough, one of her greatest hits,
'(There'll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover,' was written by
Americans:
Walter Kent, who admitted that he had never seen the cliffs, and Nat Burton. In
1995,
Ms. Lynn got involved in making a video called 'Our War to Remember,' which she
called a tribute to the women of the home front. She said she wanted the
younger
generation to understand what World War II had signified. 'I want them to
realize
what it was all about, why people fought and died so they could be alive in
England,
not a German-occupied country,' she said at the time. 'If they can see the
struggles
these people made, young people would appreciate the older generation a little
more.
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