Singer and soldiers’ sweetheart
Dame Vera Lynn symbolised the spirit and sentiment of World War II with evocative songs which she continued to sing as Britain underwent enormous changes over the next 80 years.
Her warm place in the public imagination remained until long after she had ceased to have her own television show and had given up touring and singing in public. When We’ll Meet Again: The Very Best of Vera Lynn, a new collection of her old songs, came out in 2009 it outsold U2 and Eminem, pop performers of whom she had never heard, making her the oldest person to top the album charts.
This success could be partly explained by her voice, which was both recognisable and compelling. But it was also due to her refusal to adjust to every new public fad but, instead, to adhere to the values of her respectable working-class upbringing.
Although carefully posed photographs made her stunningly attractive, she was also the straightforward, toothy ‘‘girl-next-door’’ whom young servicemen would have liked to marry.
She was born Vera Margaret Welch at East Ham, Essex (now part of Greater London) in 1917. Her father was a plumber and master of ceremonies at the local working men’s club where, encouraged by her mother, she made her debut at seven singing gushy numbers.
She joined a juvenile troupe and continued to make solo appearances at other local venues. At 14 she left Brampton Road School to sew buttons at a local clothing factory for six shillings and sixpence aweek. She lasted a day, and never returned after her father realised she could earn more than that for a single song.
Changing her stage name to Vera Lynn she had one unsuccessful singing lesson, at which the instructor tried to persuade her to sing in a higher register. She started to make records for Woolworths then graduated to the sophisticated Ambrose Orchestra, where limited exposure on a BBC broadcast, when she was rationed to one song, brought a flood of fan mail. .
In January 1940 it was reported that she was selling more records than Bing Crosby.
The BBC had been resisting the increasing popularity of female singers with bands even before hostilities broke out, but a radio critic pointed out that the bulk of requests sent in by soldiers of the Eighth Army to the Overseas Service were for sentimental tunes, with ‘‘recordings by Miss Vera Lynn specifically and predominantly asked for’’. Her position was confirmed when she beat Judy Garland and Deanna Durbin in a poll to find the ‘‘Forces’ Sweetheart’’.
Answering the mounting flood of letters addressed to her personally, Vera Lynn liked to reply with a signed photograph or a parcel of cigarettes.
At the same time she toured the country in shows, visited factories and Army camps and made three films in which she played herself, We’ll Meet Again, Rhythm Serenade and One Exciting Night; they were ‘‘lousy’’, she recalled years later.
Driving around London in her soft-top Austin 10, with a tin hat on the front seat, she was often accompanied by Harry Lewis, a cocky, rather scruffy man who played saxophone with Ambrose before leaving with several other players to form the RAF band the Squadronaires. They wed in 1941, and Lewis became her business manager, agent and lighting engineer after the war, protecting her from the outside world.
In 1944 Vera Lynn undertook her toughest wartime assignment, a tour of the Burma front, as amember of the military entertainment organisation Ensa. While the men appreciated her singing
Yours and The White Cliffs of Dover, she came to recognise how much the young soldiers valued the contact she represented with the homes they had not seen for years. In touring hospitals she would sit on their beds and, if alone with one, listen to the concerns that would sometimes pour out with accompanying tears.
That tour was a defining experience for Vera Lynn, as it was an important moment for the men. After her home at Barking was bombed, Vera Lynn bought a Sussex mansion with 40 acres. She eventually returned to London to fulfil her recording contract with Decca, widening her repertoire with such numbers as Our Baby and The World Belongs to You, Little Man.
Then, despite her loyal following, a BBC executive told her in 1949 that ‘‘sob stuff’’ was no longer wanted and that she would have to change her style.
Eventually the BBC relented, and although she never returned to being the ubiquitous radio presence she had been during the war, she had radio and television shows and toured Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, where ex-servicemen showed that their love for her remained undimmed.
Making some effort to adjust to the times, in 1952 she had three Top Ten hits in the first official British singles chart, and four years later reached the No 1 spot with My Son, My
Son. Although no lover of rock’n’roll, she had shows which featured Cliff Richard and the Generation Game dance troupe. She even made an album entitled Hits of the Sixties.
After singing in public for the last time outside Buckingham Palace in 1995, she found herself still in demand from her charities, taking no fees and raising large sums for children with cerebral palsy, the Breast Cancer Research Trust and Age Concern. And there were still the Burma Star Association and Desert Rats reunions, events to raise money for the War Widows Association, where she would champion the later veterans of the Falklands and the Gulf.
Made a dame in 1975, Lynn never completely retired from her public role. Continuing to live at the village of Ditchling in East Sussex after her husband died in 1997, she enjoyed her garden, took part in amarch against foreign juggernaut lorries, and protested against a proposal for a drilling rig off the Sussex coast.
To the end she took a close interest in the nation’s affairs. Interviewed this year she reflected on the peril of coronavirus, insisting: ‘‘I am a firm believer in carrying on. It is so important to keep going, keep smiling and keep hoping even when things are tough.’’
She is survived by her daughter.