A century of memories
AS THE incomparable Dame Vera Lynn celebrates her 100th birthday, the BBC’s airing a one-hour special on the woman who truly embodies the term ‘national icon’ and SUSAN GRIFFIN’S been granted a preview...
ALTHOUGH we associate Dame Vera Lynn with the Second World War, she was actually born during the first, on March 20, 1917, in London’s East Ham.
It was her mum, after noticing her daughter’s remarkable vocal talents, who pushed her on stage.
Lynn was singing in public before her eighth birthday, and would impress the crowds with rousing renditions of classics at working men’s clubs (“They were great audiences”). She soon earned her reputation as the ‘little belter’, as despite her small stature, she’d manage to belt songs to the back of the hall. Back then, there were no mics, so Lynn would sing in a higher key. “I had to lower the tone of my voice when I started using microphones,” she points out.
Despite her extraordinary success, Lynn never received formal training, although she does recall her one and only singing lesson with a wry smile.
“I went once to extend my range but was told, ‘No, I can’t train that voice. It’s not a natural voice’. So I said, ‘Thank you very much, madam,’ and left.” At the age of 15, she was spotted, signed on the spot and catapulted to the fashionable world of the big band scene. The audiences warmed to her instantly, and she soon became a regular on BBC radio.
Lynn couldn’t read music, and instead, she explains, “I would look at the lyrics, and if I liked the lyrics then I would listen to the tune, because I thought the lyrics were more important than the music”. In 1936, she had her first solo record, Up The Wooden Hill To Bedfordshire, and by 22 had sold more than a million records.
When war broke out, the government realised that entertainment on the home front was vital to boost morale, and Lynn was given her own weekly radio show called Sincerely Yours.
It included lots of her favourite songs and messages to soldiers from their sweethearts and wives back home.
She herself married clarinet player Harry Lewis in 1941, before he was sent away.
The two songs Lynn is arguably most known for are We’ll Meet Again - which she used to sign off from her radio show each week (“I sang it before the war. It was just a song that was sent, and I rather liked the lyrics and thought it’s a good song because it goes with anyone, anywhere, saying goodbye to someone”) - and her 1941 recording of The White Cliffs Of Dover. “It was the last thing the boys saw when they went away, and the first thing they saw on the way back,” she says.
Veteran Stan Holland, who appears in the documentary, reveals how he and his pals travelled for two hours through the Burmese jungle to see her sing.
“It was packed out with servicemen and we were all pushing to get as close to where she was,” he says. “We were all singing and crying at the same time. To think what we were going through there, it was a good bottle of medicine.”
Veteran Ben Evans, who also contributes to the special, adds: “She did so much to cheer us up when things looked grim.
She was a forces sweetheart very quickly. It was marvellous she came to see us when so many of our entertainers didn’t.”
Asked if she ever felt frightened, Lynn says, “No, I knew I was being taken good care of.
“The boys never left my side.”