Vera Lynn, Actress, - Biography
Actress,
Born March 20, 1917, East Ham, London, England
A
pic of her
Vera Lynn, born Birth name Vera Margaret Welch, is a British
singer whose career flourished during World War II, when she was nicknamed "The
Forces' Sweetheart". She is best known for the popular songs "We'll
Meet Again", written by Ross Parker & Hughie Charles, & "The
White Cliffs of Dover", words by Nat Burton, music by Walter Kent. She is
one of the last surviving major entertainers of the war years.
Lynn was born
Vera Margaret Welch on March 20, 1917 in East Ham, London. Later she adopted her
grandmother's maiden name Lynn as her stage name. She began singing at the age
of seven. Her first radio broadcast, with the Joe Loss Orchestra, was made in
1935. At this point she was being featured on records released by dance bands
including Loss's & Charlie Kunz's. In 1936 she made her first solo record
on the Crown label, "Up the Wooden Hill to Bedfordshire". This label
was soon swallowed up by Decca. After a short stint with Loss she stayed with
Kunz for a few years during which she waxed several standards. She later moved
to the aristocrat of British dance bands, Bert Ambrose.
Lynn married clarinettist
& saxophonist Harry Lewis in 1939, the year World War II broke out. In 1940
she began her own radio series, "Sincerely Yours", sending messages
to British troops stationed abroad. In this radio show she & a quartet performed
the songs most requested to her by soldiers stationed abroad. She also went into
hospitals to interview new mothers & send messages to their husbands overseas.
She toured Burma & gave outdoor concerts for soldiers. In 1942 she recorded
the Ross Parker/Hughie Charles song "We'll Meet Again" while making
the film of the same name. The nostalgic lyrics ("We'll meet again, don't
know where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day")
had a great appeal to the many people separated from loved ones during the war,
& it became one of the emblematic songs of the wartime period.
After the
war, her "Auf Wiederseh'n Sweetheart" became the first record by a British
artist to top the US charts, doing so for nine weeks, & she appeared regularly
on Tallulah Bankhead's US radio programme "The Big Show". "Auf
Wiederseh'n Sweetheart", along with "The Homing Waltz" & "Forget-Me-Not"
gave Lynn a remarkable three entries on the first UK Singles Chart, a top 12 (which
contained 15 songs owing to tied positions).
Lynn's career flourished in the
1950s, peaking with "My Son, My Son", a number-one hit in 1954. Lynn,
who never had a son, only a daughter, co-wrote the song with Eddie Calvert. In
early 1960, Lynn left Decca Records, with whom she had been for nearly 25 years,
& joined EMI. There, she recorded for EMI's Columbia, MGM & HMV subsidiaries.
Lynn
was appointed an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in 1969 &
a DBE (Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 1975. In 1976 a charity
dedicated to funding breast cancer research was founded, Lynn being its chair
& later its president [1]. She sang outside Buckingham Palace in 1995 in a
ceremony marking the golden jubilee of VE Day. Lynn, then 78, decided to go out
on a high as this is her last known public performance. In 2002 at the age of
85 she became the president of the cerebral palsy charity SOS & hosted a celebrity
concert on their behalf at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London.
In 2004 abstract
body artist Joanna Jones received permission & a grant to use the White Cliffs
of Dover as the location for one of her body paintings. Dame Vera spoke out against
this, stating: "I don't see how it can be publicity for Britain - it might
be publicity for the artist. People coming to Britain, especially for the first
time, expect to see the white cliffs of Dover, they don't expect to see an art
display, do they!"
The United Kingdom's VE Day ceremonies in 2005 included
a concert in Trafalgar Square in which Vera Lynn made a surprise appearance. She
made a speech praising the veterans & calling upon the younger generations
to always remember their sacrifice.
"These boys gave their lives &
some came home badly injured & for some families, life would never be the
same. We should always remember, we should never forget & we should teach
the children to remember."
· Vera recorded the Lynsey De Paul/Barry
Blue penned song Don't You Remember When in 1975, featuring backing vocals from
Lynsey as well as tamborine by Ringo Starr.
· Pink Floyd wrote a song
called "Vera" for their 1979 album The Wall; in the film based on the
album, a Christmas song "The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot" by
Vera Lynn is played over the opening credits.
· Pink Floyd also recorded
a live version of The Wall called Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980-81,
where before the concert starts, Vera Lynn's 'We'll Meet Again' can be heard in
the background just before the Master of Ceremonies gives his introduction.
·
In Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Bomb, her
song We'll Meet again, with visual effects of nuclear explosions, is the closing
title.
· Her song 'We'll Meet Again' is also played outside of The
Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at Disney-MGM Studios, as of 2001-present.
·
'We'll Meet Again' can be heard at the end of the episode of the Futurama episode
'A Big Piece of Garbage'
· 'We'll Meet Again" can be heard as
Dr. Bruttenholm is being killed by Kroenen in the movie Hellboy.
·
"Vera Lynn" is credited as an engineer in the closing sequence of the
film The Blues Brothers.
· She has written two autobiographies. "Vocal
Refrain" in 1970, & "We'll Meet Again" in the early 1990s.
· A Vera Lynn is cockney rhyming slang for a skin, which is a cigarette
paper.
· Vera Lynn is also cockney rhyming slang for the drug heroin.
· Vera Lynn went to what is now called Brampton Primary School in Masterman
Road, East Ham
· Gary Numan recorded "War Songs" with lyrics
"Old Men Love War Songs / Love Vera Vera Lynn" on his 1982 album "I,
Assassin"
In the Travis song "U16 Girls", there is a reference
to a 'girl who talked like Vera Lynn'.
Pictures of Vera Lynn, not spelt Vera Linn, Veera Lynn, Vera Lyn, or Vera Lynne
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