Guest Speaker
Dr. Christina Baade
Associate Professor of Communications and Multimedia, McMaster University
Location: 2441 Humanities
Associate Professor of Communications and Multimedia, McMaster University
Location: 2441 Humanities
In 1957, the 40-year-old Vera
Lynn was featured for the first time on the popular BBC television show, This Is Your Life. As BBC Audience Research
discovered, the episode had been watch by 21 percent of Britain’s adult
population; respondents were “delighted” to see Lynn featured, noting that she
was both “an ‘historic’ figure in the world of entertainment” and “at the
height of her professional career and popularity.” To those familiar with the
singer’s powerful place in British memory of the Second World War as an iconic
“sweetheart of the Forces,” her status as an “‘historic’ figure” might be
unsurprising, but the notion that she was at the peak of her popularity invites
further investigation.
This paper considers
Vera Lynn’s central place, as singer and host, on British television between
1956 and 1959, when she held an exclusive 3-year contract with the British
Broadcasting Corporation. With the beginning of commercial Independent
Television in 1955, the BBC turned to marketable performers, like Lynn, with
her mainstream and chart-topping records, in order to win viewers—particularly
women, whom it regarded as keepers of the household viewing schedule. The
centerpiece of the contract was undoubtedly the primetime series Vera Lynn Sings, a lavishly produced
variety show that also conveyed an atmosphere of “homeliness” and sincerity.
Drawing
upon the extensive archive of production documents housed in the BBC Written
Archives Centre, as well as contemporary criticism, this paper examines how the
show situated Lynn within the frameworks of feminine domesticity, middle class aspirations,
professionalism, and national belonging—both aurally and visually. It also
examines how Lynn positioned herself within the show, as a contemporary music star
performing in dialogue with the past.
The
paper closes with a reflection on the significance of this work for popular
music historiography. Dominant histories of postwar popular music have focused
on the development of the rock genre and celebrated bands like the Beatles for
their embodiment of youth, innovation,
masculinity, and an oppositional, anti-mainstream stance.
These narratives have failed to account for the contributions of non-rock
musicians, especially mature women like Lynn, who are associated with
femininity, nostalgia, commercialism, and the seemingly conservative
mainstream. Recovering Lynn’s postwar career, repertory, and performing
personas thus contributes to the development of a more accurate, more complex,
and more inclusive understanding of postwar popular music culture and society.
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