Vera Lynn Sings: Domesticity, Glamour, and National Belonging on 1950s British Television

Abstract

In the late 1950s, musical variety shows on television played a critical role in the careers of numerous singers, particularly women working in mainstream pop. Some even hosted their own shows, becoming “television personalities,” a new type of performer skilled at conveying televisual authenticity and intimacy. We can better understand the significance of these often overlooked singers by recentering the role of television in their careers. This article takes as its case study the British singer Vera Lynn and Vera Lynn Sings, the lavishly produced, prime-time musical variety show that she hosted from 1956 to 1959 and that was the centerpiece of her exclusive, multi-year contract with the British Broadcasting Corporation. By examining her star persona on the show, the article offers a corrective to accounts of Lynn’s long life as a public figure, which tend to emphasize her fame as a singer in World War II while skimming over her accomplished career in the decades that followed. Drawing upon production documents and scripts at the BBC Written Archives Centre, together with press sources, this article argues that Vera Lynn Sings helped shape popular notions of British national identity in the late 1950s. Through its musical, performative, and visual strategies, the show offered a vision of national belonging that placed aspirational, white, feminine domesticity at the center. Anchored by Lynn’s sincere persona and sentimental songs, the show’s intimate address and musical repertoire welcomed a “family” audience across lines of gender, class, and age, while simultaneously reinforcing racist and colonial definitions of national belonging.