Neither Heroes Nor Clowns

As you might have guessed, I find myself, this holiday season, rather morose - so many problems in the world (something one is even more aware of out here in the Sandlands, in close proximity as one is to political upheaval, not to mention social injustice on a scale and a class system as vile as one is likely to find anywhere in the world) and so few answers.

I suppose you won't be surprised that I've found, if not answers, then at least a little consolation, by watchng as many tacky holiday numbers as possible.  And, here, even finding as good a stab at an answer as I've come across yet. 

Leave it to the woman who kept up the spirits of a nation by keeping her eyes firmly fixed on "Tomorrow, when the world is free," to remind us that, as another British sensation once sang, love is all you need.  Ladies and gentlemen... Dame Vera Lynn.  It may be syrupy '70s pop, but she really socks it over.

There is Nothing like a Dame...

Good news from London - at all of 92, Dame Vera Lynn - "the Forces Sweetheart" of World War II - has become the oldest living person ever to have a top-20 album in the UK, displacing entries by the likes of U2 and Eminem.

Like many stars who first made it in radio (her coeval thrushes stateside, Kate Smith and the Andrews Sisters, come to mind), Vera had a limited run in films. Engaging if only moderately photogenic, she still comes off rather well, as in this clip from 1943's Rhythm Serenade, in which she smoothly handles the film's Obligatory Getting Dressed scene while singing a fairly routine uptempo number, "It Doesn't Cost a Dime."

She's best known, of course, for her wartime morale-boosters, songs like "We'll Meet Again," "White Cliffs of Dover," and "When the Lights Come on Again," all of which have been known at one time or another to leave me completely undone. This is certainly a lighter moment, but not at all without a dose of charm very much of its time and place. Which isn't something you can say for most work by, say, Eminem...