Blonde bombshell


John Turnbull celebrates an equivocal song in favour of married life from one to whom it was something of an hidden enigma


‘E


verything is ready for the wedding, the choir has been rehearsing for a week, the minister is standing in the pulpit, but the groom it seems is playing hide


and seek. So here I am standing, waiting starry-eyed; when will I ever get to be a bride?’ It was sixty-five years ago that my favourite song was the


hit of London. I am reminded of it by reading the obituary last month of its singer, the delightful Evelyn Dall. ‘I wanna get married’ was the main song of the show Folow the Girls, co-starring Arthur Askey, which ran for several months at the end of the war, mainly in London but also at other venues across the country. Hugely popular, it was recorded on 23 November 1945;


as was common in the days of 78s, with a Part One and Part Two covering both sides of the record, offering two bites of the cherry. Not every critic had enjoyed its mix of coyness and innuendo; one who enjoyed the show and Miss Dall in particular, nevertheless thought this song ‘should be cut as not in the best taste and quite unnecessary in a show of this description’.


Romantic normality ‘I wanna to get setled; I wanna play house. Tough men


are all no good, they say it feels so good to have your own particular louse. Give me a cosy shack, where the railroad never stops; I wanna to sleep in pajama tops; I wanna get married!’ Miss Dall was a beautiful young woman, with a delightful


smile. Cute rather than sultry, a girl next door more than a femme fatale. Te lyrics are amusing, the tune liltingly catchy, and perhaps most of all it expressed the yearning for simple, ordinary life aſter the rigours and tragedies of the war.


‘cheese’ to each other in a witless way. The sanctity of hymns is uncertain.


There has always been a tendency for poets to use hymn parodies as missiles, as T.S. Eliot, not an irreligious man, does in his poem ‘The Hippopotamus’ on the lines of Cowper’s ‘God Moves in a Mysterious Way’ about the True Church and its dividends. There used to be a fashion for singing scurrilous, or at best non-religious, words to psalm chants. I remember a clergyman going wild with fury when he heard a group of boys singing inappropriate words to ‘There is a green hill far away’. Something of an over- reaction, I thought. When Graham Leonard, in his days


A lovely popular song that sums up a haunting moment of social history – with old-fashioned sentiments of a bygone age. And it has vanished from all but the most comprehensive collections of the songs of the Forties. But still more fascinating – at a time when marriage is


under threat and less popular than at almost any time since full registration began – is the compromised, confused personal background. Miss Dall was a sort of Gracie Fields in reverse, an American who had come to Britain during the war, and maintained a punishing schedule of shows and appearances in towns up and down the country.


Wartime adultery Why did she come here? She entered, it would appear,


a marriage of convenience with Albert Holmes, manager of the Ambrose Orchestra, so that she could continue her affair with the band-leader Bert Ambrose himself, who remained married. At the time of this show, it was becoming clear to her that


Ambrose was never going to divorce his wife, and she was preparing to return to America to start a new life. Does it detract from the charm of the song? I don’t think so. It is rather a reminder that so much talk of marriage, including our own, however serious and high-minded, is still subject to the hidden, contradictory, oſten opaque emotions of all involved. By way of postscript, she did get married, in 1946; they


had a son and daughter; she seems never to have sung again; widowed in 1974, she died earlier this year at the age of 92. ND


as Bishop of London, joked that he did not want to receive Communion from a woman, because he just wanted to take her into his arms, he received considerable criticism. In lessons on literary criticism, one is taught to weigh a statement by its Sense, Feeling, Intention, and Tone. Under these headings we ask four questions about the author. First, what is he saying? The answer here is that he was stating a fact. Second, what is his attitude to the subject? He finds the ordination of women ridiculous. What does he want to achieve? He


wants to comfort and rally such as ourselves, and provoke his opponents to thought. Finally, what is his attitude


to his audience? Some would say that he patronizes and underrates their intelligence, others that he overrates their ability to see his serious implications. These are important questions for


religious jokers. While our giggles about Chedorlaomer were not notably respectful to the faith, they implied a fellowship of equality, a belief that we were not offending those to whom we spoke. Directed humour is quite another matter. We cannot but know that some of these pages may offend, but equally we cannot but know that they encourage our members, and hope they provoke thought in those to whom the magazine is also sent.


July 2010 ■ newdirections ■ 25


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