Introduction

Anne Lenner was a British dance band singer whose career flourished in the years 1934-1945. Her smooth, distinctive vocal style was characterized by languid, seductive elegance. Her career saw British music transition into the swing era, and she always managed to inject a note of her trademark sophistication into the new tunes. She was joined in this endeavor by American pianist and bandleader Carroll Gibbons. The lion’s share of her artistic output was with him and his band, but even when she worked with other groups, her voice stood out as uniquely dignified and attractive, and her vocal delivery was unusually flawless.

Youth

“Anne Lenner” was a pseudonym. She was born Violet Green on December 24, 1912 in Aylestone, a suburb of Leicester, to comedian Arthur Green, who used the stage name “Tom Lenner,” and Florence “Florrie” Wright, a chorus vocalist who “appeared with all the greats of the Edwardian era.” ¹ Arthur and Florence had six daughters and two sons. They eventually put on a show with their daughters (Florence, Maidie, Ida, Rosa, Ivy, and of course, Violet) as “Tom Lenner, Florrie Wright and the Chicks.” ² All of the sisters except Maidie would continue in show business; their brothers Herbert and Arthur did not become entertainers. ³ Today Anne Lenner is the most famous member of that family, but in the 1930s and 1940s the younger Florence and Ivy were also incredibly popular singers; they worked under the pseudonyms “Judy Shirley” and “Shirley Lenner,” respectively. ⁴

Stage Career and First Marriage

Anne Lenner made her stage debut at age 13. ⁵ At the time, she had not yet adopted the name “Anne.” In fact, she was still being billed as “Vi Lenner” in 1931, when, according to the Western Mail,

Wedded in spite of family objections, with a ring borrowed from a comedian, two young theatrical artistes on Wednesday evening returned to the comparatively commonplace affairs of musical comedy at a Manchester theatre after an overnight dash to Gretna Green.

Mr. Geoffrey [sic] Piddock, the 25-year-old juvenile lead, and Miss Vi Lenner, the eighteen-year-old soubrette, played the performances of their lives in “The Laugh Parade” at the Royal Osborne Theatre [in Manchester], in spite of their having had no sleep for nearly 36 hours.

Gretna Green in Scotland was a traditional wedding venue for young English couples who lacked parental consent (Anne’s family did not like Piddock, and she was too young to get married in England without their approval). ⁶ Lenner would later describe Jeffrey Piddock as the man who taught her to dance. ⁷ The marriage was unhappy and short-lived, but it resulted in Lenner’s having a son, Jeffrey Anthony Piddock, who would later perform as “Jeffrey Lenner,” thereby taking the family pseudonym into a third generation. The father Jeffrey would go on to be moderately successful in theater, to appear in some films, ⁸ and to become a television producer worthy of note. ⁹

London

Still known as “Vi,” ¹⁰ Lenner relocated to London and became a nightclub singer. It was at the Cabaret Club in 1934 that she first met pianist and bandleader Carroll Gibbons, and that very night she signed a three-year contract to work with him and his group. ¹¹ In fact, she continued to record with his Savoy Hotel Orpheans well into 1942, in addition to singing at the hotel and elsewhere and broadcasting with them regularly. She must have decided to call herself “Anne Lenner” around this time, as James Dyrenforth introduced her as “the charming Girl Friend, Miss Anne Lenner” on a radio transcription recorded on January 15, 1935 (EMI SH 519; Columbia mx. CAX-7409-1).

The moniker “Girl Friend” was a play on the name of the subset of the Savoy Hotel Orpheans that she was recording with: Carroll Gibbons and His Boy Friends. While the Savoy Hotel Orpheans had an arrangement to broadcast weekly on the BBC, ¹² many of the early broadcasts Lenner is now best known for were done with the Boy Friends through the International Broadcasting Company and the stations Radio Luxembourg and Radio Normandy. The BBC was the only legal broadcaster in Britain, so commercial radio had to operate out of foreign countries within range of Britain. In 1934-1935, Carroll Gibbons and His Boy Friends collaborated with Anne Lenner on programs promoting Hartley’s Jam. The music was recorded on discs in London, which were then shipped to Luxembourg or France for actual broadcast. In 1979, Carroll Gibbons’s widow Joan revealed that quite a few of these radio transcripts had survived in his private collection, and they are now available on LP and CD. ¹³ Lenner would later do other programs with Gibbons for the International Broadcasting Company, such as the programs advertising Stork Margarine in 1937, ¹⁴ but no transcripts of these broadcasts are known to have survived.

I have noted that Lenner would continue to record with Carroll Gibbons into 1942. She certainly expressed an immense debt to him for having set her on the path to success as an artist:

No words of mine could describe my feelings for Carroll. He took me as common clay and moulded me into what I am to-day. His sympathetic help, his understanding and reassuring smile are the symbols of my success. ¹⁵

It is hard to overemphasize how intertwined their careers were, and she was for a long time almost exclusively his vocalist. All told, she recorded 172 conventional record sides with Carroll Gibbons, as well as 22 radio transcription sides — most of which have more than one song on them. She often sang duets; her most frequent partners were Brian Lawrance, George Melachrino, and Eric Whitley.

It is worth mentioning a number of one-off recording sessions Lenner had with other bandleaders and groups:

• George Walter (Walter Goehr)’s Cine Studio Orchestra (1935)
• George Scott Wood’s Masqueraders (1936)
• Stan Atkins and His Band (1936)
• Joe Loss and His Orchestra (1936)
• Maurice Winnick and His Orchestra (1940)
• Jack White and His Band (1940)
• Jay Wilbur and His Band (1941)

In the late 1930s, Lenner even appeared on television (e.g., in a 1937 episode of Cabaret). ¹⁶

Wartime, Second Marriage, and Film Appearances

For the first years of World War II, Anne Lenner continued to record with Gibbons. Her voice also shows up in films, and occasionally her face as well — her singing was often dubbed over that of other actresses: ¹⁷

Song	Actress	Film	Year	Notes
[Unknown]	Herself	Calling All Stars	1937	Appearance with Carroll Gibbons; missing from surviving prints
“When the Night Is Through”	Herself	Garrison Follies	1940	Missing film
“Harmonize”	Greta Gynt	The Common Touch	1941
“Santa Sent Me You”	Ann Todd	Ships with Wings	1941
“Every Night at Seven”	Ann Firth	Suspected Person	1942
“I Don’t Want to Be Hurt Again”		Perfect Strangers	1945	Lenner is not believed to be actually in-shot.
“Love Steals Your Heart”	Patricia Roc	The Wicked Lady	1945

In the middle of 1940, Lenner married Gordon Little, ¹⁸ an actor with whom she had broadcasted frequently.

By 1942, British entertainment increasingly reflected the wartime state of affairs, so the recordings surviving of her from 1943 through early 1945 are transcriptions that were played to the troops over the radio, with groups such as

• The R.A.F. Concert Orchestra
• The Blue Mariners
• Eugene Pini and His Orchestra
• The R.A.O.C. Blue Rockets Dance Orchestra
• The Army Radio Orchestra (directed by R.S.M. George Melachrino, Lenner’s old duet partner)

Lenner was occasionally called upon to entertain leaders such as Winston Churchill and General Eisenhower. She told the story of performing at the American Embassy in London just days before D-Day; Eisenhower thought she must be Vera Lynn, so he made a point of asking her to sing “We’ll Meet Again.” ¹⁹

Just before the end of the war, Lenner made two records with Frank Weir and His Astor Club Seven.

Post-War

At the end of the war, Anne Lenner’s marriage to Gordon Little collapsed. ²⁰ Lenner did shows for the troops stationed in Austria, Germany, and Italy; she also performed overseas in Monte Carlo and Paris, with Bert Firman conducting. ²¹ Back in London, she made one final record with Harold Geller and His Orchestra (in 1949; it was a duet with Bob Harvey).

Soon, however, she transitioned out of singing music. Her nephew John Doyle later believed that her voice was beginning to fail, which is entirely possible, ²² but the British dance band genre imploded after the war, so she would likely have had to find different work anyway. Lenner took a job as a telephone switchboard operator at MI5; ²³ she then worked at Post Office Telecommunications, which became British Telecom, into the 1980s. ²⁴

In her later life, Anne Lenner was known to attend Memory Lane parties. This author has communicated with attendees who remember her as an impressive character with a kind manner. She died on June 4, 1997 in Barnet Hospital, London ²⁵ of a metastatic carcinoma. ²⁶

The 228 surviving record and radio transcription sides that Lenner made attest to her having been a popular singer of the first order, skilled at expressing thoughts and emotions in a uniquely unforgettable style. She cleverly wrapped her skill and precision in an aura of luxurious laziness. Her vocals succeed in being simultaneously majestic and intimate. Anne Lenner’s special contributions to the cause of art, her service to her country during wartime, and her devotion to her fans, well into her old age, are a testament to a life well lived.