SOFT LIGHTS AND SWEET MUSIC

A new photographic exhibition puts the great Broadway performer Elisabeth Welch under the spotlight once again. Stephen Bourne pays tribute to the American star who made her home in the UK...

4Born in New York 1904, Elisabeth Welch made her professional stage debut in Blackbirds in America in 1928 and from there began her long and successful transatlantic stage and film career, also becoming a trailblazing figure in the world of popular music.

Throughout the Jazz Age she worked on stage with some of the great names of the Harlem Renaissance, including Josephine Baker and Bill Bojangles Robinson.

Ivor Novello wrote songs for Welch, Paul Robeson was her leading man in films, and she enjoyed popularity as a cabaret star of London’s café society. From 1934 to 1936 the BBC broadcast her own radio series Soft Lights and Sweet Music. When war broke out in 1939, Welch remained in her adopted country and supported the British war effort by entertaining the armed forces.

In 1979 Welch’s appearance in Derek Jarman’s film of Shakespeare’s The Tempest (singing Stormy Weather) won her new audience. At the age of 61 she returned to the Broadway stage, and her performance in Jerome Kern Goes to Hollywood earned her a nomination for a Tony award.

Elisabeth Welch: Soft Lights and Sweet Music by Stephen Bourne (Scarecrow Press, 2005) is available from the National Portrait Gallery bookshop.

Soft Lights and Sweet Music: Photographs of Elisabeth Welch, National Portrait Gallery, from 15 March –25 October , Room 31 case display.

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