For God knows how many tens of millions, Vera Lynn‘s “We’ll Meet Again” is known for one thing and one thing only — as a tuneful accompaniment to a montage of nuclear explosions at at the very end of Stanley Kubrick‘s Dr. Strangelove (’64).
So in the wake of Lynn’s passing it’s fairly mind-blowing that a 6.18.20 obit by Variety‘s Manori Ravindran fails to mention the Strangelove linkage.
Here are three guesses as to why Ravindran, Variety‘s London-based international editor, dropped the ball.
One, because the 30something staffer wanted to write a positive-minded, hooray-for-a-legendary-singer tribute to Lynn, and felt that the satirical Strangelove association would somehow diminish that. Or two, because Claudia Eller, who’s been furloughed from her Variety editor-in-chief post over safety/sensitivity issues, wasn’t there to catch the omission. Neither did Eller’s successor, Cynthia Littleton.