R.I.P. Lizbeth Webb

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'Champagne Soprano' Lizbeth Webb bows out

Lizbeth Webb, the Fifities West End star and muse of Ivor Novello, has died aged 86.

By Richard Eden

7:26AM GMT 20 Jan 2013 - London Telegraph

Just weeks before a West End revival of Gay's the Word, the Ivor Novello show that turned her into one of the biggest stars of the Fifties, Lizbeth Webb has died at the age of 86.

After entertaining British troops during the Second World War, the glamorous actress, who was known as the "Champagne Soprano", helped revive theatreland with her appearances in the hit musicals Bless the Bride and Guys and Dolls.

Her role in Gay's the Word, which is to be revived at the Jermyn Street Theatre next month, was written especially for her by Novello, the celebrated composer.

Webb, who died last Thursday, became Lady Campbell after she married Sir Guy Campbell, a baronet and Army colonel who was awarded the Military Cross.

After retiring from the stage to raise her two sons, one of whom is the actor Rory Campbell, she enjoyed a triumphant return in 1967 in The Merry Widow.


Lizbeth Webb, who has died aged 86, transformed herself from a wartime dance-band vocalist to 1950s West End star, earning the accolade of “the champagne soprano”.

Lizbeth Webb

Lizbeth Webb Photo: David Sim

7:10PM GMT 22 Jan 2013 London Telegraph

When, in the mid-1950s, she became engaged to Guy Campbell, a decorated war hero, she did not know he was heir to a baronetcy. On her marriage in 1956, newspapers cited her as a latter-day example of the Edwardian girl making a social odyssey from “chorus to coronet”.

Her first professional West End break was as an understudy, when she took over the lead in Vivian Ellis and AP Herbert’s Parliamentary satire Big Ben in 1946. But her biggest success was as Lucy Veracity Willow in Ellis and Herbert’s next show, Bless The Bride.

In her show-stopping number This Is My Lovely Day Lizbeth Webb allied a powerful soprano voice to a graceful stage presence. A recording of the song was soon released, with her other big number, I Was Never Kissed Before, on the B-side. The show proved the perfect antidote to the continuing toils of post-war austerity in Britain and it received a huge boost in the summer of 1947 when the engagement was announced between Princess Elizabeth and Lt Philip Mountbatten. With the royal nuptials taking place that November, Britain was gripped by wedding fever which greatly contributed to the success of Bless the Bride.

Lizbeth Webb next played the juvenile lead in Ivor Novello’s last musical, Gay’s the Word (1951), a part that nearly eluded her. Dame Cicely Courtneidge, playing the title role, told the composer that there was no place for another female lead, until it was explained to her that Miss Webb was a fine lyric soprano who had no intention of encroaching on Courtneidge’s territory as a comedienne.

After appearing as Sarah Brown in the first London production of Frank Loesser’s Guys and Dolls (1953), she met Campbell, and subsequently wound down her career. She emerged to star in the title role of Lehar’s The Merry Widow on a national tour in 1969, but thereafter effectively retired from the stage.

The youngest of three children, she was born Elizabeth Sandra Wills-Webber at Tilehurst, near Reading, on January 30 1926, but her mother died in childbirth and she and her two sisters were each adopted by different aunts. Educated at Hemdean House and Queen Anne’s School, Caversham, as a girl she was taught to row by her adoptive father, and excelled at swimming and sprinting.

When she was 14 she auditioned for Julian Kimbell, who was holding singing classes locally, and who offered her free tuition, realising that one day she would be able to repay him. The coloratura soprano Gwen Catley recommended her to a producer at the BBC, and when Elizabeth, then 16, made her first live broadcast (from Ayr) with the father of the operatic tenor Dennis O’Neill, it was heard by Peggy Cochrane , the wife of the bandleader Jack Payne, who called him in from the garden to listen. Payne hired her as a vocalist, and changed her name to Betty Webb; she later became Lizbeth Webb. Her first BBC engagement was with the Albert Sandler Trio, but her popularity on radio was as a singer of ballads and opera with Jack Payne’s concert orchestra during the war. As a freelance vocalist she appeared in countless BBC Sunday concerts with Louis Levey’s Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, Max Jaffa and Vilém Tausky.

She also became a frequent broadcaster on the BBC German Service in wartime propaganda programmes, working with Mischa Spoliansky, who had written light music in Berlin during the 1920s. She sang songs in German, along with Lucy Mannheim and her actor husband, Marius Goring. On the daily afternoon magazine show Aus der Freien Welt, Betty Webb performed in sketches that promoted the delights of life in Britain at the same time as disseminating much misleading information. She was obliged to sign a form acknowledging that in the event of an Allied defeat, she would be on the Nazis’ death list.

Urged on by the bandleader Geraldo, the impresario CB Cochran (who famously ran a dancing troupe called Cochran’s Young Ladies) asked to see her, and immediately engaged her to understudy Carole Lynn in Big Ben. She took over the lead from Lynn and during the run was visited in her dressing room by Ellis and Herbert. Cochran told Lizbeth Webb that the pair had been commissioned to write a piece for her: Bless The Bride.

When the show opened in April 1947 Sir Winston Churchill was at the opening night and Queen Mary asked Lizbeth Webb to be presented privately to explain and demonstrate her singing technique. She also asked Webb to parade before her in her ball gown from the show, as it reminded the Queen of a dress she had once owned.

For his part, Cochran paraded her as his “pride and joy”. Under the terms of her contract, his new leading lady could travel only by taxi, chauffeur or on foot, with no public transport permitted. Furthermore, she could appear only in bespoke clothes and never without full make-up.

Lizbeth Webb entertained troops overseas in Austria, behind enemy lines and under sustained attack in Korea, as well as in Cyprus and Libya, where she met her second husband, Col Guy Campbell, MC, head of the British military mission in Tripoli. Although he had no idea who she was, he and Lizbeth Webb fell for each other immediately.

When she appeared in an episode of The Goon Show on radio, Peter Sellers had asked her to marry him. They were briefly engaged before she broke it off.

Lizbeth Webb’s first marriage, to Donald Parker, an RAF pilot, ended in divorce, and in 1956 she married Campbell, who succeeded to his father’s baronetcy in 1961, becoming Sir Guy Campbell, 5th Bt. He died in 1993, and she is survived by their two sons.

Lizbeth Webb, born January 30 1926, died January 17 2013