Dame Vera Lynn - The Lledo Model
British singer Dame Vera Lynn died on 18th June 2020, aged 103. During WW2 she was known as the Forces Sweetheart, as she sang and broadcast to Allied troops around the world.
In the 1990s Lledo used her nick-name for a set of five models depicting singers and actresses from the early 1940s. Vera Lynn being the only British star in the series.
All the models were based on Lledo model DG52, the 1935 Morris Parcels Van, which is mainly metal with only a few plastic parts. Model length 92 mm. Each vehicle was painted a different colour, with a black chassis and mudguards, and carried a head and shoulders portrait of the star on each side, using a very limited palette.
This meant that each colour had to be used for several different parts of the picture, which resulted in Betty Grable, probably the most famous blonde in Hollywood at the time, having light blue hair. That is just weird. The series title was carried on a heart on the cab roof.
All the models came in a standard Lledo window box, with header, and a brief historical note on the back.
The series was not as well done as many other Lledo sets, but I am fond of it, as it was collecting these models (as well as those from the Goodnight Sweetheart series) that introduced me to die-cast collecting in the 1990s.
The models were numbered in the Lledo Promotional series. The first two digits identify the casting, and the last three digits the finish.
LP52023 - Betty Grable (1916-73) - Dark blue truck, with the circle and heart in light blue. Portrait in flesh, three shades of blue, and brown. Red lips, blue eyes, and blue hair. Bluish-white lettering.
LP52024 - Dorothy Lamour (1914-96) - Light grey/green truck, with the circle and heart in teal. Portrait in flesh, light and dark brown. Red lips, teal eyes, sandy brown hair. Dark reddish-brown lettering.
LP52025 - Marlene Dietrich (1901-92) - Green truck, with a red background circle to the portrait. Uniquely, the heart on the cab roof is a different colour – gold. The portrait is flesh, white, brown, and light grey/green. Red lips, brown eyes, white/grey/brown hair. White lettering.
LP52026 - Rita Hayworth (1918-87) - The truck is sand, with the background circle and heart in red. Portrait in flesh, brown, pale yellow, and deep pink. Red lips, brown eyes, and blonde hair. Lettering is dark brown on the sides, and white on the cab roof.
LP52027 - Vera Lynn (1917-2020) - The truck is red, with the circle and heart in gold. She also wears a metallic gold dress. Portrait in flesh, gold, white, brown. Red lips, brown eyes, brown/grey hair. All lettering in white.
Paul Adams
NZ
The serious lack of quality here could help explain the demise of Lledo.
ReplyDeleteHow do you think they created the images Terran? On a computer or are they paintings?
DeleteBack in the 60'S it was popular to posterize photos to reduce them to patches of similar tone. It's hard to say what the studio for Lledo did as the portraits are barely recognisable and the palette used is awful. This company reproduced colourfull logos on vehicles for years using accurate colours.
DeleteWith these images only Rita Hayworth is recognisable and only because the pose is familiar to me.
Again, this explains the demise of Lledo who are now absorbed into Corgi.
Theyve obviously taken some classic hollywood portraits, posterised them to reduce the tone and run them through a program which creates vector art based on points and lines, to enable them to be scaled down and easily coloured. Its an ideal process for converting complex artwork into something simple, especially if you only have a very limited colour pallete - like LLedo!
ReplyDeleteIt's not the quality that bothers me, it's the whole wierd concept.
ReplyDeleteWho thought it was a good idea to put dodgy, modern, vinyl looking images of old movie starlets on the side of vintage delivery vans, in a range of not-quite-right period colours ?
Who are these for ?
Mish.
Mish, you ask who these are for and the answer would be the vast number of people who collect Hollywood Movie Star material. Vera Lynn was thrown in for the British Market and the series is aimed at WW2 nostalgia. If the portraits were in bright colours so as to replicate Aircraft nose art they might have been attractive and sold well in the US where Lledo marketed their product.
DeleteNow you're right there Terranova.
ReplyDeleteWW2 Aircraft style designs looking 'in period' would definitely have worked much better. I could see those selling well, though they'd still not be to my taste.
Mish.
I too think these portraits are poor, and certainly do not reflect the glamour of Hollywood in its golden age. The style reminds me of a series of Marilyn Monroe portraits that Andy Warhol did, in various colour combinations. Perhaps Lledo were trying for a 1960s Pop Art look, which is totally out of period for these 1940s stars.
ReplyDeleteA set of vintage aircraft nose art models would have been great, either based on real designs, or simply in the same style. Pin-up queen Betty Grable certainly appeared on several WW2 American bombers, and I expect all the others did as well.
The 1935 Morris van is an odd choice for the series. Lledo did have a 1940s Dodge 4x4 in their range, which appeared as both a van and an ambulance. This would have been a much better choice, and more in-period, but the large flat sides of the Morris would have made applying the markings a simple task.
Although I was not born until 1961, long after WW2, there were still plenty of old movies on TV featuring these stars when I was growing up, so I was familiar with all of them, which helped sell the series to me. In fact, this was one of the first die-cast sets I collected in the 1990s, and helped turn me in to a collector, but it is not a great set.
The things that sparked the collecting bug in us are important Paul. We can trace our hobby back to that point. It doesn't matter what they were. Mine was a beat-up SPV in a junkshop and I had a flashback to childhood. Then it was the batman movie 1989 and seeing all the toys in the shops. Oddly enough I've never heard of Dorothy Lamour until I saw your set! Not sure I've seen any of those stars in films but my memory is terrible. I probably did as a kid. As you say, Second world war films were on all the time in the Sixties and me/you were born a mere 15 years after the war ended.
DeleteDorothy Lamour starred in a series of Road films with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, starting with Road to Singapore in 1940. She was also known as the Sarong Girl, as she often wore a sarong in her films, adding a touch of exotic glamour to 1940s Hollywood. Rita Hayworth was one of my favourite 1940s stars, and made a lot of films. Both, along with Betty Grable, were American. Marlene Dietrich was German, but moved to America in the 1930s. All these stars made both straight films, and musicals, which were very popular at the time. Vera Lynn was really a singer, and only made a handful of films. I am not sure I have ever seen any of them. She was also the only British name in the series.
ReplyDeleteYou know a lot about these actresses paul. I had a mis-spent youth obsessing about monsters clearly. It was Vera Lynn's funeral here today, almost a state affair with three passes of spitfires, one each for the Army, Navy and of course the Air Force. There's a documentary on later about how a young 12 year old girl, along with her Dad, helped design the Spitfire by mathematically solving how to fit 8 guns to each plane.
DeleteWhen I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s there were lots of old black and white movies on TV, from the 1930s up to the 1960s or so. Therefore I saw a lot of these movies, and their stars were more familiar to me than the more modern stars, whom I only saw on a rare visit to the movies. Mum only ever took me to tame, G rated films - no Hammer horrors or James Bond for me (except Thunderball (1965), which I did not see until 1982). Later, I never went to the movies, as there was plenty on TV. I have just kept my interest in old films through the years, adding 1930s and 1940s horror movies on DVD in more recent years. To me, many modern films are either totally overblown, or filled with bad language and needless gore - I prefer pretty girls and thrilling adventure.
ReplyDeleteWhich 1930's and 40's horror movies have you got Paul?
DeleteThere was an item on the News tonight about the funeral of Dame Vera Lynn, which showed the Spitfire flypast. A fitting tribute.
ReplyDeleteMy old horror movies include the Legacy Collection sets of the Universal Frankenstein, Dracula, and Wolfman films. There is also a set with Mark of the Vampire, The Mask of Fu Manchu, Doctor X, The Return of Doctor X, Mad Love, and The Devil-Doll, various other Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff films, and the post-war Abbott and Costello horror spoofs, plus a few of the later Hammer films, and 1950s monster movies such as Them. Some of these I still have to watch, so I might spend the next couple of weeks catching up.
Sounds glorious Paul, a Universal horror fest! What could be better for your full recuperation. Some ace movies there. Mad Love, that's Peter Lorre isn't it? And the two Vamp movies, I have yet to see them, Mark and Mask. Them! is just fantastic and the Abbott Costello monster flicks are true Universal movies as good as the first wave, sequels really to the earlier Monsterthons like House of Dracula. I love it when all the creatures turn up in the same place! Heaven! Well, my Heaven!
DeleteYes, Mad Love is the Peter Lorre version of The Hands of Orlac. I was really lucky to pick up these sets a few years ago. There are also Legacy Collection sets of The Mummy, The Invisible Man, and The Creature From the Black Lagoon, but I do not have these, although I do have all three Creature films on separate DVDs. Good to hear you also like the Abbott and Costello spoofs, most horror buffs look down on them, but I enjoyed them, and thought they treated the monsters with more respect than many modern films.
ReplyDeleteI agree, The Abbot and Costello films are proper Universal Monster movies Paul. Wow, the Hands of Orlac! Now that was a film! What a great DVD collection you have!
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