Sentimental Journey Back to the War Years

Lainie Nelson is way too young to have any personal familiarity with the World War II years. So how, then, did she become so intrigued by songs and popular culture of the ‘40s--so much so that she created “The White Cliffs of Dover,” a tribute to the rich musical emotions of the period?

“It was the end of innocence,” she said. “And it was a time in which the songs were filled with real-life feelings. ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’ and ‘For All We Know, We May Never Meet Again’ really meant something to people who were split by the war.”

Nelson makes her case in detail Sunday in two performances of “The White Cliffs of Dover” at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. The show stars Nelson and Michael G. Hawkins in a series of scenes touching on the multiplicity of individual stories and the array of deep emotions experienced by those who lived through the time.

It does so with a collection of songs ranging from such big-band hits as “In the Mood,” “Moonlight Serenade,” “Sentimental Journey” and “G.I. Jive” to love songs (“P.S. I Love You,” “For All We Know,” “It’s Been a Long, Long Time,” etc.) and black humor (“We’re Gonna Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line”).

But Nelson, who began to put the production together “almost immediately after I got my new computer” in early 1995, said it took awhile to shape it.

“It’s gone through quite a few versions,” she said, adding that the latest version was co-written with Mark Madama.”I did all kinds of research, but it wasn’t until I found some actual letters, written during the war, that it really jelled.”

As Nelson toured the show in every venue she could book around the country, people began to approach her, often presenting her with segments from wartime letters written by family members.

The connection became even closer when the show’s musical arranger, Michele Brourman, provided some letters written by her father, Philip Brourman, who was shot down over Germany and interned as a prisoner of war for 14 months.

“At one point,” said Nelson, “he was herded into a boxcar to be taken to a prison camp. When he heard American planes flying overhead, he found a pencil and began to write the words to a song, ‘Wing On to Victory.’ ”

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Nelson has included the elder Brourman’s song in “The White Cliffs of Dover,” where, more than four decades after it was written, it is finally receiving its public premiere.

“The strange part of all this,” said Nelson, “is that I have no real personal connection with the war. No close relatives were in the service, and I can’t say I ever heard any stories about it from my parents.

“I’m a San Fernando Valley girl, born and bred, a fifth-generation Californian,” she said. “But when I began to get into this material, to get a sense of what it was like to have lived in the ‘40s, it gave me a completely different perspective.”

Part of that perspective generated a desire to have the production reflect the war years from more than an American point of view.

“I really wanted to have some English music-hall numbers,” Nelson said, “and have them be authentic, from the period.”

The resulting material includes the marvelous sendup of Adolf Hitler--”Der Fuehrer’s Face” (actually from a Walt Disney cartoon and turned into a 1942 hit by Spike Jones, but also a popular musical-hall item)--and “Thanks for Dropping In, Mr. Hess,” a hilarious tune inspired by the unexpected parachuting of Rudolf Hess (a close Hitler associate) into England in the early war years.

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From the English perspective, the show is properly framed with “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” and, of course, the title tune, “The White Cliffs of Dover.” But Nelson has also included “La Vie en Rose” and “Mam’selle,” as well as “Lili Marlene,” a song that eventually knew no national boundaries.

Nelson may not have had a personal connection with World War II, but she does not lack for professional credentials to produce and star in a musical-theater program. In a career of more than two decades, she has performed in Broadway musicals, television variety shows, summer stock, cabaret, Las Vegas revues and with symphony orchestras.

In summer stock, she played Ado Annie in “Oklahoma!” with John Raitt, and she was Eileen in “Wonderful Town” with Eve Arden. In addition to dozens of other regional theater roles, she starred in “Gene Kelly’s Salute to Broadway” with Howard Keel, and later toured with Keel as Annie in the Australian company of “Annie Get Your Gun.”

She has also worked frequently in cabaret venues, performing as a regular for several years at now defunct Maldonado’s Supper Club in Pasadena, and with singer Susan Watson in a highly praised cabaret show called “Broadway Celebrations.”

“But ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’ is my baby,” said Nelson. She is so dedicated to the project and its underlying message--”It’s important to keep this period alive in our souls,” as Nelson puts it--that she has made several lengthy bus-and-truck tours with it in virtually every part of the country.

“And I’m going to continue to do so, for a while,” she added. “We’re traveling in a big RV now, which makes life a lot easier. And we’ll be heading out to a run on the East Coast after we finish up in Cerritos.”

Nelson will travel, as she always does, with her constant companion, Bugs, an Abyssinian cat. (“Life without a cat is just not possible,” she said with a smile.) And she will be doing precisely what she wants to be doing at this point in her career.

“This has gone from my blank computer screen to an actual concert tour,” she said. “It’s been a real labor of love, and I’m very proud to be able to play a role in keeping this music, and this amazing part of our history, alive.”

* Lainie Nelson stars in “The White Cliffs of Dover,” Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive. 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday. $27-$42. (800) 300-4345.