Ann Watt

Ann Watt was born Angela Jean Elisabeth Watt in Brandon, Manitoba. While still a small child, she moved with her family to the Grandview area of Vancouver, where she’d go on to spend much of her youth.

At high school, she came into her own in the Glee Club, and in time was able to make her living exclusively as a singer, and many of her greatest triumphs took place at the famous Theatre Under the Stars, which officially opened on August the 6th 1940.

At the TUTS, Miss Ann Watt played the lead in such classic operettas as “The Chocolate Soldier”, “Naughty Marietta” and “The Student Prince”. For the Canadian Broadcasting Company, she sang many popular classics with the accompaniment of Percy Harvey and the Golden Strings. While for “Canada Calling”, broadcast in February 1945 to Canadian Armed Forces serving overseas, she sang Noel Coward’s “I’ll See You Again”.

Such was the loveliness of her voice to say nothing of looks so glamorous she was likened to Betty Grable, she became something of a Canadian Forces Sweetheart. While her irresistible vivacity and charm caused both audiences and press to fall in love with her not just in Canada but parts of the northern US as well. Among the Classical songs she broadcast during the North American phase of her career were “Les Filles de Cadiz” by Delibes, “Mandoline” by Debussy and “Silent Noon” by Vaughan Williams. She moved to London, England where she performed variously for the BBC, and the Ivor Novello musical “King’s Rhapsody”.