Sir Tom Jones Tear-jerking Performance Joins D-Day Commemorations

The Normandy Landings, popularly referred to as “D-Day,” were a part of the Allied invasion of Normandy in World War II, and were celebrated for the eightieth time in June 2024. Numerous memorial services have been held in the weeks that have followed, leading up to a major event on June 6th at the British Normandy memorial in Ver-sur-Mer. Along with many other well-known people and politicians, Welsh singing icon Sir Tom Jones participated in the celebrations by passionately performing “I Won’t Crumble With You If You Fall.”

Even though it was performed as a tribute to Tom’s late wife Linda, the song turned out to be perfect for the D-Day event, giving the celebrations a heartfelt and somber tone. Tom sung of the “honor” he felt to be asked to perform at the event, and his passionate voice gave the song a lot of fire and emotion. “It is a momentous occasion that reminds us of the limitless sacrifices of that campaign,” he wrote on social media amid the beauty.

It was very breathtaking. And King Charles III and Queen Camilla greeted the twenty-three D-Day veterans in attendance. A military piper played on Gold Beach earlier in the day at precisely 7:26 a.m. to signal the start of the commemorations and the beginning of the invasions. Together with Tom Jones’s poignant vocal performance, all of these elements contributed to a powerful ceremony that honored the veterans of the Normandy Landings.

Before the D-Day commemorative ceremony, Tom sang this particular song live and brought many to tears in the audience. In 2022, he spontaneously performed “I Won’t Crumble When You Fall” during an episode of The Voice UK, in response to numerous enthusiastic requests from the audience. Tom’s strong voice reverberated throughout the room as he performed, bringing fellow judge and vocalist Anne-Marie to tears with only the piano providing accompaniment.

Donald Sutherland dead at 88: iconic actor starred in “MASH,” “Ordinary People,” “Hunger Games”

Sutherland was born July 17, 1935 in New Brunswick, Canada, later moving to Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. Throughout his childhood he battled a number of serious illnesses including polio, rheumatic fever and spinal meningitis.
He left Canada to pursue an interest in acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and soon found work in TV and low-budget films.
He got a Hollywood breakthrough in the classic war film The Dirty Dozen, whose ensemble cast includes Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, Ernest Borgnine and Jim Brown. It was the fifth highest grossing film of 1967.

After leaving London for Hollywood, Sutherland landed one of his most iconic roles in the 1970 anti-war comedy-drama MASH, originating the role of “Hawkeye” Pierce. MASH was one of the most successful films of the decade and is regarded as a classic.
Throughout the ’70s, Sutherland was a Hollywood leading man: his films include in the Oscar-winning Klute opposite Jane Fonda, the psychological horror Don’t Look Now, and the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He also appeared in the hit comedy Animal House.

In 1980, he starred in Robert Redford’s Ordinary People, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Other major films include Backdraft, JFK, Six Degrees of Separation, The Italian Job and Pride and Prejudice.

Sutherland also had success on TV, winning an Emmy Award for the 1995 film Citizen X, and a Golden Globe for the television film Path to War.
A younger generation of moviegoers was introduced to Sutherland through The Hunger Games, the hit dystopian blockbuster series: Sutherland starred as the villainous President Coriolanus Snow.

Though he surprisingly never received an Oscar nomination, he received an Academy Honorary Award in 2017, “for a lifetime of indelible characters, rendered with unwavering truthfulness.” He also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2011, and on the Canadian Walk of Fame in 2000.

Sutherland was married three times; he was married to actress Francine Racette for 52 years until his death. He was previously married to Lois May Hardwick and Shirley Douglas, and also had an affair with his Klute co-star Jane Fonda.
He had five children — including most famously his son Kiefer Sutherland, the actor best known for playing Jack Bauer in 24.
”I was too young to go watch my father’s films in the cinema,” Kiefer Sutherland told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. “By the time I hit 20, VHS was available and a friend of my fathers had a lot of his films. In three days I watched Don’t Look Know, Klute, M*A*S*H, Kelly’s Heroes, 1900 and Fellini’s Casanova.”
“It was such a wide spectrum of characters, and I remember calling him up and I felt really badly that I grew up not knowing what a profoundly special actor he was, I felt horribly guilty of that. As a young actor, I had never known or seen another actor who’ve done characters so diverse either.”