The YouTube generation seems to be awestricken over the fact that somebody who looks like Susan Boyle can sing like Susan Boyle.

The YouTube generation obviously never encountered Kate Smith, a lady with ordinary looks and an extraordinary voice who sang her way into America’s heart during the Great Depression and through World War II, and was still going strong when television arrived to transform the entertainment industry.

Kate weighed in at 235 pounds at the age of 30. Her face was fleshy and her body was bulky, but her manner was graceful. Her voice and style embodied all the virtues of America during its innocent years.

It was she who introduced Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” to the nation on Nov. 10, 1938, to mark the 20th anniversary of the end of World War I. Berlin pulled an old, rejected piece of music from his trunk, reworked the lyrics, and passed it to Ted Collins, Kate Smith’s manager and discoverer. Kate gave it the perfect send-off, and the song eventually became the nation’s second national anthem — more beloved and more singable than the one Frances Scott Key wrote.

Maybe Kate benefited from the fact that radio and records had not evolved into movies and DVDs. People didn’t have to look at her. They could just close their eyes and let her singing flow through their souls. But even in those days before visual images enhanced mass communications, we knew that Kate Smith was no Carole Lombard.

She often opened the home games for the Philaldelphia Flyers hockey team by singing “God Bless America,” prompting the hockey players’ boast, “It ain’t begun till the fat lady sings.” The record book shows that the Flyers were more likely to win after Kate opened with the Berlin classic. The team honored her with a statue at its home arena.

“I’m big and I sing, and boy when I sing, I sing all over,” said Kate.

In 1939, when President Franklin Roosevelt entertained the king and queen of England, he introduced Kate Smith by saying, “Your majesties, this is Kate Smith. This is America.”

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan awarded her the U.S. Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

Kate was proof positive that the genes for pulchritude and for singing voice are not inextricably linked. Susan Boyle offers further proof.

To be honest, Kate Smith would win a beauty contest pitting her one-on-one against Susan Boyle. But maybe that’s because Susan hasn’t had the benefit of the grooming and coiffing that the American entertainment industry lavishes on its stars. Neither has she developed Kate’s easygoing, friendly personality.

Susan’s photos remind me of a passage from Rudyard Kipling's “The Road to Mandalay”:

“Tho’ I walks with fifty ‘ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand,

“An’ they talks a lot o’ lovin’, but wot do they understand?

“Beefy face an’ grubby and —

“Law! wot do they understand?”

Susan is from Scotland, not London, but on television and in photos she comes across as beefy-faced and maybe a little grubby. She is an unmarried church volunteer who probably doesn’t know a lot about lovin’, and was thrust into the merciless spotlight before she was emotionally prepared.

I have a feeling that makeover artists wielding cosmetic brushes and hair-styling techniques could transform her into a woman who wouldn’t be at all hard to look at. They might not make her beautiful, but they would eliminate the jarring contrast between the way she looks and the way she sings.

Susan obviously has a beautiful voice, and she can deliver a song beautifully, but I doubt that she would have achieved the same instant popularity had she looked like Madonna or Brittany Spears. Her homely appearance gave her a cachet that could provide the beginnings of a lucrative career.

For even though she finished second to a group of London dancers, her talent and transatlantic fame remain. On this side of the Atlantic, which offers the biggest audiences, people are likely to forget the name of the London dance troupe (“Diversity”) by next week. But Susan Boyle’s name and image will be around for a long time. Any talent agent who couldn’t help her cash in on that kind of fame should go back to selling fish and chips.

The question is, can Susan survive it?

She’s going to need professional help to deal with the terrible demands the public makes on the people who entertain it. We are all too familiar with the sad stories of the beautiful and talented who were victimized by the careers that gave them wealth and fame.

Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe are two luminous examples. Hank Williams succumbed to alcohol and drugs at the age of 29. The pressures of stardom drove Elvis Presley into the lethal arms of drugs. Johnny Cash narrowly escaped. John Belushi didn’t. Neither did Janis Joplin.

Susan’s behavior had been erratic up until the finals of “Britain’s Got Talent,” when “Diversity” came from behind and toppled her from the pedestal on which the YouTube viewers had placed her. All the pressure of being demoted from frontrunner to also-ran was too much for her, and she was hospitalized.

Kate Smith maintained her poise and confidence throughout her long career, letting her voice speak for itself.

Perhaps a Ted Collins will come along to escort Susan through the minefields of fame. I hope so. Her voice and talent deserve to survive.

Readers may write Gene Owens at 315 Lakeforest Circle, Anderson SC 29625, or e-mail him at WadesDixieco@AOL.com.