LOVED ENTERTAINER

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 22, 26 July 1945, Page 10

LOVED ENTERTAINER

GRACIE FIELDS TO ARRIVE THIS WEEK

Gracie Fields, the lovable star of music-hall, stage, films, and radio, is due in Auckland on Saturday. Born Gracie Stansfield, of Molesworth, Rochdale, Gracie has often been described as "the mill girl who became a star." In point of. fact her mill career was comparatively brief. After touring with Haley's Juveniles and assisting in local benefit nights, she was placed by her mother as' an errand girl to a confectionei*. 'Thirteen-year-old Gracie, nourishing theatrical ambitions, sent her photograph to a management advertising for chorus girls. Back came the photograph marked "hardly suitable." Her factory career, when she entertained the girls by singing as soon as the foreman was out of hearing, was sandwiched between Gharburn's Young Stars tour and getting a job in a concert party at £3 a week,

Twice a week she rushed off to Manchester for dancing lessons,'-sneaked into the galleries of theatres to study stars like Maidie Scott and George Formby, sen., and went back to singing her. concert and sentimental songs. One night Gracie became bored with her sob-ballad. She sang the first verse straight, then burlesqued the second. verse. The audience, bored, too, rose with a .cheer —and that was the turning point of her career.

In 1907 Rochdale Hung up its windows to shout "Shoot oop!" when in shawl and clogs she was serenading a theatrical lodging house near her home, in the hope that some visiting manager might be dazzled by her voice. In 1941 Rochdale flocked beneath the balcony of the Town Hall to hear Gracie sing "There'll Always be an England" on her rqturn after .a year's leave of absence on war benefit tours in Canada and the United States. In the meantime Gracie had risen from Is a week and "all found" with Haley's Juveniles in the English provinces to i\ princely income, with a house in Hampstcad. a villa on Capri, an apartment building in Los Angeles, and a beach house in Santa Monica.

Gracie is only sft siri tall and weighs just over nine stone. She states frankly: "I'm 47. I touch up my hair. My teeth are made by a mechanic. And my legs—ec, lad, but I'm glad I earn my living by my throat!" »

Her band leaders and accompanists have to be (.rigger-quick, since she will change a complete programme after sensing the mood of the house. Again she will fly off into a coloratura soprano cadenza, leaving the band high and dry. Then slop and ask, "Hello! Are you waiting for me?" And when a sad song has been sung she can -be as affected as her hearers. ; Singing "Waltzing Matilda" in Australia House for Australian servicemen just before she left London on her 1943 tour of Africa. Malta, and Sicily, she was obviously moved when an R.A.A.F. man asked her for a liower from her bouquet. She handed him a carnation tenderly,. then brightened, and said. "Ee. lad. have it stoofed!"

Her homely tongue has got her and others out of many awkward situations. Once at a benefit show the Duke of Kent suddenly appeared back-stage among the performers unannounced. There was a pause of-embarrassment until Gracie stepped forward. "Ec; I see it now. He is just like my brother, Tommy," she declared. The Duke laughed, the manager recovered his wits, and the proper courtesies were exchanged.

£100,000 FOR BRITISH WAR RELIEF

Gracie maintains two orphanages, one in England and. one in Ireland, mainly for children of people in the variety profession. When she and her husband. Monty Banks,-went to Canada in 1940, questions were-asked • in' the House of Commons about money and ;ie-\yels that the pair had taken out of Britain. Although it was proved'that permits had been given, Gracie' was accused of having lied the blitz and her husband of evading declaration of dollars. That year in Canada and the United Slates. Gracie earned £100,000 for British war relief. On her return she said stoutly, "I wouldn't be here if my conscience wasn't clear. I've been doing my bit." Warm in her generosity to an international- public. Gracie reserves her fullest warmth for the British. In her own words when she sang in a bomber station hangar ,iust before she left England. "I love you and you love me, and that's suinmat!" ...