Our Gracie

The lusty, loudmouthed darling of Britain's music halls, 49-year-old Gracie Fields, was a near casualty of the war. When Gracie and her Italian husband, Monty Banks (Mario Bianco), quit England one jump ahead of the Luftwaffe in 1940, the British press and public hooted bitterly. It was only to save Monty, an enemy alien, from pokey, Gracie explained from the U.S.

It took five years of energetic fence-mending, in every corner of the world where British troops were stationed, and two years of peace, for the public to forgive & forget. Last week, in a rollicking, fullblown show for BBC, "Our Gracie" was back, as bouncy as ever, in black lace, with her hair a halo of tight, bleached curls.

To coax her out of retirement, BBC had spread itself handsomely, and tailored a program exactly to the solid (5 ft. 5 in., 130 Ibs.) Fields measure. The twelve-week series is Gracie's first in Britain, though she has starred in three U.S. radio series. The new show is aired three times a week (once live, twice transcribed) to the largest audience BBC can offer. The actual number of listeners is a secret, for BBC believes that publication of such figures "makes for jealousy between the stars."

No Cartwheels. Gracie's Working Party is shrewdly hooked up with a patriotic motif. Touring the British Isles, Gracie performs before large audiences of workers, as a part of Britain's current production drive. Britons are fondly familiar with the "low but clean" pattern of a Fields performance. There are 45 minutes of sentimental ballads, sung in an ear-jarring soprano that sometimes shrills up to high C, and comedy songs (like her famed The Biggest Aspidistra in the World), screeched out in unabashed Lancastrian.

In Coventry last week, Gracie swaggered onstage before 1,000 General Electric employees, promptly pitched into a nostalgic Noel Coward medley and an Afrikaans song in "Lancashire French." Then she reverted to her old rough & tumble with a comic song called He Forgot to Come Back, wherein she quakingly called for "Hennerry." Only her celebrated cartwheels had been dropped from the prewar formula.

If Gracie had any remaining doubts about her restored popularity, they should be quieted by now. Her fan mail was up to 3,800 letters a week--topping anything in her toast-of-the-pub days.

No Time for Vacation. With this week's broadcast in London, Gracie will wind up the live half of the series (the Other six shows have been transcribed). For the future, she would like a "long-vacation" (either at her Santa Monica estate or at her Capri villa). But she's reluctant to mention a rest: even Lancashire would take a dim view of anyone lolling nowadays, when all Britain is supposed to be working harder.

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