The blue plaque
reads:
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English
Heritage
Gracie Fields 1898 -
1979 Singer and Entertainer lived here
|
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The entry for the
blue plaque at the English Heritage webiste [visit
link] tells us:
"Dame Gracie
Fields (1898-1979), one of Britain’s most successful and best loved performers,
is honoured with a blue plaque at 72a Upper Street, Islington, where she lived
during the years 1926 to 1929.
It was while
living here – in a maisonette above a sweet shop – with her parents, Fred and
Jenny Stansfield, and her first husband Archie Pitt that she performed almost
continuously in London and consolidated her reputation as one of the country’s
most popular music hall stars. These years also saw her record for the first
time and appear before King George V and Queen Mary at the Royal Variety
Performance. To mark this occasion, the British Film Institute will be screening
This Week of Grace (1933), in which Fields plays an unemployed factory worker in
a rags-to-riches tale; a massive hit on its release, the lost film has been
restored and will be screened for the first time in over 70
years.
Grace
Stansfield was born and brought up in Rochdale and never lost her distinctive
Lancashire accent. She started singing in public at an early age, encouraged and
coached by her stage-struck mother, and by the time of her first professional
performance she was billed as “Young Grace Stansfield, Rochdale’s own girl
vocalist”. At the age of 14 she joined a Blackpool troupe of young performers
and used the name Gracie Fields for the first time.
In 1915,
Fields met the comedian and theatrical agent Archie Pitt while performing in a
revue called Yes, I Think So and joined his company the following year. Between
1916 and 1918 she appeared in more than 4,000 performances of It’s a Bargain, a
revue written by Pitt that showed off her talents as a comedian as well as a
singer. It was Pitt’s next show, however, that proved the turning point in
Fields’ career, for the six years from 1918 to 1924 she spent touring in Mr
Tower of London made her into a music hall star. In April 1923, she married
Archie and a few months later made her West End debut alongside her sisters and
brother when Mr Tower was booked for a week at the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester
Square; her performances were greeted with rapturous reviews when the show
returned in February 1924. Over the next few years Fields took on a phenomenal
workload, appearing in stage plays, music hall performances and late night
cabaret bookings at the Café Royal. She became very wealthy and together she and
Pitt built a 28-room mansion in The Bishop’s Avenue, Hampstead named ’Tower‘, in
honour of the show that had made her famous.
In 1928
Fields – by now affectionately known as ‘our Gracie’ – made her first of ten
appearances at the Royal Variety Performance. Capitalising on her stage success,
she became a regular performer on the BBC and recorded many of her popular songs
including ‘Sally’, ‘The Biggest Aspidistra in the World’ and ‘Wish Me Luck as
You Wave Me Goodbye’; by 1933, she had cut four million discs. Fields also
started her film career; her starring role in Sally in our Alley (1931) proved a
great hit and won her lucrative contracts to make ten further films over the
next eight years, including Sing as We Go (1934), The Show Goes On (1937) and
Shipyard Sally (1939). She became the biggest box office star in British cinema
and in 1937 signed a £200,000 contract with Twentieth Century Fox that was
billed “as the highest salary ever paid to a human being”. The following year
Fields became the first female variety artist to receive the CBE, and was also
awarded the freedom of Rochdale.
Gracie Fields
was at the pinnacle of her career, but her private life was far from
straightforward; having separated from Pitt, she had an affair with the artist
John Flanagan for several years and in 1935 she met the Italian-born film
director Monty Banks, who directed her in four movies and became her second
husband in 1940. In 1939 her career was unexpectedly halted as she was diagnosed
with cervical cancer; hundreds of thousands of fans sent her letters and
telegrams and she was overwhelmed by their support. Told by her doctors to take
two years off, Fields returned to work after only a few months, determined to
contribute to the war effort. She performed to troops around the world but in
Britain she was accused of betraying her country as she moved to United States
in 1940, fearing Italian-born Monty would be interned as an
alien.
After the war,
Fields settled on the Italian island of Capri, but she retuned to Britain to
record and give concerts, including her triumphant return to the London
Palladium in 1947. In the same year her radio show, Gracie’s Working Party, was
broadcast from factories across Britain. After Monty’s death in 1950, she
married Boris Alperovici in 1952, whom she had met in Capri. She spent most of
her time at her villa Canzone del Mare and was feted by many fans who had chosen
to holiday in Capri to catch a glimpse of her. Fields made her final appearance
on the London stage in 1978 when she ended the Royal Variety Performance with a
rousing rendition of ‘Sally’. She was made a Dame Commander of the British
Empire in 1979, only a few months before she died in Capri aged
81.
Dr Susan
Skedd, head of the blue plaques team, said: “Gracie Fields was one of the
greatest performers of the twentieth century and enjoyed remarkable success as a
singer, comedian and actress. She inspired lasting affection among her many fans
and in spite of her fame and wealth kept her down-to-earth attitude to life.
Fields’ association with London is less well known than her links to Rochdale
and it seems fitting she should be honoured with a plaque in the city where she
lived and performed for many years.”
Morris Aza,
the son of Fields’ agent, Bert Aza, said: “Although my aunt by her marriage to
Archie Pitt (my father’s brother), Gracie was a perfect ‘Aunt’, never forgetting
a birthday of mine or, when older, my wife’s or children’s. She would visit us
whenever she was in England and arrive unannounced with a piercing whistle which
was louder than a doorbell. She loved to travel through London on the upper deck
of buses sitting at the rear and invariably started singing Sally to an
astounded audience which showed its appreciation in no uncertain manner. She was
a truly wonderful human being and I am delighted she is being remembered in
Islington by the erection of a plaque near Collins Music
Hall.”"