"Grycie"

"Grycie," yelled a visiting British tar, "do us a cartwheel!" Gracie Fields, once the world's highest paid comedienne, obliged. Then, opening her full bag of tricks, she displayed the wares that had hoisted her from a shilling-a-week trouper to first lady of the English music halls, at $750,000 a year, before U.S. and British income taxes. Scratching, sniffling, grimacing, Gracie clowned her "low but clean" repertory, squealing high C, telling screwy Lancashire stories, whooping up a community sing with the servicemen packing her audience.

This scene and others like it take place regularly in Blue Network's Manhattan studio, but radio listeners to Gracie's first commercial radio series (now in its fourth week) do not hear it. On the air (Monday through Friday, 9:55 p.m.) Gracie doles out only a five-minute teaser--enough for "a song and a bit of a story." Last week, typically, the song was The Biggest Aspidistra in the World and the story about cockney Bill who was blown out of a window by a bomb, came to, remarked "Crikey! I got outa there just in time." For this token program Gracie receives a handsome $2,500 a week (from Pall Mall cigarets).

Gracie frankly admits that she is out to restake herself. Always openhanded, since Dunkirk she had contributed most of her time and talent to British War Relief. Radio is a way to "get some bills paid." Observes Gracie of her potent earning powers: "I'm 42 [she is 44] and that's nearly middleaged, but I hate to think of it and I don't believe it. My hair is blonde but I give it a bit of fixing--I do. I have teeth that were made by some mechanic and I wear glasses, and my legs--ee lad, I'm glad I earn my money with my throat."

To U.S. audiences, Gracie Fields's entertainment goes pretty much on its brand name acquired abroad. British servicemen find it tophole. They crowd into the studio, mill around afterwards for autographs, pour their troubles into Grycie's willing ears. One night last week two tars insisted on escorting her from her hotel to the broadcasting studio, explaining that back in England they had never got a close-up of her. Sighs Gracie: "I guess they think I'm Britannia."

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