In a previous post, I examined the fierce controversy that erupted in September 1943 when an open letter in The Crusader accused Gracie Fields of "snubbing" the Eighth Army in Italy to fulfill commercial radio contracts in America. Yet to fully understand "Our Gracie’s" contribution, we have to rewind four years to where her wartime service began. Long before the mud of the Gothic Line, Gracie was the undisputed heroine of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). In this first part of a series of posts on Gracie Field’s war, I look at how Britain’s biggest working-class icon single-handedly forced the War Office to open the front lines to female performers.
Original wartime caption: Troops arriving at the theatre for a concert. Taken at the Apollo Theatre at Lens. Image: IWM (O 233)
When war was declared in September 1939, the newly formed Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) set up its headquarters inside the barricaded corridors of London’s Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. That damp autumn saw every form of entertainment put on for the base troops in England waiting to join the BEF in France.But General Headquarters (GHQ) in Arras set a firm rule: no civilian women and no star theatrical parties were allowed in active operational zones.[1] Operational areas were to be treated as an all-male military preserve, leaving troops in muddy French billets starved of professional entertainers.[2]
Crossing the Channel, November 1939
Gracie thought the embargo was absurd and insisted on singing directly to the troops in France.[3] Joining forces with veteran actor Sir Seymour Hicks (who had led the very first troupe of entertainers to the Western Front in 1914), American star Claire Luce, cartoonist Tom Webster, comedian Billy Russell, and a troupe of girl dancers, Gracie crossed the Channel in mid-November 1939.[4]
On November 15, 1939, in the coal mining cities of Lens and Douai, Gracie gave the first major star concerts of the Second World War.[5] The demand among soldiers was overwhelming. At a large forward-area cinema near Lens, seating was so fiercely contested that battalions were forced to draw lottery tickets to decide who could attend.[6]
Across the foyer, troops stretched a massive canvas banner reading: "Welcome to Gracie from the Boys". As thousands of soldiers filed into the auditorium, they signed their names and service numbers in pencil across the fabric. After the performance, the signed banner was shipped back to London to be hung as a trophy in the foyer of Drury Lane.
You can view Pathe clips of the concert here:
The ‘Sally’ Silence & a 90 Minute Solo
When Gracie took the stage, the atmosphere was electric. Accompanied by an improvised orchestra drawn from a Lancashire regiment, she led the men through rousing choruses of "When I Grow Too Old to Dream".[7] Then came her signature anthem, "Sally". Skene Catling, a Reuters war correspondent travelling with the BEF, recorded an extraordinary moment of unbidden discipline:[8]
With a unity of sentiment that might have been the result of an Army Order—but was actually a remarkably unanimous sense of fitness—every man stopped singing and waited for Gracie to sing it through first by herself. For 'Sally' is essentially Gracie’s song.
Gracie Fields entertaining RAF personnel in France, December 1939. Source: WikiCommons
Gracie returned for a second BEF tour over Christmas 1939.[9] At an RAF base near Rheims, when bandleader Jack Payne’s orchestra was stranded in a winter blizzard, Gracie walked onto the stage at seven minutes past two and carried the entire 90-minute matinee completely solo, keeping thousands of freezing airmen in stitches. Catling noted in his dispatch that Gracie was "worth an Army Corps to the B.E.F.".[10]
Repercussions at GHQ and BBC Censorship
After Gracie’s two concerts caused a sensation, commanding officers across France immediately besieged GHQ with demands for live entertainment.[11] Gracie’s trailblazing performance had single-handedly forced the War Office to open the floodgates.[12]
Back in London, however, officialdom remained prickly. Seeing an opportunity to promote the fledgling ENSA organisation and to give the families of the men in the BEF some comfort that they were being looked after in France, Drury’s Lane’s Press Officer lobbied the BBC to broadcast Gracie’s concert. The BBC finally relented only at the very last minute, but only granted a meager 15-minute relay. Sir Seymour Hicks publicly blasted the broadcaster in Reynolds News, arguing that the BBC had missed the greatest propaganda and morale-boosting opportunity of the early war.[13] Dean celebrated Gracie’s victory over officialdom in his biography:[14]
Gracie’s voice over the ether was like a Verey light piercing the fog of official censorship. It brought the human side of the war home to every listener and afforded one more striking example of the triumph of personality over red tape.
Even the enemy took notice. Stung by the cultural impact of her front-line appearances and subsequent fundraising broadcasts, Nazi radio and press bulletins officially denounced the Rochdale singer. One German propaganda report declared her an active enemy of the Reich, warning that she was "adjudged a war industry" that had provided Britain with the equivalent of a hundred new fighter planes.[15]
Gracie Fields shares a joke with troops in a village near Valenciennes, 26 April 1940. Image: IWM (F 4074)
By early 1940, Gracie Fields had established the benchmark for wartime celebrity service. But as France collapsed and Italy entered the conflict in June 1940, her personal life and marital status would suddenly drag her from national heroine into a bitter transatlantic exile.
Next in the series (Part 2): Exile and the Khaki Backlash (1940–1942) —how Our Gracie’s marriage to Italian-born director Monty Banks forced her departure to North America, her multi-million-dollar war relief drive, and the barbed press attacks that awaited her return.
[1] Basil Dean, The Theatre at War (George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd, 1956), p. 71.
[2] ‘WO 167/46 General Headquarters (GHQ): Entertainments 1939 Nov-1940 Jan’, TNA [The National Archives], n.d., WO 167/46 General Headquarters (GHQ): Entertainments 1939 Nov-1940 Jan.
[3] Skene Catling, Vanguard to Victory: An Account of the British Expeditionary Force during Its First Months in France in the Second Great War (Methuen & Co Ltd, 1940), pp. 187–92.
[4] Walter Macqueen-Pope, Pillars of Drury Lane (Hutchinson & Co, 1955), p. 221.
[5] Dean, The Theatre at War, p. 78.
[6] Skene Catling, Vanguard to Victory: An Account of the British Expeditionary Force during Its First Months in France in the Second Great War, p. 188.
[7] John Graven Hughes, The Greasepaint War: Show Business 1939-45 (New English Library, 1976), p. 45.
[8] Skene Catling, Vanguard to Victory: An Account of the British Expeditionary Force during Its First Months in France in the Second Great War, p. 189.
[9] Skene Catling, Vanguard to Victory: An Account of the British Expeditionary Force during Its First Months in France in the Second Great War, p. 191.
[10] Skene Catling, Vanguard to Victory: An Account of the British Expeditionary Force during Its First Months in France in the Second Great War, p. 192.
[11] Dean, The Theatre at War, p. 12.
[12] Dean, The Theatre at War, p. 91.
[13] ‘Basil Dean Private Papers: DEA 5 - ENSA Papers’, Manchester, n.d., Rylands Research Institute, DEA 5.
[14] Dean, The Theatre at War, p. 71.
[15] Andrew Merriman, Greasepaint and Cordite: The Story of ENSA and Concert Party Entertainment during the Second World War (Aurum, 2012), p. 31.
