To the Rescue

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6810, 14 January 1929, Page 4

To the Rescue

English Actress Helps American Comrades

ISS GRACIE FIELDS, the Lancashire comedienne, was the* most popular person in London on a recent Saturday evening.

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She was so popular that the police had to ask her to make a speech to disperse the crowd which surged round the Gaiety Theatre stage door after the performance of “Topsy and Eva,” in which she had come to the rescue of the American Duncan sisters. The theatre was packed for her appearance in the play, and from the moment she came on in place of Miss Rosetta Duncan, who had been taken ill, so saving the show from immediate collapse. Miss Fields carried everyone and everything with her on wave after wave of enthusiasm. Her spontaneous action in jumping into the breach and playing after only two days’ rehearsals, and without a fixed salary, fired the imagination of the audience. Clowning Her Way Through She played “Topsy” with a black ■ face and in her native Rochdale ac-

cent. She fooled at the top of her very clever bent, often making up her words as she went on, clowning her way through. She sang a number of her own songs, with her musical director, Miss Ann Lipman, leading the orchestra, and at the end she caught the curtain and was hauled high up above the stage. When bouquets and baskets of flowers were brought on for her, Miss Fields lay on her back among them and kicked her feet in the air. Her speech was characteristic of her action. She put her arms round fair-haired Miss Vivian Duncan (“Eva”) .and said, “I’m not much of a speechifier, but I wouldn’t see this poor little kid let down.” The audience shouted its approval, and the band played “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” After the curtain had come down for the last time, enthusiasm for Miss Fields became almost wild. Everyone from stage hands to principals wanted to shake her hand and cheer her, and when she tried to go home she was lifted off her feet and "chaired.” She had to go back into the theatre, and to get rid of the people in the street the police asked her to make a “good-night” speech, which she did in broad Lancashire.