Radio: 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"...