‘Great Lives’ features Dame Gracie Fields

Global icon: Gracie Fields in 1934

A BBC Radio Four programme set to air at 4.30pm on Tuesday (2 August) will remember the life of Dame Gracie Fields.

The show, titled ‘Great Lives’, will be broadcast as a memorial trail for the entertainer continues, with a statue of Gracie set to be erected upon the completion of the trail in autumn this year.

The chairman of the Rochdale-based Gracie Fields appreciation society, Seb Lassandro, will also feature in the programme which will recount the story of the singer, actress and comedienne’s life.

Mr Lassandro has been involved in several projects in tribute to Gracie after working alongside the Rotary Club of Rochdale East and Rochdale Council on the memorial trail.

He also worked closely with sculptor Sean Hedges-Quinn, who was commissioned to produce the statue of the Rochdale star last year.

The sixth of eight plaques dedicated to Gracie was unveiled at Champness Hall last Friday (29 July) as the singer made her first post-war appearance there in July 1947. The event was recorded live by the BBC and was said to symbolise the entertainer’s ‘rehabilitation’.

Gracie was said to be the highest-earning actress in the world at the height of her career in the 1930s. She was a made a freeman of the Rochdale borough in 1937 and opened the Gracie Fields theatre in 1979 before she died aged 81 later that year.