Gracie Fields

Dame Gracie Fields, DBE , was an English actress, singer and comedian and star of both cinema and music hall. She spent the later part of her life on the isle of Capri, Italy. Fields was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to entertainment in 1938, and in 1979, seven months before her death, she was invested a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II.

Fields was born Grace Stansfield, over a fish and chip shop owned by her grandmother, Sarah Bamford, in Molesworth Street, Rochdale, Lancashire. She made her first stage appearance as a child in 1905, joining childrens repertory theatre groups such as Haleys Garden of Girls and the Nine Dainty Dots. Her two sisters, Edith and Betty and brother, Tommy, all went on to appear on stage, but Gracie was the most successful. Her professional debut in variety took place at the Rochdale Hippodrome theatre in 1910 and she soon gave up her job in the local cotton mill, where she was a halftimer, spending half a week in the mill and the other half at school.

Source: Wikipedia