Gracie Field

Gracie Field was the one you could undoubtedly call an infant prodigy. She was born in 1898 in Stansfield and she was only a child when she began to show her musical talent, and so she was on the stage when she was only eight. Her whole life was characterized by art and work: at first singer, later mimic and dancer. In the meantime she was also working in a cotton mill, so that she could help her family economically. The man who marked the turning point in her life was her future husband, the Jew Archie Pitt, who gave her the role of main character in the revue “Mr Tower of London”. The revue had been played for seven years and let Gracie become the queen of the English music-halls. Their relationship was quite troubled, especially because of his frequent infidelities. Then the woman fell in love with the Irish painter John Flanagan, with whom, after reading the novel “South Wind”, she visited Capri for the first time in 1927. Since that day on, her stays on the blue island at the marquis Patrizi’s villa were frequent and intense and when in 1933 the villa was put up for sale, she bought it straight away. Soon the love for the Irishman ended. Gracie passed to the movie and made her first appearance in “Our Alley”. In the jet-set circle she met the director Monty Banks (the Mario Bianchi of that time), who was for her a sweet and affectionate fellow. It was really Banks who had the idea in 1936 to turn the former blockhouse belonging to Emil von Behring, the discoverer of the antidifhtheric serum, into a tourist establishment. This occupation strictly bound Gracie to Capri. Then the hard years of the first world war came: in spite of the difficulties it was thanks to the woman that many waiters and dockers succeeded in finding a job. While the war was getting worse, the work for the building of the establishment were interrupted because of the lack of labour. Gracie was obliged to repair with Banks to the United States of America. She was hardly blamed for that by the Britain. After the end of the war Gracie came back to Capri and started up again the work. Under the guide of the architect Talamona they would have set up the first bathing establishment with swimming-pool ever seen in Capri: La Canzone del Mare “The Song of the Sea”. After the untimely death of Banks the woman married with the Catholic rite Boris Alperovic, a Russian Jew from Bessarabbia, with whom she ran “La Canzone del Mare” till 1976 despite a serious lack of understanding between them. Gracie died in September 1979. Her remains were buried in a loculus at the entrance of the graveyard in Capri. That place was a gift of the Cerios family to whom the woman had always been profoundly bound.