This Week of Grace *** (1933, Gracie Fields, Frank Pettingell, Henry Kendall, John Stuart) – Classic Movie Review 13,615

The spirited 1933 British comedy film This Week of Grace stars Gracie Fields in her rediscovered third film, along with Frank Pettingell, Henry Kendall, and John Stuart.

Director Maurice Elvey’s spirited 1933 British comedy film This Week of Grace is written by H Fowler Mear and Jack Marks, from a story by Maurice Braddell and Nell Emerald, and stars Gracie Fields, Henry Kendall, John Stuart, Frank Pettingell, Minnie Rayner and Nina Boucicault.

This Week of Grace is a mild, but pleasant and amusing film star vehicle for Our Gracie, in her usual persona as Grace Milroy, a jobless factory worker who takes a position as a maid/ housekeeper at the estate of a wealthy eccentric titled lady, the Duchess of Swinford (Nina Boucicault). Grace falls in love with the Duchess’s nephew, Viscount Swinford (Henry Kendall). and eventually marries him, but…

Energetic acting work all round keeps it moving: Fields goes off like a rocket, Frank Pettingell and Minnie Rayner score as Mr and Mrs Milroy, and so do Nina Boucicault and Henry Kendall as the Duchess of Swinford and Lord Clive Swinford.

In her third film, Fields earned £20,000. It follows Sally in Our Alley and Looking on the Bright Side.

Harry Parr-Davies’s songs include ‘My Lucky Day and ‘Happy Ending’.

Taglines: ‘Our Gracie’s biggest success. Loaded with songs. Bursting with Laughs’. ‘Cinderella in modern dress’.

The cast are Gracie Fields, Frank Pettingell, Henry Kendall, John Stuart, Douglas Wakefield, Minnie Rayner, Vivian Foster, Marjorie Brooks, Helen Haye, Nina Boucicault, and Laurence Hanray, plus the Sherman Fisher Girls as the Dancers.

The film was made by Twickenham Studios but shot at Ealing Studios as the Twickenham sound stage was booked up.

Release: July 1933.

The rediscovered film was loaned to the British Film Institute after its 2010 search for missing films, and a copy was made for the National Archive. It is available on DVD and Talking Pictures TV in the UK. As a result of being long missing, it is one of Fields’s least-known films.

Story-writer Nell Emerald acted in silent films in the 1910s and 1920s, and produced sound films in the 1930s.

Story-writer Maurice Braddell acted in silent films and talkies. Retired from films and working as an art restorer, and living in New York’s East Village, he was cast in Andy Warhol’s 1968 film Flesh and the 1971 Women in Revolt.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,615

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