Gracie!
 was a 2009 biopic tv film on the life of Gracie Fields, with Jane Horrocks playing Fields and Tom Hollander her husband Monty Banks.
 It covers her career before the Second World War and the decline in her popularity during the war.
Dame Gracie Fields, DBE (born Grace Stansfield; 9 January 189827 September 1979) 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 (CBE) for "services to entertainment" in 1938, and in 1979, seven months before her death, she was invested a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II.
Minnie Rayner (2 May 1869 – 13 December 1941) was a British stage and film actress.
 A character actress she played working class figures, often mothers, in films of the 1930s.
 Her roles include the matriarch of the working-class Fulham family who takes in an exiled Russian Prince (Ivor Novello) as a lodger in the comedy "I Lived with You" (1933).
 The same year she played Gracie Fields' mother in "This Week of Grace".
Our Gracie is a compilation album of the previous works of Gracie Fields, especially songs from movies she had appeared in.
Brian Tesler (born 19 February 1929) is a British television producer and executive.
 His career encompassed British television's post-war evolution from a single-channel BBC to the beginning of today’s multitude of cable and satellite channels.
 He worked as a producer in both the BBC and Independent Television in the 1950s, launching the television careers of Bruce Forsyth and Roy Castle among many others.
 He devised the Billy Cotton Band Show and British Television's first request show Ask Pickles with Wilfred Pickles, and worked with stage and screen stars such as Gracie Fields, Julie Andrews, Tony Bennett, Bob Hope and Mario Lanza.
Gracie: A Love Story is a 1988 biography of comedian Gracie Allen by George Burns.
 The tribute to Burns' wife and professional partner reviews their life together and contrasts Allen's scatterbrained public persona with the intelligent actress and devoted wife she actually was.
"Wish Me Luck as You Wave Me Goodbye" is a song by Harry Parr-Davies, made popular during the Second World War by Gracie Fields.
 It appeared in Fields' 1939 film "Shipyard Sally".
 Its use in the film is patriotic, Stephen C. Shafer argues, although the song in this context did not reference the war as the film was released prior to its outbreak.
Betty Fields , born in Rochdale, Lancashire, was a British actress.
 She was the sister of Gracie Fields.
 In 1936 she starred in the lead of "On Top of the World" in a role originally intended for her sister.
William Thomson Hay (6 December 1888 – 18 April 1949) was an English comedian, actor, author, film director and amateur astronomer who came to notice for his theatrical sketch as a jocular schoolmaster, known as Dr. Muffin.
 The acts in which Hay performed the schoolmaster sketch became known as "The Fourth Form at St. Michael's".
 Hay toured with act and appeared in America, Canada, Australia and South Africa.
 From 1934 to 1943, he was a prolific film star in Britain, and was ranked the third highest grossing star at the British Box Office in 1938, behind George Formby and Gracie Fields.
Frank Randle (born Arthur Hughes, also known as Arthur McEvoy or Arthur Twist; 30 January 1901 – 7 July 1957) was an English comedian.
 A contemporary of fellow Lancastrians George Formby and Gracie Fields, he was regarded as more subversive, perhaps explaining why the immense popularity he enjoyed during his lifetime has not survived him.

Question: What British actress played the mother of singer and comedian Gracie Fields?
Answer: Minnie Rayner