George Formby , OBE (born George Hoy Booth ; May 26, 1904 - March 6, 1961), is a British actor, singer-songwriter and comedian who became famous all over the world. through his films of the 1930s and 1940s. Onstage, the screen and recording he sings light and funny songs, usually playing ukulele or banjolele, and being the highest paid entertainer in the UK.
Born in Wigan, Lancashire, he is the son of George Formby Sr, from whom he then takes his stage name. After his early career as a boy and a stable jockey, Formby climbed into the musical stage after his father's early death in 1921. The show was originally taken exclusively from his father's actions, including songs, jokes and similar characters. In 1923 he made two career-changing decisions - he bought ukulele, and married Beryl Ingham, a fellow player who became his manager and changed his action. She insists that she appears on the stage dressed formally, and introduces the ukulele to her appearance. He began his recording career in 1926 and, from 1934, he increasingly worked in films to develop into a major star in the late 1930s and 1940s, and became the most popular entertainer in Britain during the decade. Media historian Brian McFarlane writes that in the film, Formby describes the hasty Lancastrian innocent people who will triumph against some form of criminals, gaining the affection of an attractive middle-class girl in the process.
During World War II, Formby worked extensively for the National Entertainment Service Association (ENSA), and entertained civilians and troops, and in 1946 estimated that he had performed in front of three million service personnel. After the war, his career declined, though he traveled to the Commonwealth, and continued to appear in variations and pantomimes. His last television appearance was in December 1960, two weeks before Beryl's death. He surprised people by announcing his engagement to a school teacher seven weeks after Beryl's funeral, but died in Preston three weeks later, at the age of 56; he was buried in Warrington, with his father.
Formby biographer Jeffrey Richards assumes that the actor "has been able to bring together Lancashire simultaneously, working class, people, and nation". Formby is considered to be the first original display comedian in the UK. He is an influence on future comedians - especially Charlie Drake and Norman Wisdom - and, culturally, to entertainers like The Beatles, who refer to him in their music. Since his death, Formby has been the subject of five biographies, two television specials and two public sculptures.
Video George Formby
Biography
Initial life: 1904-21
George Formby was born George Hoy Booth at 3 Westminster Street, Wigan, Lancashire, on May 26, 1904. He is the eldest of seven surviving children born of James Lawler Booth and his wife Eliza, nÃÆ'  © e Hoy, though this marriage is bigamous because Formby Sr was still married to his first wife, Martha Maria Salter, a twenty-year-old music hall player. Booth is a successful comedian and music singer who performed under the name George Formby (he is now known as George Formby Sr). Formby Sr suffers from chest disease, identified as bronchitis, asthma or tuberculosis, and will use cough as part of his humor in his actions, telling the audience, "Bronchitis, I'm a bit tight tonight", or "cough better tonight". One of the main characters is John Willie, a "typical Lancashire model". In 1906, Formby Sr. earned $ 35 a week in the music hall, which rose to  £ 325 per week in 1920, and Formby grew up in a prosperous home. Formby Sr is so popular that Marie Lloyd, the influential singer and actress of the hall, will only watch two innings: she and the Dan Leno.
Formby was born blind because of obstructive caul, although her vision recovered when she was coughing hard or sneezing when she was several months old. After a short education - where he was unsuccessful, and did not learn to read or write - Formby was expelled from formal education at the age of seven and sent to be a stable boy, briefly in Wiltshire and then in Middleham, Yorkshire. Formby Sr sends his son away to work because he is worried that Formby will be watching him onstage; he defies Formby following in his footsteps, saying "one fool in the family is enough". After a year working at Middleham, he was apprenticed at Thomas Scourfield at Epsom, where he ran his first professional race at the age of 10, when he weighed less than 4 miles (Â £ 56; 25 kg).
In 1915, Formby Sr allowed his son to appear on screen, leading in By the Shortest of Heads , a thriller directed by Bert Haldane in which Formby plays a stable boy who defeats a group of criminals and wins. a prize of £ 10,000 when he came first in a horse race. The film is now considered missing, with the last copy known to have been destroyed in 1940. Then in 1915, and with the closure of the British racing season due to the First World War, Formby moved to Ireland where he continued as a jockey until November 1918. Later that month he returned to England and ran for Lord Derby in his Newmarket cage. Formby continued as a jockey until 1921, although he never won the race.
Starting a stage career: 1921-34
On February 8, 1921, Formby Sr succumbed to his bronchial condition and died, at the age of 45; he was buried in the Catholic section of Warrington Cemetery. After his father's funeral, Eliza took the young Formby to London to help her overcome her sadness. While there, they visit the Victoria Palace Theater - where Formby Sr had previously been so successful - and saw a show by Tyneside comedian Tommy Dixon. Dixon is doing a copy of the Formby Sr acting, using the same song, joke, costume, and behavior, and calls himself "The New George Formby", a name that makes Eliza and Formby even more angry. The show encouraged Formby to follow his profession, a decision supported by Eliza. Since he had never seen his father perform live, Formby found his copies difficult and had to learn his father's songs from recordings, and the rest of his acting and jokes from his mother.
On 21 March 1921, Formby gave his first professional appearance in a two-week run at the Hippodrome in Earlestown, Lancashire, where he received a fee of Ã, Â £ 5 a week. In the show he was billed as George Hoy, using his mother's maiden name - he explained later that he did not want the Formby name to appear in small letters. His father's name is used in posters and advertisements, George Hoy is described as "Comedian. (Son of George Formby)". While still appearing in Earlestown, Formby was hired to appear on the Moss Empire theater network for £ 17 10 per week. The first night did not work and he then said about it, "I was the first corner, three minutes, the death of a dog". She toured around the place in Northern England, although she was not well received, and was booed and hissed while performing at Blyth, Northumberland. As a result, he often experiences an unemployment period - up to three months at a point. Formby spent two years as a support act to get around in the northern hall, and despite his low pay, his mother supported him financially.
In 1923, Formby began playing the ukulele, although the exact circumstances of how he played the instrument were unknown, and he introduced him into his acting during a run at the Alhambra Theater in Barnsley. When the song - still the material of his father - was well received, he changed his stage name to George Formby, and stopped using John Willie's character. Another notable event was his appearance at Castleford, West Yorkshire, where appearing on the same bill was Beryl Ingham, an actress and actress-winning Hamilton-born actress who had won the All England Step Dancing title at the age of 11. Beryl, who had formed a dance act with his sister May, called "The Two Violets", had a low opinion about Formby's actions, and then said that "if I had a bag of rotten tomatoes with me I would throw them at him". Formby and Beryl had a relationship and married two years later, on September 13, 1924, at a registration office in Wigan, with Formby's aunt and uncle as witnesses. Upon hearing the news, Eliza insisted on the couple having a church wedding, which followed two months later.
Beryl takes over George as manager, and changes aspects of his actions, including songs and jokes. He instructs him on how to use his hands, and how his audiences work. He also persuaded him to change his stage gown into a black tie - though he performed in other costumes as well - and took lessons on how to play the ukulele correctly. In June 1926 he was clever enough to get a one-time recording contract - negotiated by Beryl - sang six of his father's songs for the Edison Bell/Winner label. Formby spent the next few years touring, mostly to the north, but also appeared in Shepherd's Bush Empire, his official official debut in London. Although he had further recording sessions in October 1929, performing two songs for Dominion Records, "Beryl's demands will prevent a serious contract from the way George came," according to David Bret, Formby biographer. That changed in 1932, when Formby signed a three-year deal with Decca Records. One of the songs he recorded in July was "Chinese Laundry Blues", telling the story of Wu, who became one of his standard songs, and part of a long-running series of songs about his character. During his career, Formby continued to record over 200 songs, about 90 songs written by Fred Cliffe and Harry Gifford. In the winter of 1932, Formby appeared in his first pantomime, Babes in the Wood , in Bolton, after which he toured the George Formby Road Show around northern England, with Beryl acts as a commÃÆ'¨re; the show was also held in 1934.
Expanded movie career: 1934-40
With Formby's growing success on stage, Beryl decided it was time to move on to the movie. In 1934 he approached producer Basil Dean, head of Associated Talking Pictures (ATP). Although he expressed an interest in Formby, he did not like the related demands of Beryl. He also met with the representatives of Warner Bros in England, Irving Asher, who belittled, saying that Formby "is too stupid to play bad guys and too ugly to play heroes". Three weeks later, Formby was approached by John E. Blakeley of Blakeley's Productions, who offered him a movie deal.
The movie, Shoes! Boots! , shot on a budget of £ 3,000 in a one-bedroom studio on Albany Street, London. Formby played John Willie's character, while Beryl also appeared, and the pair paid £ 100 for a two-week job, plus 10 percent of the profits. The film follows a revue format, and Jo Botting, writing for the British Film Institute, described it as having a "almost incidental" wafer-plot. Botting also considers this film to have "poor sound quality, static scene settings and lack of set", and although it does not impress the critics, the number of viewers is very high. Formby followed it with Off the Dole in 1935, again for Blakeley, who had renamed his company Mancunian Films. The movie costs $ 3,000 to make, and gets $ 80,000 at the box office. Just like Boots! Boots! , the film is in revue format, and Formby again plays John Willie, with Beryl as his opponent. According to Formby biographer Jeffrey Richards, the two films for Blakeley "are an invaluable record of pre-cinematic formby at work".
The success of the image made Dean offer Formby a seven-year contract with ATP, which produced 11 films, although his fellow producer Dean, Michael Balcon, regarded Formby as "a strange and unfavorable character". The first film of the deal was released in 1935. Formby's No Limit is a participant in the Isle of Man's annual Tourist Trophy (TT) cycling competition. Monty Banks is directed, and Florence Desmond leads the women. According to Richards, Dean did not try "to downplay the character of Formby's Lancashire" for the film, and hired Walter Greenwood, novelist novelist born in 1933, Love on the Dole, as a screenwriter. The making of troubled movies, with Beryl being difficult for everyone present. Writer Matthew Sweet described the set as a "battlefield" for his actions, and Banks did not succeed in asking Dean Bar Beryl from the studio. The Observer thinks that part of No Limit is "very boring stuff", but the recording of the race "shot and cut to maximum joy". Regarding the movie star, the reviewer thinks that "Lancashire George is a big boy, he can silence and joke, play banjo and sing with authority... Still, he's not so bad." This highly popular film was re-published in 1938, 1946 and 1957.
The formula used for No Limit is repeated in his works as follows: The formby played by "urban man" was defeated - but refused to admit it. "He described the good-hearted Lancastrian, but tended to be accidental and incompetent, often in skillful trades, or services.The plots were prepared for Formby who sought to achieve success in unfamiliar areas (in horse racing, TT Races, as spies or police), and by winning the affection of a girl's class intermediate in the process, interspersed throughout the film is a series of songs by Formby, in which he plays banjo, banjolele or ukulele.The songs, in the academic words of Brian McFarlane, "are understated in their balance between comedy and broad action,... [Formby] the usual shy ones ".
No Limit followed by Keep Your Seats, Please in 1936, again directed by the Bank with Desmond returning as his opponent. Tensions appeared in pre-production with the Bank and some players asked Dean that Beryl was banned from the set. The misery also became tense between Formby and Desmond, who did not speak, except the movie scene. The situation got so bad that Dean avoided visiting his studio during the month of filming. The film contains the song "The Window Cleaner" (known as "When I Cleaning Windows"), which was immediately banned by the BBC. Company director John Reith stated that "if the public wants to listen to Formby singing his disgusting little songs, they should be content to hear it in the cinema, not over the airwaves of the country"; Formby and Beryl are very angry with the block on the song. In May 1941, Beryl told the BBC that the song was a favorite of the royal family, especially the Queen Mary, while a statement by Formby indicated that "I sing it to the King and Queen in the Royal Variety Performance." The BBC relented and began broadcasting the song.
When production is finished at Keep Your Seats, Please , Beryl insists that for the next movie there should be "no Eye-Ties [sic] and small trollops involved", referring to the Bank and Desmond, respectively. Dean was tired of the quarrel, and for the third ATP film, Feather Your Nest, he pointed to William Beaudine as director, and Polly Ward, the nephew of the music hall star Marie Lloyd, as the female lead. Bret described the songs in the film as "relatively bland," but "with the exception that will be immortal": "Rely on lampposts".
At the next production, Keep Fit in 1937, Dean began forming a special team at Ealing Studios to help develop and produce Formby films; the key among the members was director Anthony Kimmins, who then directed five Formby films. Kay Walsh plays a prominent woman and, in Beryl's absence from the set, Formby and Walsh are having an affair, after she falls due to her "girlish behavior outside the camera". Although Beryl was very angry with Walsh, and tried to get rid of him from the film, the showdown with Dean proved futile. Dean told him that Walsh would still lead in Keep iit, and in the next Formby movie ( I See Ice , 1938); to ease his Dean raised Formby's fee for the last film to be Ã, Â £ 25,000.
When the filming ended on I See Ice, Formby spent the summer of 1937 performing on the King Cheer revue at the Opera House Theater, Blackpool, before performing in a 12-minute slot. in Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium in November. The popularity of the show meant that in 1937 he was the top British male star in box office acquisition, a position he held every year until 1943. In addition, between 1938 and 1942 he was also the highest paid entertainer in Britain, and by the end of the year The 1930s earned $ 100,000 annually. In early 1938 Dean informed Formbys that in the next film, It's in the Air , the Bank will come back to drive and Walsh will again become a leading lady. Beryl objected strongly, and Kimmins continued his briefing duties, while Ward was brought in to lead the women. Beryl, as he did with all of Formby's female colleagues, "read my husbands' melee act" to the actress.In May, while filming It's in the Air , Formby bought Rolls -Royce, with a private GF number plate 1. Every year after that he'll buy a new Rolls Royce or Bentley, buy 26 on his life path.
In the fall of 1938, Formby began working at Trouble Brewing, released the following year with 19-year-old Googie Withers as the female lead; Kimmins again directed. Withers later recounted that Formby did not talk to her until, during breaks in filming when Beryl was not around, she whispered out of the corner of her mouth, "Sorry, honey, but you know, I'm not allowed to speak to you", something she thinks "very sweet ". The second release of 1939 - shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War - was Come On George! , which surpassed Pat Kirkwood in the female lead; the pair were so intense with each other, and none of Formbys liked some of the other senior cast members. Come on George! screened for troops serving in France before being released in the UK.
Second World War: service with ENSA
At the outbreak of the Dean of the Second World War left ATP and became head of the National Association of Entertainment Services (ENSA), an organization that provided entertainment to the British Armed Forces. For five months, Formby was asked to register to ENSA, but was refused; Dean succumbed in February 1940, and Formby signed on a fixed salary of £ 10 per week, though he still remained under contact with the ATP. He made his first tour in France in March, where he performed for members of the British Expeditionary Forces.
The social research organization Mass-Observation notes that Formby's first film in 1940, Let George Do It! , giving a very strong impetus to the early civilian spirit of the British war. In the sequence of dreams after anesthetized, the character of Parasutra's character becomes the Nuremberg Rally and hits Hitler. According to Richards, the scene provides a "visual encapsulation of people's wars with Everyman's English covering Nazi Superman". The scene was so striking that it became Formby's first international release, in the US, under the title To Hell With Hitler , and in Moscow - where it was released in 1943 under the title Dinky Doo - it was shown to pack the house and receive a box-office record for more than ten months. The critics also praised the film, and Kinematograph Weekly called it "best performance to date" Formby, and the movie, "box office certainty".
ENSA Formby heavy commitments, factory tours, theaters and concerts around the UK. He also gave free concerts for charity and worthy purposes, and collected Ã, Â £ 10,000 for the Fleetwood Fund on behalf of the missing trawlermen family. She and Beryl also set up their own charity, such as the OK Club for Kids, which aims to provide cigarettes to Yorkshire soldiers, and Jump Funds, to provide balaclava, scarf and socks for the soldiers at home. Formby also joins the Home Guard as a shipping racer, where he takes his job seriously, and condenses them around his other jobs whenever he can.
Formby continued filming with ATP, and his second film of 1940, Spare a Copper, once again focused on the war aspect, this time battling the fifth columnist and saboteur at the Merseyside shipyard. The cinema goers are getting tired of the war movies, and the next attempt, Being Better Again goes back to a less contentious issue, with Formby being trapped in a domestic battle between his new wife and mother. At the start of the filming schedule, he took the time to appear on the ENSA show broadcast on the BBC from the Aldwych subway station as Let People Sing ; he sang four songs, and told the audience, "Do not forget, it's great to be an Englishman!" Toward the end of 1940, Formby tried to register for active military service, although Beryl told him that by becoming a member of ENSA he had already signed up. The check board rejects him as improper, as he has sinusitis and rheumatic fingers. He spent the winter in a pantomime at the Opera House Theater, Blackpool, depicting Idle Jack at Dick Whittington. When the season ended, Formbys moved to London and, in May 1941, performed for the royal family at Windsor Castle. He has commissioned a new set of non-offensive lyrics for "When I'm Cleaning Windows," but was told that he had to sing the original, uncensored version, enjoyed by the empire, especially Queen Mary, who requested a repetition of the song. King George VI presented Formby with a set of gold cufflinks, and advised him to "wear them instead of get rid of them".
With an ATP contract expiring, Formby decides not to renew or encourage an extension. Robert Murphy, in his study of wartime British cinema, pointed out that Balcon, the Formby producer at the time, "seems to have made little effort to persuade him not to transfer his loyalty", even though the box office was successfully enjoyed by Let George Do It and Spare a Copper . Many offers came in, and Formby chose Columbia Pictures America's company, in a deal worth over £ 500,000 to make a minimum of six films - seven were finally made. Formby founded his own company, Hillcrest Productions, to distribute films, and had final decisions about director's choices, playwright and themes, while Columbia would have a prominent women's choice. Part of the reason behind Formby's decision was the desire for parts with more characters, something that would not happen to ATP.
In late August 1941, production began in Formby's first film for Columbia, George South America , which took six weeks to complete. Formby's move to American companies is still controversial, and despite its popular appeal does not seem to be affected, "his films are treated with increasing critical hostility," according to John Mundy in a 2007 British film examination. The reviewer for The Times > writes that the story is "confused" and assumes that "there is not enough comic discovery in its preaching". Murphy writes that the criticism "has more to do with inadequate vehicles that later appear inside rather than a decline in personal popularity."
In early 1942, Formby toured three weeks, 72 shows in Northern Ireland, mostly playing for troops but also doing fundraising for charity - one at Belfast Hippodrome raising £ 500. He described his time at Ulster as "the most tour fun I've ever done ". He returned to the mainland through the Isle of Man, where he entertained the troops guarding the internment camp. After a further charity event - collect Ã, Â £ 8,000 for tank funds - Formby is an associate producer for the movie Vera Lynn We Will Meet Again (1943). In March he also filmed Much Too Shy released in October of that year. Although the film was less accepted by critics, the public was still attended in large numbers, and the film was profitable.
In the summer of 1942, Formby was involved in a controversy with the Observation Society of the Day of the Lord, who had filed a lawsuit against the BBC for playing secular music on Sunday. The public began a campaign against the entertainment industry, claiming all theatrical activity on Sunday unethical, and citing the 1667 law that made it illegal. With 60 prominent entertainers who have avoided Sunday's work, Dean told Formby that his stance would be crucial in avoiding the spread of the problem. Formby issued a statement, "I will hang my uke on Sunday only when our children stop fighting and get killed on Sunday... as far as the Lord's Day of Society's attention is concerned, they can take care of their own bloody business And in any case, what have they done for war effort except to make everyone uneasy? "The next day it was announced that the pressure from the community would be lifted.
At the end of the year Formby began filming Get Cracking, a story about Home Guard, completed in less than a month, a tight schedule brought by the upcoming ENSA tour of the Mediterranean. Between the end of filming of Get Cracking and the launch of the film in May 1943, Formby toured Northern Scotland and the Orkney Islands, and almost finished filming on the next movie, Bell-Bottom George. The reviewer for The Times is of the opinion that "Get Cracking , despite the different improvements in other films where Mr. Formby has appeared, is cut too close to meet the individual demands of techniques to achieve real life his own ".
Bell-Bottom George was described 60 years later by Baz Kershaw academicians as "gay unashamed and embellished with homoerotic scenes"; Bret agrees, noting that "the majority of players and almost all male players are gay not shy," the film became a hit with what Bret described as "a very large and closed Interby." The reviewer for The Manchester Guardian was impressed with the film, and wrote that "there is a new neatness of execution and lightness of touch about this production... while George himself can no longer be accused of trailing the cloud of vaudevillian glory". The reviewer also considers Formby "our original and genuine movie comedians". After completing the filming, Formbys toured further ENSA. Though Dean personally disliked Formbys, he greatly admired their tireless work for the organization. In August, Formby toured 53 days in most of the Mediterranean, including Italy, Sicily, Malta, Gibraltar, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, and Palestine; visited 750,000 troops in thirteen countries, toured 25,000 miles (40,000 km) in the process and returned to the UK in October. The couple toured the countryside with Ford Mercury purchased by Formby from Sir Malcolm Campbell, who had been converted to sleep two behind.
In January 1944, Formby described his experience doing tours for ENSA in Europe and the Middle East on BBC radio broadcasts. He said the troops "worried many people at home, but we immediately put them right about it.We told them that after four and a half years, England is still the best country to live in." Shortly after he started filming He Snoops to Conquer - his fifth photograph for Columbia - he was visited on set by the Dance Music Policy Committee (DMPC), an organization responsible for filtering music for broadcasts, which also given the responsibility to check whether music sympathizes with the enemy during the war. DMPC interviews Formby about three songs that have been included in Bell-Bottom George: "Small Fish Swim", "If I Have a Girl Like You" and "Bell-Bottom George". Formby was called to the BBC offices to perform three songs in front of the committee, with his song checking out the music sheets available. A week later, on February 1, the organizers met and decided that the songs were harmless, although Formby was told he would have to obtain further permission if the lyrics were changed. Bret argues that he has been the victim of a plot by members of the Federation of Artists of Variety, following Formby's scathing comments about entertainers who are too afraid to leave London to entertain troops. The comments, which appeared in Union Jack magazine, were later widely reported in the British press. The Federation of Various Artists demands that Formby release names, and threaten him with action if he does not do so, but he refuses to yield to their pressure.
Formby went to Normandy in July 1944 at the vanguard of a wave of ENSA players. He and Beryl made their way across a rough junction to Arromanches giving a series of impromptu concerts to troops in improvisational conditions, including behind a farming cart and army truck, or in bomb crater fields. In one location the German front line was too close for him to perform, so he crawled into the trenches and told jokes with troops there. He then climbs HMS Ambitious for his first scheduled concert before returning to France to continue his tour. At dinner with General Bernard Montgomery, whom he met in North Africa, Formby was invited to visit the glider crew of the 6th Airborne Division, which had held a series of unresolved bridges for 56 days. He did so on August 17 during a one-day visit to the front bridge, where he gave nine shows, all standing next to the sandbag walls, ready to jump into the crack gap if there was a problem; most of the time the listener is in the foxhole. After four weeks of touring France, Formby returned home to begin work on I Does not Do It (released in 1945), although he continued to work at ENSA concerts and tours in the UK. Between January and March 1945, shortly after the release of He Snoops to Conquer , he left on the ENSA tour taking in Burma, India and Ceylon (the latter now Sri Lanka). The concerts in the Far East were the last for ENSA, and by the end of the war it was estimated that he had performed in front of three million service personnel.
Postwar career: 1946-52
In 1946 "With My Little Staff in Blackpool Rock", recorded by Formby in 1937, began to cause problems on the BBC for Formby broadcasts or his music. The producer of one of the direct broadcast programs from Formby received a letter from a BBC manager who stated "We have no record that" With My Little Wand from Blackpool Rock "is banned.We also know and so does Formby, that certain lines in the lyrics do not may be broadcast ". Other sources, including the BBC, stated that the song was banned. Between July and October 1946, Formby filmed George in Civvy Street , which will be his last movie. This story concerns the rivalry between two pubs: Unicorn, bequeathed to the character of Formby, and Lion, owned by his childhood lover - played by Rosalyn Boulter - but run by an unscrupulous manager. Richards thinks the film has a "symbolic meaning"; in the end, with a marriage between two publishers, Formby "bending out of the film unites the nation in myth, communal and matrimonial".
The film was less successful at the box office than his previous works, as audience tastes have changed in the post-war world. Fisher argues that because of his tireless work of war, Formby became too synonymous with war, causing the public to turn away from him, just as they had experienced by wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Bret believed that post-war audiences wanted intrigue, tension and romance, through James Mason movies, Stewart Granger, David Niven, and Laurence Olivier. Bret also pointed out that the cinematic decline of Formby is shared by similar players, including Gracie Fields, Tommy Trinder and Will Hay. Formby biographers Alan Randall and Ray Seaton argue that in the late 40s, Formby "starts gray and thickening", and too old to play a young, innocent young Lancashire. The decline in display popularity hit Formby hard, and he became depressed. In early 1946, Beryl examined him to a mental hospital under his maiden name, Ingham. He came out after five weeks, in time for a tour in Scandinavia in May.
Upon returning from Scandinavia, Formby went to a pantomime in Blackpool; while there, he learned from his assignment as British Royal Order Official (OBE) at the 1946 King's Birthday Honors. Despite his delight, he was upset that Beryl left without official recognition, and said "if anything passes by our way I want it into something Beryl can share. " Later that year Formbys toured South Africa shortly before the official racial apartheid was introduced. While there they refused to play racially segregated places. When Formby was blacked out by a black audience after hugging a small black girl who had presented her with a box of chocolates, National Party leader Daniel FranÃÆ'§ois Malan (who later introduced apartheid) called to complain; Beryl replied, "Why do not you pee, you terrible little guy?"
Formby returned to England at Christmas and appeared in Dick Whittington at the Grand Theater in Leeds for nine weeks, and then, in February 1947, he appeared in a two-week variation at the London Palladium. Reviewing the show, The Times thought Formby was "more than ever mechanical perfection of naïve nerves, his smile, though still, winning, and his song... interesting". In September of that year he went to Australia and New Zealand for 12 weeks. On his return he was offered the role of more movies, but rejected him, saying "when I look back at some of the movies I've done in the past it makes me want to cringe, I'm afraid the days will be a lost clown, from now on I will only do variations". She began to suffer from increasing health problems including gastric ulcers, and was treated for respiratory problems due to her heavy smoking habit. She finished the year in pantomime, performing as a Buttons in Cinderella at the Liverpool Empire Theater, with Beryl playing Dandini.
In September 1949, Formby went on a 19 tour of Canada from coast to coast, from which he returned unhealthy. While later appearing in Cinderella in Leeds, he collapsed in the locker room. The doctor in charge of giving morphine, which Formby briefly became addicted. Poorer health happened to him in 1950, with dysentery attacks, followed by appendicitis, after which he recovered in Norfolk, before giving another royal command command in April. He made two further international tours that year: one to Scandinavia, and one second to Canada. His earnings of Ca $ 200,000 were taxed heavily: the Canadian tax reached $ 68,000, and the UK tax took 90% of the balance. Formby complained to reporters about the rate of taxation, saying "That's it, As long as the government keeps making me bleed, I will not rush to work anymore!"; he and Beryl spent the rest of the year resting in Norfolk, for a temporary retirement.
Formby was tempted back to work by the theater impresario Emile Littler, who offered him Percy Piggott's main role in Zip Goes a Million, a drama based on GB McCutcheon's 1902 Brewster's Millions novel; Formby offered Ã, Â £ 1,500, plus part of box-office expenses. The show premiered at Coventry Hippodrome in September 1951 before it opened at the Palace Theater, London on October 20th. The Times commented unfavorably, saying that although the audience is very appreciative of the game, they "can not imagine to have detected sparks of intelligence in both lyrics and dialogue"; the paper both belittled Formby, writing that "he has a nimble way with a song or banjo, but little or no proficiency in his handling of comic situations".
A month after the show opens in London, Formby is a guest on the Disc Island Desert, where one of his options is his father "Stand on the Road Corner". In early 1952, Formby's health began to decline and, on April 28, he decided to withdraw from the Zip Goes a Million. On the way to the theater to tell Littler, Formby suffered a heart attack, even though the doctor took five days to diagnose the coronary and put him in the hospital. He was treated for both attacks, and his morphine addiction. He stayed at the hospital for nine weeks before returning home to Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, where he announced his resignation.
Health and work problems intermittently: 1952-60
During his recovery, he contracted gastroenteritis and had blood clots in his lungs, after which he underwent an operation to clean the fish bones stuck in his throat. He had recovered enough by April 1953 to perform a 17-show tour of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), before a special appearance at Southport Garrick Theater. In September, he turned on Blackpool Illumination.
From October to December 1953 Formby appeared at the London Palladium in the 138 show of the Fun and the Fair revision, with Terry-Thomas and Billy Cotton bands; Formby appeared in the second half of the night, with Terry-Thomas closing the show. Although Formby's actions were well received, the show was not as successful as expected, and Terry-Thomas later wrote that "Formby puts the audience in a certain mood that makes them not accept anyone who follows... Even though I act is the star point, I feel on this occasion that my presence there is anti-climax ". He requested that the order be changed in order for Formby to close the event, but this was rejected. Formby suffered stage fright during the show - the first time he had suffered from this condition since the beginning of his time on stage - and a depression attack back, along with a stomach problem.
Formby retired from work until mid-1954, when she starred in a re-show of Turned Out Nice Again , in Blackpool. Although the show was originally scheduled to run for 13 weeks, it was cut short after six when Formby suffered again from dysentery and depression. He again announces his resignation, but continues to work. After several television appearances in Ask Pickles and Top of the Town, in late 1954 and early 1955, Formby traveled to South Africa for a tour, in which Beryl negotiated an agreement with the Prime South African Minister Johannes Strijdom plays at Selby's preferred venues, and then sails to Canada for a series of ten-day shows. On his way home he suffered bronchial pneumonia, but still joined the non-musical drama player Too Young to Marry during his arrival in England.
In August 1955, Beryl felt unwell and underwent a test: she was diagnosed with cervical cancer and was given two years to live. The couple reacted to the news in a different way, and while Beryl started drinking heavily - up to a bottle of whiskey a day to ease the pain - George began to work harder, and started a close friendship with a school teacher, Pat Howson.
Too Young to Marry toured between September 1955 and November 1956, but still allowed Formby time to appear in the Babe in the Wood pantomime at the Liverpool Empire Theater. Touring production is well received everywhere except in Scotland, where the thoughtful Scottish Formby script is thought to have made people lose their jobs. For Christmas 1956 he appeared in his first London pantomime, playing Idle Jack at Dick Whittington and his Cat at the Palace Theater, though he retired from escape in early February after suffering from strep throat. According to Bret, Formby spent the rest of 1957 "hardly doing anything", even though he appeared on two television programs,
From March 1958, Formby appeared in the Beside the Seaside music comedy, Holiday Romp in Hull, Blackpool, Birmingham, and Brighton. When it reached Brighton, the game was played by a smaller audience, and the run was shortened. This drama may not be to the tastes of south audiences - the plot is centered on the northern family holiday in Blackpool - and the Brighton audience may be too small, but the people in the north, especially Blackpool, are very thoughtful and the show is a night-out. When the show closed, Formby was disappointed, and vowed never to appear on another musical stage. 1958 was professionally quiet for him; In addition to the Seaside side, he also worked in a single appearance on three television shows. He began in 1959 with a performance at Spectacular Val Parnell: The Atlantic Showboat in January, and in April hosted his own show, Steppin 'Out With Formby . During the summer he appeared at the Windmill Theater, Great Yarmouth, although he missed a two week show when he was involved in a car accident on the August Bank Holiday. When doctors examine it, they worry about their overall health, partly as a result of the habit of smoking forty cigarettes per day. She also has high blood pressure, is overweight and has heart problems.
Formby's final year is 1960. In May, he recorded the last sessions of his songs, "Happy Go Lucky Me" and "Banjo Boy", which peaked at number 40 on the UK Singles Chart. He then spent the summer at Queen's Theater in Blackpool at The Time of Your Life - a show also broadcast by the BBC. One of the acts in the show was the singer Yana, with whom Formby cheated, became easier due to Beryl's absence from the theater due to illness. His last appearance on television, the BBC 35 minute program, The Friday Show: George Formby, was broadcast on December 16th. Bret regarded the program as "the greatest show" of Formby - it was of course the most sincere, "although reviewing for The Guardian, Mary Crozier considered it" too slow. "He went on to say" George Formby really star music, and needs the warmth and friendliness of the theater to pull off full appeal. "Beryl's disease gets worse and worn by the tension, and feels the need to escape, Formby takes part of Mr. Wu at Aladdin in Bristol, having turned down a more lucrative part in Blackpool.
Last month: new romance, death, and family dispute
Two hours before the premiere of Aladdin - on Christmas Eve 1960 - Formby receives a phone call from Beryl's doctor, saying that he is in a coma and not expected to good night; Formby went through the show, and was told the next morning that Beryl had died. The cremation took place on December 27, and an hour after Formby's service returned to Bristol to perform in the daytime show Aladdin . She continued the show until Jan. 14 when a cold had forced her to rest, based on a doctor's advice. He returned to Lytham St Annes and communicated with Pat Howson; she contacted her doctor and Formby was instructed to go to the hospital, where she stayed for the next two weeks.
On Valentine's Day 1961, seven weeks after Beryl's death, Formby and Howson announced their engagement. Eight days later he suffered a further severe heart attack so he was given the last ceremony of the Catholic Church upon his arrival at the hospital. She was revived and, from her bed in the hospital, she and Howson planned their wedding, to be held in May. He was still there when, on March 6, he had a further heart attack and died at the age of 56 years. The obituarist for The Times wrote that "he is an amateur from an old cigarette concert platform that turns into a music-genius music professional", while Donald Zec, writing in the Daily Mirror calling him "as a great entertainer as one of the giants of the music-room". The Guardian considers that "with his ukulele, his songs, and his grinning pat, the numbers are bigger than those parts: the Lancashire character", while in the public eye, Formby's "passes" true and widely mourning ".
Formby was buried with his father at Warrington Cemetery with more than 150,000 mourners queuing on the route. The management is Bruce Williams who, like Eddie Latta, has written songs for Formby. An hour after the ceremony, the family read a will, which had been made two weeks earlier. Harry Scott - Valet and Formby factotum - will receive £ 5,000, while the rest is to go to Howson; in Formby's estate estate is worth £ 135,000. Formby's mum and brothers get angry at the desire, and fight over it. In Bret's words "mourning... [Formby] is ravaged by a greedy family fighting over his not-so-great fortune".
Because the will was contested, Formby's lawyers insisted that a public auction be held for the contents of Formby's home, which lasted for three days in June. Howson offered to honor the previous will by providing Ã, Â £ 5,000 for Eliza and Ã, Â £ 2,000 each for the Formby brethren, but the offer was denied, and the matter went to the High Court in London. This case was heard in May 1963 before Mr. Justice Ormrod. In the end, Eliza was awarded Ã, Â £ 5,000, and the sisters each received Ã, Â £ 2000. Formby's lawyer, John Crowther, acted for Howson, and explained that the testament to Formby's sisters from the older testament was made "in aversion" by Formby, who described his family as "a set of scroungers". The family appealed the decision and the matter lasted until September 1965, when it was finally dismissed for Howson's good.
Maps George Formby
Screen persona and techniques
Richards assumes that Formby "has been able to bring together Lancashire simultaneously, working class, people and nation"; Geoff King, in his examination of the comedy, also saw Formby as an icon, and wrote that "[Gracie] Fields and Formby gained status as national and regional figures, without sacrificing their distinctive regional personality traits." While the national aspect is important for success outside the north, "the Lancashire accent remains to enhance the appeal of its simple comics". Media historian Brian McFarlane writes that, in the movie, Formby describes "basically incompetent people, aspiring to various types of professional success... and even more likely to middle-class boyfriends, usually in the grip of some caddish type with whiskers Always he scored on both counts ".
On the ITV's The South Bank Show issue in November 1992, Richards commented that Formby "the embodied qualities that people admire and found convincingly in depression... and you think that this is someone who threw anything at him , will come and come out smile - and people want it ". HJ Igoe, writing at The Catholic Herald, thinks that "Formby has a common English touch.We are warm to friendly turnip faces, turning eyes, sliced ​​coconut mouths, small songs that silly... melodic melodious sounds and crooked banyos.Johnson is a universal masterpiece - platoons and simple spaces - boys - beloved henpeck - fathers who can not hang pictures and underpin their foolishness every day there is great wisdom from ordinary fools who love and believe in the world, his comedies are understated, but never lustful.
Richards identifies in Formby "a basically childish innocence... which explains why George is as popular as children as he is with adults"; Igoe agrees, and writes that "we know he loves children, because he is a child himself". The Formby screen and stage persona of innocence and simplicity are not seen as ignorance or ignorance, although Basil Dean disagrees and thinks that Formby "does not act bare as many successful Lancashire comedians do, he's gormless". Most of the impartiality in Formby's performance relates to sex, and the use of multiple entenders in his songs. John Caughie and Kevin Rockett, in their examination of the British film, and Richards, saw the connection between Formby's approach to sex and beachside postcards from Donald McGill. Richards sees Formby's humor function similar to McGill's: "harmless diffusion from a major source of tension in a very oppressed and conventional society". Formby's submission of sexual content - what McFarlane identifies as "sung with a grinning smile and innocent air" - negates any possible anger, and this contrasts with the more open sexual exposure of other players at the time, such as Max Miller and Frank Randle.
Ukulele expert Steven Sproat considers Formby "incredible... No uke player since Formby - or even before Formby - who plays like him". Most of Formby's skills came from his right-hand technique, split stroke, and he developed his own fast and complicated style of sync with his very fast right strum. Joe Cooper, writing in the New Society, considers that "No one has ever reproduced the destructive destructive right-handed syncopation, so carefully synchronized with the left hand's forefinger."
Legacy
Formby screen personnel influenced Norman Wisdom in the 1950s and Charlie Drake in the next decade, though both of these players used pathos, which Formby avoided.
Shortly after Formby's death a small group of fans formed the George Formby Society, which held its inaugural meeting at Imperial Hotel Blackpool. George Harrison is a Formby fan, a member of the Society and an ukulele advocate. The rest of The Beatles are also fans - they improvise with ukuleles during recording breaks at Let It Be - and the influence of Formby can be heard in the song "Her Majesty". The Beatles' second track, "Free as a Bird", ends with a little coda including the ukulele picked by Harrison and John Lennon's voice playing backwards, saying "It's great."
In 2014 there are two public statues of Formby. The first, by Manx artist Amanda Barton, is in Douglas, the Isle of Man, and shows him leaning against a lamppost and wearing the skin of a TT motorcycle driver. Barton is also tasked to provide a second statue for the city of Lancashire, Wigan, which was inaugurated in September 2007 at the city's Grand Arcade shopping center.
Formby has been the subject of five biographies by 2014. In the late 1960s Harry Scott published his memories of Formby, The Fabulous Formby, in the 14 issues of The Vellum, the George Formby Society magazine ; John Fisher published George Formby in 1975 before Alan Randall and Ray Seaton published their book in 1974 and David Bret produced George Formby: A Troubled Genius in 1999. The latter of the five to be published are by Sue Smart and Richard Bothway Howard in 2011, It's Good More! . There were also two documentaries on British television, The South Bank Show edition in 1992, and Frank Skinner at George Formby in 2011.
In 2004 Formby was inducted into Ukulele Hall of Fame, a nonprofit organization for the preservation of ukulele history. His quote reads, in part: "He won such love and respect for the presence of his charismatic stage, technical skills and playful lyrics that he remained popular forty years after his death." In June 2012 the Blackpool Boat Car Tram, number 604, was repainted and returned to service by sponsor of the George Formby Society. The tram was named "George Formby OBE" and pictures of him taped to the trolley.
Notes and references
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References
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External links
- George Formby in BFI
- George Formby at Screenonline UK Film Institute
- George Formby on IMDb
- George Formby in the TCM Movie Database
- George Formby in PathÃÆ'Â © News
- The George Formby Society
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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