George Formby

Infos
Photos
Best films
Family
Characters
Awards

If you like this person, let us know!

Do you like this person ?

I like

I don't like

Birth name George Hoy Booth
Nationality United-kingdom
Birth 26 may 1904 at Wigan (United-kingdom)
Death 6 march 1961 (at 56 years) at Preston (United-kingdom)
Awards Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire

This article is about the Ukulele player, singer and comedian. For his father (1875–1921), see George Formby, Sr.

George Formby, OBE (26 May 1904 – 6 March 1961), was a British actor, singer-songwriter and comedian. He sang light, comical songs, usually playing the ukulele or banjolele. He was a major star of stage and screen in the 1930s and '40s, when Formby became the UK's highest-paid entertainer. His songs such as "When I'm Cleaning Windows" were particularly popular during the Second World War (1939–45).

When he and his wife travelled throughout the war, creating improvised lyrics to songs to fit the situation, they delighted their audiences. It was estimated that they played before three million Allied servicemen and women.

His 1937 song, "With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock", was banned by the BBC because of its suggestive lyrics. Formby's cheerful, innocent demeanour and nasal, high-pitched Lancashire accent neutralised the shock value of the lyrics; a more aggressive comedian such as Max Miller would have delivered the same lyrics with a bawdy leer.

His best-known catchphrase was probably "It's turned out nice again!". In 1960, his last recorded song "Happy Go Lucky Me" / "Banjo Boy", peaked at number 40 in the UK Singles Chart. Since his death in 1961, a remix version of "When I'm Cleaning Windows" by 2 In A Tent charted in the early 1990s.

Biography

Early life
Formby was born George Hoy Booth at 3 Westminster Street, Wigan, Lancashire. The eldest of seven surviving children, Formby was born blind because of an obstructive caul. His sight was restored during a violent coughing fit or sneeze when he was a few months old. His father, James Booth used the stage name George Formby, adopted from the town of Formby, Lancashire. He was one of the great music hall comedians of his day, fully the equal of his son's later success. His father, not wishing him to watch his performances, moved the family to Atherton Road in Hindley. It was from there that the younger Formby was apprenticed as a jockey when he was seven. He rode his first professional race at 10, when he weighed less than 4 stone (56 lb; 25 kg).

The family next moved to Stockton Heath, Cheshire, in a home on London Road. It was from there that the young George began his career as an entertainer.

Stage career
In 1921, three months after the death of his father, Formby abandoned his career as a jockey and began appearing in music halls using his father's material. At first he called himself George Hoy, using the name of his maternal grandfather, who came from Newmarket, Suffolk, where the family was engaged in racehorse training.

In 1923 while he was appearing in music hall in Castleford, Yorkshire he met Beryl Ingham (born in 1901 in Accrington, Lancashire), a champion clogdancer and actress, who had won All England Step Dancing title at the age of 11 and had formed a dancing act with her sister, May, called "The Two Violets". They married in Formby's birth town of Wigan, Lancashire the following year.

The couple worked together as a variety act until 1932, when she became his full-time manager and mentor, though she appeared in two of his films for which Formby was paid up to £35,000 per performance. It was Beryl's business skill and tough character that guided Formby to be the UK's highest-paid entertainer.

Formby endeared himself to his audiences with his cheeky Lancashire humour and folksy North of England persona. In film and on stage, he generally adopted the character of an honest, good-hearted but accident-prone innocent who used the phrases: "It's turned out nice again!" as an opening line; "Ooh, mother!" when escaping from trouble; and a timid "Never touched me!" after losing a fight of almost any description.

What made him stand out, however, was his unique and often mimicked musical style. He sang comic songs, full of double entendre, to his own accompaniment on the banjolele, for which he developed a catchy and complicated musical syncopated style that became his trademark, and which he had allegedly taken up as a hobby and first played it on stage for a bet. His best-known song, "Leaning on a Lamp-post" was written by Noel Gay. He recorded two more Noel Gay songs, "The Left-Hand Side of Egypt" and "Who Are You A-Shoving Of?" Over two hundred of the songs he performed, many of which were recorded, were written by Fred Cliffe and Harry Gifford, either in collaboration or separately, and Formby was included in the credits of a number of them, including "When I'm Cleaning Windows".

Some of his songs were considered too rude for broadcasting. His 1937 song, "With My Little Stick Of Blackpool Rock" was banned by the BBC because of its suggestive lyrics. Formby's songs are rife with sly humour, as in "Mr Wu's A Window Cleaner Now" where Formby is about to sing "ladies' bloomers" and suddenly changes it to "ladies' garters"; and in 1940's "On the Wigan Boat Express," in which a lady passenger "was feeling shocks in her signal box." Formby's cheerful, innocent demeanour and nasal, high-pitched Lancashire accent neutralised the shock value of the lyrics.

World War II
Formby was in high demand to entertain troops during the Second War. He and his wife, Beryl, were the first variety entertainers sent to France to provide diversions. They were the last entertainers out when the lines collapsed forcing the British to evacuate. The duo continued to travel throughout the war, creating improvised lyrics to songs to fit the situation much to the delight of the audiences. It was estimated that they played before over three million Allied service members. It was this effort that earned him the Order of the British Empire in the 1946 King's Birthday Honours List.

Film career
Further information: George Formby on screen, stage, record and radio
Formby had been making gramophone records as early as 1926; his first successful records came in 1932 with the Jack Hylton Band, and his first sound film Boots! Boots! in 1934 (Formby had appeared in a sole silent film in 1915). The film was successful and he signed a contract to make a further 11 films with Associated Talking Pictures, earning him a then astronomical £100,000 (roughly USD 4 million in 2009 terms) per year, despite the fact that studio head Michael Balcon reportedly considered Formby "an odd and not particularly loveable character". Between 1934 and 1945 Formby was the top comedian in British cinema, and at the height of his film popularity (1939, when he was Britain's number-one film star of all genres), his film Let George Do It was exported to America. Although his films always did well in Britain and Canada, they never caught on in the United States. Columbia Pictures hired him for a series, with a handsome contract worth £500,000, but decided not to circulate his films in the US.

Formby appeared in the 1937 Royal Variety Performance, and entertained troops with Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) in Europe and North Africa during World War II. He was appointed an OBE in 1946. His most popular film, still regarded as probably his best, is the espionage comedy Let George Do It, in which he is a member of a concert party, takes the wrong ship by mistake during a blackout, and finds himself in Norway (mistaking Bergen for Blackpool) as a secret agent. In one dream sequence he punches Hitler on the nose and addresses him as a "windbag".

In 1946 Beryl and George toured South Africa shortly before formal racial apartheid was introduced, where they refused to play racially-segregated venues. According to Formby's biographer, when George was cheered by a black audience after embracing a small black girl who had presented his wife with a box of chocolates, National Party leader Daniel François Malan (who later introduced apartheid) phoned to complain; Beryl replied "Why don't you piss off, you horrible little man?"

Formby suffered his first heart attack in 1952, during the run of his successful stage musical Zip Goes a Million. He withdrew from the show, and confined his performances to occasional guest appearances on stage and TV. In July 1960, he scored a chart hit with "Happy Go Lucky Me" / "Banjo Boy", which peaked at number 40 in the UK Singles Chart. His final television appearance, broadcast in December 1960, was a 35-minute solo spot on BBC Television's The Friday Show.

Death
Beryl continued to manage Formby's career until she contracted leukaemia; she died on 24 December 1960 in Blackpool, Lancashire. After her death, Formby publicly confessed that "My life with Beryl was hell". Two months later he became engaged to Pat Howson, a 36-year-old schoolteacher whom he had known since the 1930s, declaring that he had achieved a happiness which had never existed with Beryl.

Formby suffered a second heart attack and died in hospital on 6 March 1961. He was buried in the family grave in Warrington Cemetery
with an estimated 100,000 mourners lining the route. Because of his close association with Formby, the undertaker Bruce Williams (who as Eddie Latta had written songs for Formby) was chosen to make the funeral arrangements. Howson was left £140,000 by Formby which was contested by Formby's family up until her death in 1971.