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'George Formby', OBE (26 May 1904 – 6 March 1961) was an English singer and comedian who became a major star of both cinema and music hall.

Contents

Career

Beryl Ingham: wife and manager of George Formby

Playing Styles

Trivia

Selected Songs

Filmography

In the ''Thursday Next'' series

References

External links

Career

George was born in Wigan, Lancashire, as George Hoy Booth, the eldest of seven surviving children (four girls and three boys). His father (James Booth) was George Formby (Senior) (1875-1921) one of the great music hall comedians of his day, fully the equal of his son's later success. His father not wishing him even to watch his performances, he was apprenticed as a jockey when he was seven and rode his first professional race at ten when he weighed under four stone (56 pounds, 25.4 kg).
On the death of his father in 1921, Formby abandoned his career as a jockey and started his own music hall career using his father's material. He originally called himself George Hoy (George Hoy was also his father in-law's name, who originally came from Newmarket, Suffolk a famous horseracing town & whose family were involved in horse training). In 1924 he married dancer Beryl Ingham, who managed his career (and it is said his personal life to an intolerable degree - see biographies below) until her death in 1960. He allegedly took up the ukulele, for which he was later famous, as a hobby and first played it on stage for a bet.
George Formby endeared himself to his audiences with his cheeky Lancashire humour and folksy Northern 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 and "Ooh, mother!" when escaping from trouble.
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 syncopated style which became his trademark. Some of his best-known songs were written by Noel Gay.
He made his first successful record (he had been making records as early as 1926) 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 with Associated Talking Pictures, earned him a then-astronomical income of £100,000 per year. A subsequent contract with Columbia Pictures earned him a further £500,000.
Between 1934 and 1945 Formby was the top box-office attraction in British cinema. He appeared in the 1937 Royal Variety Show, and entertained troops with ENSA in Europe and North Africa during World War II. He received an OBE in 1946. He had received a Stalin Prize in 1944, prompted by the popularity of his films in the USSR. His most popular film, and 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. A dream sequence in which he punches Hitler on the nose and addresses him as a "windbag" is one of the most enduring moments in film comedy.
Formby suffered his first heart attack in 1952. His wife Beryl died of leukaemia on 24 December 1960 and he planned to marry Pat Howson, a 36-year-old schoolteacher, in the spring of 1961. However he had a second heart attack before then and died in hospital on 6 March 1961. His funeral was held in St Charles' Church in Aigburth, Liverpool and an estimated 100,000 mourners lined the route as his coffin was driven to Warrington Cemetery, where he was buried in the Booth family grave.

Beryl Ingham: wife and manager of George Formby

Beryl Ingham was born in Haslingden, Lancashire in 1901. She was a champion clogdancer and actress, winning the All England Step Dancing Title at the age of 11. Later she formed a dancing act with her sister May, which they called themselves "The Two Violets" [1]. It was in 1923 while they were appearing in music hall in Yorkshire that she met George Formby. They married in George's home town of Wigan, Lancashire the following year [2].
The couple worked together as a variety act until 1932 when she became his full time manager and mentor, though she did in fact appear in two of his films for which George was paid up to £35,000 per performance. It was due to Beryl's business nous that she guided George to be the UK's highest paid entertainer (at a time of high taxation he was paying 97.5% of his earnings as revenues).
In 1946 Beryl Ingham was with George on a tour of South Africa, where he played to black audiences despite threats from the National Party leader Daniel François Malan. Beryl embraced a three year old black girl who had presented her with a box of chocolates. When Malan started shouting at the Formbys, threatening to throw the couple out of the country, Beryl, with a typical northern response, replied "Why don't you piss off you horrible little man" [3]
Beryl continued to manage George's career until she contracted leukemia. She died on Christmas Day 1960 in Blackpool.

Playing Styles

George Formby's trademark was playing the banjolele in a highly syncopated style, collectively referred to as the 'Formby style'.
Among the several styles that he used, the most commonly emulated stroke of Formby's is a simple but clever technique, called the "Split Stroke", a technique which could produce some distinctive (but relatively easy to copy) effects. He sang in his own Lancashire accent.
Other strokes used by Formby include the triple, the circle, the fan, and the shake.

Trivia

★ One of his most popular films is ''No Limit'' and used to be shown every year in the Isle of Man TT week. George rides a 'Shuttleworth Snap' in the film. The Shuttleworth Snap was actually a disguised 1928 AJS - it was the Rainbow that was the disguised Ariel Red Hunter. In real life Formby owned a Norton International 500cc OHC single sports model, one of the most desirable machines of the day.

★ In a TV programme towards the end of his life, Formby admitted that he had never learned to read or write music.

★ His father, George Formby Senior, had intended to retire from music-hall and buy some horses, employing George to train them, but died before he could put this plan into effect.

★ In the British radio programme, ''The Bradshaws'', all of Formby's songs were said to have been written by Uncle Wally One-Ball.

★ There is a bronze statue of George leaning on a lampost on Ridgeway Street in Douglas, Isle of Man.

★ The British comedian Peter Kay makes reference to George Formby in a comedy sketch. Kay describes how his 'Nana' finds it difficult to pronounce product names. Examples include: "VD Player" instead of "DVD Player", and "George Formby Grill" instead of "George Foreman Grill".

★ George is referenced in many episodes of the Marks and Gran sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart, and is portrayed, with his wife Beryl, in the series 3 episode "Turned Out Nice Again".

★ Appears in the back cover of Alice in Chains self-titled album, also known as Tripod, with a Computer Edited third leg.

Selected Songs

★ "Auntie Maggie's Remedy"

★ "Chinese Laundry Blues"

★ "The Isle of Man"

★ "The Window Cleaner"/"When I'm Cleaning Windows ()

★ "Leaning on a Lampost"

★ "With my Little Ukulele in my Hand"

★ "With my Little Stick of Blackpool Rock"

★ "Mother What'll I do Now"

★ "Mr Wu's A Window Cleaner Now"

★ "Mr Wu's An Air Raid Warden Now"

★ "Our Sergeant Major"

★ "My Grandad's Flanalette Night Shirt"

Filmography

★ ''By the Shortest of Heads''

★ ''Boots! Boots!''

★ ''Off The Dole''

★ ''The Song That Made A Star''

★ ''No Limit''

★ ''Keep Your Seats Please''

★ ''Feather Your Nest''

★ ''Keep Fit''

★ ''I See Ice''

★ ''It's In The Air''

★ ''Trouble Brewing''

★ ''Come On George''

★ ''Let George Do It''

★ ''Spare A Copper''

★ ''Turned Out Nice Again''

★ ''South American George''

★ ''Much Too Shy''

★ ''Get Cracking''

★ ''He Snoops To Conquer''

★ ''Bell Bottom George''

★ ''I Didn't Do It''

★ ''George in Civvy Street''

In the ''Thursday Next'' series

A fictional George Formby appears in the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde. In the "Nextiverse", Formby was part of the resistance during the Nazi occupation of England, broadcasting inspirational songs and jokes to the occupied English on "Wireless Saint George" (essentially the opposite of Lord Haw-Haw). Such was Formby's popularity that Hitler ordered all banjos and ukeleles burned. Following the collapse of the occupation, Formby was appointed President-for-Life, to replace the (presumed defunct) Royal Family as an inspirational figurehead for the country (and unlike the Royal Family, was genuinely beloved by the vast majority of his subjects). The Nextiverse version of Formby held the rank until his death in 1988.

References

External links

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★ The Guardian: Naughty but nice (George Formby by David Bret)

★ 'Ukulele king' Formby dies (BBC News)

★ The George Formby Society

★ homage to Mancunian Films

★ Profile of George Formby Snr and Jnr

★ George Formby website by Stan Evans

★ George Formby's Gravesite