| George Formby |
|
| Background
information |
| Birth name(s): |
George Hoy Booth |
| Date
of birth: |
26
May 1904 |
| Birth
location: |
Wigan,
Lancashire |
| Date of death: |
6
March 1961 |
| Death
location: |
Liverpool |
| Genre(s): |
Music hall, Film
singer,
comedian |
| Spouse(s): |
Beryl Ingham 1901–1960(d) |
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
- 1 Career
- 1.1 Beryl
Ingham: wife and manager of George Formby
- 2 Playing
Styles
- 3 Trivia
- 4 Selected
Songs
- 5 Filmography
- 6 In
the Thursday Next series
- 7 References
- 8 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 Blackpool for Bergen) 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 is 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.
- He did not read music, apart from the notes he could play
in on the banjolele.
- 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 currently a tribute to George touring the
country. 'Justin Formby' hails from Medomsley, near Dipton
in the North East of England. As well as being a double of George and
playing his classic songs, he also plays modern songs in the Formby
style, songs by such artists as The Beatles, Dire
Straits and Cradle of Filth.
- 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".
- 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 (Audio
sample)
- "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
| Persondata |
| NAME |
Formby, George |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES |
Booth, George Hoy |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION |
Music hall, Film, singer, comedian |
| DATE OF BIRTH |
May
26, 1904 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH |
Wigan,
Lancashire |
| DATE OF DEATH |
March
6, 1961 |
| PLACE OF DEATH |
Liverpool |
