| 34th | Top ukulele players |
| George Formby, Jr. OBE | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | George Hoy Booth |
| Also known as | George Hoy |
| Born | 26 May 1904 Wigan, England |
| Died | 6 March 1961 (aged 56) Liverpool, England |
| Genres | Oldies |
| Occupations | Singer–songwriter, actor, comedian, musician |
| Instruments | Vocals |
| Years active | 1921–61 |
| Associated acts | George Formby, Sr. |
| Notable instruments | |
| Banjolele, ukulele | |
George Formby, Jr., OBE (26 May 1904 – 6 March 1961) was an English singer and comedian, famous for playing the banjolele, a banjo-like instrument, and performing a variety of light, comical songs. He would eventually become a popular star of stage and screen.
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Formby was born at 3 Westminster Street, Scholes, Wigan, Lancashire, as George Hoy Booth, the eldest of seven surviving children (four girls and three boys). Formby was born blind due to an obstructive caul. His sight was restored during a violent coughing fit he suffered whilst he and his mother were crossing the River Mersey[1]. Other sources claim he stated that the miracle of his restored sight was "due to a simple sneeze"[2]. His father (James Booth) was George Formby, Sr., whose stage name was adopted from the town of Formby, Liverpool, 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 even to watch his performances, moved the family to Atherton Road in Hindley, near Wigan, and it was from there that Formby was apprenticed as a jockey when he was seven and rode his first professional race aged ten when he weighed under 4 stone (56 lb; 25 kg).
The family then moved to Stockton Heath, Warrington and it was from there that George Formby Jr. embarked on his career in entertainment.
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 maternal grandfather's name, who originally came from Newmarket, Suffolk, a famous horseracing town and whose family were involved in racehorse 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; he first played it on stage for a bet.
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 fistfight.
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 musical syncopated style that became his trademark. 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 Cliff 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 the lyrics.[3] Formby's songs are rife with sly humour, as in 1932's "Chinese Laundry Blues," where Formby is about to sing "ladies' knickers" and suddenly changes it to "ladies' blouses"; 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 demeanor and nasal, high-pitched Lancashire accent neutralized the shock value of the lyrics; a more aggressive comedian like Max Miller would have delivered the same lyrics with a bawdy leer.
George 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 with Associated Talking Pictures, earned him a then-astronomical income of £100,000 (roughly $4 million USD in 2009 dollars) per year. Between 1934 and 1945 Formby was the top comedian in British cinema, and at the height of his movie 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 Great 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 did not circulate his films stateside.
Formby appeared in the 1937 Royal Variety Performance,[4] and entertained troops with Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) in Europe and North Africa during World War II. He received an OBE in 1946.[5] 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. He planned to marry Pat Howson, a 36-year-old schoolteacher, in the spring of 1961 but suffered a second heart attack and died in hospital on 6 March 1961. His funeral was held in St. Charles' Church in Aigburth, Liverpool. 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.
Pat Howson was well provided-for in Formby's will, but when she died soon afterward, it was believed that the fortune was jinxed.
For many years Fred Knight was Formby's chauffeur, driving him to the studios and music halls across the country. At that time Formby had a Lanchester, a make long gone, but considered quite the limo of its day.
Beryl Ingham was born in 1901 in Haslingden, Lancashire. 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".[6] It was in 1923 while they were appearing in music hall in Castleford, Yorkshire that she met Formby. They married in Formby's home town of Wigan, Lancashire the following year.[7]
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 Formby was paid up to £35,000 per performance. It was Beryl's business savvy that guided Formby 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 and George toured immediately pre-Apartheid South Africa, where they refused to play racially segregated venues. One story of the tour relates that after George embraced a small black girl who had presented his wife with a box of chocolates, the National Party opposition leader Daniel François Malan personally phoned to complain about their behaviour. Beryl is said to have replied "Why don't you piss off you horrible little man?" [8].
Beryl continued to manage Formby's career until she developed leukaemia. She died on December 24, 1960 in Blackpool, Lancashire.
Formby's trademark was playing the ukulele-banjo in a highly syncopated style, collectively referred to as the 'Formby style'.
Among the several syncopation techniques that he used, the most commonly emulated stroke of Formby's is a clever rhythmic technique, called the "Split stroke", a technique which produces a musical rhythm, that is easily recognized as Formby. He sang in his own Lancashire accent. Other strokes that are included in Formby's repertoire include the triple, the circle, the fan, and the shake. In his act, George often had many Ukuleles on stage tuned in different keys, as in some solos it requires an open string to be sounded - which is not possible when using Barre chords.
On George's last TV appearance 'The Friday Show', he modestly told the audience that he could only play in one key. Research has shown that this statement is false, as George himself plays transposed solos on songs such as 'On the HMS Cowheel', a melodic solo on 'I Told my Baby with the Ukulele', and many more.
Without a doubt George's best known catchprase is 'Turned out nice again!' but he also had a few others too such as 'Eeh champion!' or 'Eeh isn't it grand!' or when managing to escape from anybody he would say 'Haha! never touched me!' George would also often exclaim 'Eeh! well I'll go to our house!' or 'Mother!'
There is a bronze statue of Formby leaning on a lampost on Ridgeway Street, close to the intersection with Lord Street, in Douglas, Isle of Man. On 15 September 2007 another bronze statue was unveiled in Formby's hometown of Wigan, Lancashire in the Grand Arcade shopping centre.
A Norton International owned by Formby, registration HVU 111 (Formby was superstitious, and insisted that all his motorbikes had the same three numbers in their registration, although he was not bothered which number,) sold for £30,582 at an auction on December 3, 2007. The 1947 Norton International was one of several motorcycles owned by Formby, who starred in the film No Limit, a spoof of the 1935 Isle of Man TT race. The International was presented to him during a visit to Norton’s Bracebridge Street factory in July 1947.[9]
   | The Guardian: Naughty but nice (George Formby by David Bret) - Book review: George Formby by David Bret | Books | The Guardian |
| | 'Ukulele king' Formby dies - BBC ON THIS DAY | 6 | 1961: 'Ukulele king' Formby dies |
| | The George Formby Society - Appreciating the legacy of George Formby |
| | homage to Mancunian Films - Official website for the Mancunian Film Studios Company and Mancunian Legends |
| | George Formby's Gravesite - George Formby (1904 - 1961) - Find A Grave Memorial |
| | George Formby website by Stan Evans - Stan Evans - George Formby Newsletter and Information |
| | Profile of George Formby Snr and Jnr - Andy Eastwood's Ukulele Heroes - George Formby |
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