George Formby

George Formby, OBE, was an English actor, singer-songwriter and comedian. He became known to a worldwide audience through his films of the 1930s and 1940s. He sang light, comical songs, usually playing the ukulele or banjolele. He was considered Britain’s first properly home-grown screen comedian.

About George Formby in brief

George Formby, OBE, was an English actor, singer-songwriter and comedian. He became known to a worldwide audience through his films of the 1930s and 1940s. On stage, screen and record he sang light, comical songs, usually playing the ukulele or banjolele, and became the UK’s highest-paid entertainer. He was considered Britain’s first properly home-grown screen comedian. Formby was an influence on future comedians—particularly Charlie Drake and Norman Wisdom—and, culturally, on entertainers such as the Beatles. His last television appearance was in December 1960, two weeks before the death of his manager Beryl Ingham. He died in Preston three weeks later, at the age of 56; he was buried in Warrington, alongside his father, George Formby Sr, from whom he later took his stage name. His father was a successful music hall comedian and singer who performed under the name George Form by. Form by Sr suffered from a chest ailment, identified variously as bronchitis, asthma or tuberculosis, and would use the cough as part of the humour in his act, saying to the audience, \”Bronchitis,. I’m a bit tight tonight\”, or \”coughing better tonight\”. One of his main characters was that of John Willie, an \”archetypal Lancashire lad\”. In 1906 he was earning £35 a week at the music halls, which rose to £325 a week by 1920, and Formby grew up in an affluent home.

He did not learn to read or write and was sent briefly to become a stable boy, briefly in Wiltshire. In 1915 he took the lead in his son’s first professional film, Shortest Heads, directed by Bert Haldane. After a year working at Middlefield, he was apprenticed to Thomas Scholfield at Epsom, where he ran his first Epsom races. After the war his career declined, although he toured the Commonwealth, and continued to appear in variety and pantomime. In 1946 it was estimated that he had performed in front of three million service personnel. Since his death Formby has been the subject of five biographies, two television specials and two works of public sculpture. His son sent him away to work as his son, but he was worried Formby would follow in his footsteps, saying: “one fool in the family is enough”; he was then sent away to watch him on the screen, taking the role of the lead character in the film Shortest heads. He also appeared in a film of the same name, The Shortestheads, in which he played the lead role in a thriller about a young boy who has to fight his way to the top of the school for his GCSEs. He had a son, George Hoy Booth, with his first wife, Martha Maria Salter, a twenty-year-old music hall performer. In 1923 he made two career-changing decisions – he purchased a ukULEle, and married Beryl ingham, a fellow performer.

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