George Formby Jr. - Biography
George Formby was a famous music hall performer known for his double entendre-laden songs he played on banjolele. His unique, syncopated manner became known as “The Formby Style.” After first finding work as a jockey, he became famous first as a star of the stage, and subsequently on the screen, appearing in numerous films in the 1930s and ‘40s.
George Hoy Booth was born May 26th, 1904 in Wigan, Lancashire, UK. His father was the famous Edwardian music hall comedian James Booth, (his stage name, George Formby, was a reference to the northern town of the same name) and a Catholic mother, Ivy Caston. Though George was born blind, he gained the use of his eyes as a child either during a coughing fit or as the result of a sneeze.
Booth was the bastard son of a Lancashire prostitute and did his best to ensure his thirteen children grew up more respectably. He forbade his children from seeing his music hall act. He moved the family from their home on Westminster Street in Scholes to one on Atherton Road in Hindley. Though his father was one of the country’s highest paid performers, George nonetheless grew up quickly, going to work at an early age. When he was seven, he began apprenticing as a jockey; when he was ten, he turned professional. Not long after, the family moved once again, to Stockton Heath, Warrington. In 1915, George appeared in his first movie, as a jockey in By the Shortest of Heads. By his own admission, by the following year he was smoking up to two packs of Capstan Full Strengths and Woodbines a day.
In 1921, James Booth died and George went against his father’s wishes, abandoning his career as a jockey and performing his father’s material as George Hoy. Three years later he married Beryl Ingham, one half the clog dance duo, The Two Violets, and the couple began performing as a duo. It was Ingham who convinced George to take up the banjolele. In 1926, she pushed for him to sign a recording contract with Edison-Bell Winner. That year, George cut his first recordings as George Formby — “The Man Was a Stranger To Me / Rolling Around Piccadilly,” “I Parted My Hair In the Middle / John Willie's Jazz Band” and “John Willie, Come On / I Was Always A Willing Young Lad.” In 1932, Ingham became Formby’s manager. That year, he had his first real successes recording with the Jack Hylton Band.
He released a handful of singles in ’33 before appearing in his first sound film, 1934’s Boots! Boots! That year he signed a £100,000 a year contract with Associated Talking Pictures, making him one of the highest paid film stars in the world. He continued to churn out singles and appear in films including No Limit (1935), Off the Dole (1935) Keep Your Seats, Please (1936) Feather Your Nest (1937) and Keep Fit (1937). In 1937, he released “With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock / Oh Dear, Mother” which was banned by the BBC for its lyrics. That year he also performed for the troops in Europe and North Africa with Entertainments National Service Association and in the Royal Variety Performance. In September, “Leaning On a Lampost / Hi-Tiddley-Hi-Ti Island” sold 150,000 copies within the first month of its release. He continued releasing singles and appeared in It's in the Air (1938), I See Ice (1938) Come on George! (1939) and Trouble Brewing (1939) as the decade closed.
The next decade witnessed the release of many more singles and of the film, Let George Do It! (1940), the success of which made him the biggest film star in the UK. As a result, it was the first of his films exported to North America, where it was a huge success in Canada. More films followed, including South American George (1941), Turned out Nice Again (1941), Spare a Copper (1941), Much Too Shy (1942), Get Cracking (1943), Bell-Bottom George (1944), He Snoops to Conquer (1944) and I Didn't Do It (1945) which produced many more hit singles. After the release of George in Civvy Street in 1946, Formby receive an OBE in 1946. That year he and his wife also made headlines when they refused to play racially segregated venues in the immediately pre-Apartheid South Africa.
In the 1950s, Formby slowed down the pace of his film and music considerably. In 1952, he had his first heart attack. In 1959, he cancelled a tour of Australia because he was worried about the health of his fifteen-year-old dog, Willie Waterbucket. On December 24th, 1960, Formby’s wife died of leukaemia. Two months later he was engaged to a school teacher twenty years his junior, Pat Howson. Two days before they were to be wed, he suffered another heart attack and died in on March 6th, 1961 in Preston, Lancashire. His funeral service at St. Charles’ in Aigburth, Liverpool drew an estimated 100,000 mourners who followed the procession to Warrington Cemetery where he was buried in the Booth family plot.
With changing musical tides, despite his massive stardom, Formby has been largely forgotten today. There are still reminders of him in the form of several monuments including a bronze statue of Formby leaning on a lamppost on Ridgeway Street in Douglas, Isle of Man, and another at the Grand Arcade shopping centre in Wigan.
