For one reason and another this one and He Snoops To Conquer from 1944 are the 2 Formby films most difficult to come by, this was his 4th for ATP at Ealing and paradoxically the one with perhaps his most famous song in.
Willie and Mary work at the local record factory, the Monarch Gramophone Co. and are in the process of buying a house and getting married. Much to her pub landlady Ma's opposition "What you can see in that gump beats me". He needs to get a 5/- a week rise to fulfil their dreams would the same still held true today for the rest of us! A big crooner without even a contract records Leaning On A Lampost for the Company but George drops and shatters the wax master galvanising him and Mary to cover it up by recording it themselves late one night and hoping that no one will notice the substitution
George regressed back to Willie for the last time in here, from now on George was always George, and Polly Ward playing his girlfriend was nicely exuberant and even came back for a second helping the next year in It's In The Air. Familiar British stock actors played everyone else in a cartoon-like fashion. Songs: Feather Your Nest (in the unfinished bedroom), cutting the famous Leaning On A Lampost (my favourite bit, in the studio - wonder if there really was a record catalogue number CA895?) and Happy As A Sandboy (at the house warming party built on castles of sand).
There are many more trials and tribulations to come the Turkish bath being one but if you think this film will end in blank despondency you don't know your Formby! Overall it's another enjoyable piece of nonsense this time with a simple social commentary thrown in.
