Not copyrighted in the U.S.A. by Columbia British Productions. U.K. release through Columbia: 27 December 1941. Australian release through Columbia: 22 October 1942. 8,552 feet. 95 minutes. U.K. length: 92 minutes. (The cut U.K. version is available on an otherwise excellent – except for an image break-up at the climax – Sony DVD).
SYNOPSIS: An unpopular South American tenor plays to a London theater packed with paper. His manager seeks various ways to break his contract, but a perky little down-and-out who is a dead ringer for the tenor thwarts all the manager's stratagems.
COMMENT: George's first film for Columbia is an odd vehicle that is only intermittently successful. The script seems to have been made up on the run. George plays two roles. At first we find him in his usual comic guise as he tries to round up a few shillings by singing the typically catchy "The Barmaid at the Rose and Crown" (much to her annoyance). Then he disrupts a stage performance by dropping his musket and literally runs into our lovely heroine, Linden Travers. At this point, a great deal of the action is now transferred away from George to Jacques Brown as the tenor's manager and Felix Aylmer, his lawyer. Some of this speechifying is boring, some of it is quite funny (especially the bit with the actor who is not used to working without a script and the later scenes with breezy Ronald Shiner and brain-dead Alf Goddard).
At this stage, someone at Columbia no doubt realized that Formby was being pushed to the sidelines. Austin Melford was brought in to beef up his role and no doubt had the bright idea of borrowing Jiminy Cricket from Walt Disney's 1940 Pinocchio. We don't actually see Jiminy, of course. Instead Formby himself voices his Voice of Conscience. Then there is an amazing scene (if a brief one) with Enid Stamp Taylor in which George is made up to impersonate the missing tenor. This is the only time George ever played a character role on the screen and the only time he was ever photographed (aside from an inside joke appearance in "We'll Meet Again") without his usual make-up.
Indeed, instead of disguising himself as Gilli Vanetti, he simply doffs his disguise as George Formby. True, he has curled his hair (which may have been his practice in real life), but he has removed his false teeth and false nose, is keeping his mouth closed and his eyes open, and is standing up straight. So for this one brief scene we have a glimpse of George as he really was. This departure obviously didn't sit too well with the brass at Columbia. When Vanetti re-appears at the climax, this time he is made up (and costumed) as a dead ringer for George Formby!
As I said, "South American George" is a mixed bag. Certainly it's essential viewing for Formby fans. It would be wrong to say it doesn't work on the whole. It works intermittently. There are probably more misfires (Herbert Lomas is wasted as Formby's dad; Brown takes up far too much footage; "Jiminy Cricket" is a bore; and aside from "The Barmaid", the songs are nowhere in the "Mr Wu" class) than fires (Linden Travers makes a really lovely heroine), but as the first movie at a new studio, maybe we can forgive experimenting and mistakes. Especially when those experiments give us a glimpse of the real man behind the make-up!
SYNOPSIS: An unpopular South American tenor plays to a London theater packed with paper. His manager seeks various ways to break his contract, but a perky little down-and-out who is a dead ringer for the tenor thwarts all the manager's stratagems.
COMMENT: George's first film for Columbia is an odd vehicle that is only intermittently successful. The script seems to have been made up on the run. George plays two roles. At first we find him in his usual comic guise as he tries to round up a few shillings by singing the typically catchy "The Barmaid at the Rose and Crown" (much to her annoyance). Then he disrupts a stage performance by dropping his musket and literally runs into our lovely heroine, Linden Travers. At this point, a great deal of the action is now transferred away from George to Jacques Brown as the tenor's manager and Felix Aylmer, his lawyer. Some of this speechifying is boring, some of it is quite funny (especially the bit with the actor who is not used to working without a script and the later scenes with breezy Ronald Shiner and brain-dead Alf Goddard).
At this stage, someone at Columbia no doubt realized that Formby was being pushed to the sidelines. Austin Melford was brought in to beef up his role and no doubt had the bright idea of borrowing Jiminy Cricket from Walt Disney's 1940 Pinocchio. We don't actually see Jiminy, of course. Instead Formby himself voices his Voice of Conscience. Then there is an amazing scene (if a brief one) with Enid Stamp Taylor in which George is made up to impersonate the missing tenor. This is the only time George ever played a character role on the screen and the only time he was ever photographed (aside from an inside joke appearance in "We'll Meet Again") without his usual make-up.
Indeed, instead of disguising himself as Gilli Vanetti, he simply doffs his disguise as George Formby. True, he has curled his hair (which may have been his practice in real life), but he has removed his false teeth and false nose, is keeping his mouth closed and his eyes open, and is standing up straight. So for this one brief scene we have a glimpse of George as he really was. This departure obviously didn't sit too well with the brass at Columbia. When Vanetti re-appears at the climax, this time he is made up (and costumed) as a dead ringer for George Formby!
As I said, "South American George" is a mixed bag. Certainly it's essential viewing for Formby fans. It would be wrong to say it doesn't work on the whole. It works intermittently. There are probably more misfires (Herbert Lomas is wasted as Formby's dad; Brown takes up far too much footage; "Jiminy Cricket" is a bore; and aside from "The Barmaid", the songs are nowhere in the "Mr Wu" class) than fires (Linden Travers makes a really lovely heroine), but as the first movie at a new studio, maybe we can forgive experimenting and mistakes. Especially when those experiments give us a glimpse of the real man behind the make-up!