Formby Happy In Making Other People Laugh

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 105, 27 January 1939, Page 14

Formby Happy In Making Other People Laugh

(CHARLES CHAPLIN once seriously envisioned himself in the role of Napoleon: John Barrymore, who played “Hamlet,” was not satisfied HU he gravitated into comedy parts, and most actors have the desire to be what they are not immediately they touch the top rung of the ladder. But that is not true of the English screen star, George Formby. He is a comedian, first, last, and ali the time, and lie has no other ambition than to go on being a funny man. , “I’ve got the face and figure lor fun,” lie stated recently, “and that’s the field I’ll stick to. Ami I like being on the happy side of the fence, too. You get closer to the' human side of life yourself, and likewise encourage others to get the right slant on things. “Now, who lias yet met a happy highbrow? Aye, it is better to have made the people laugh with you am) at you than to have left them only the pangs of arty indigestion and the memory of a dark frown' “Comedy is the true strength of entertainment; it is exhilarating and relaxing, and it’s hard but satisfying work. That’s why 1 intend to keep to that side of the business exactly as long as my Masters, Mr. and Mrs. Public and family, see eye to eye with me on the point of what constitutes good humour.” That George Formby should be so emphatically in favour of comedy is not surprising. His own triumph in this realm was presaged by a family attachment which saw the name top the bills of Loudon music halls long before the era of motion pictures. George himself was a vaudevillian of no little note before Basil Dean, director of Associated Talking Pictures Limited ;saw his act in a Lancashire variety theatre and immediately selected him as a likely screen type. It was Dean, also, who originally starred Grade Fields, and for his company she made all her pictures prior to accepting an engagement at a record salary with an American studio organization. On the practical side, George Formby has found the rewards, for wit recording companies bring him in an annual sum which ranks him with the world’s highest-paid entertainment personalities.